Samsung Galaxy A8 (2018) to go on sale on January 5; pre-orders have debuted

In the last month, Samsung announced the launch of the Galaxy A8 (2018) and Galaxy A8+ (2018) smartphones. At the time of unveiling, the company had announced that these smartphones will go on sale from January 2018.

As we have stepped into the new year, a report by Korea Herald states that Samsung will sell the Galaxy A8 (2018) in South Korea via the carrier KT Corp starting from this week. The report adds that the pre-orders for the Galaxy A8 (2018) are open from today and that the sale will debut on Friday, January 5. It has also stated that the smartphone will be priced at 599,500 won (approx. Rs. 36,000).

The report has shed light on the availability details of the Samsung Galaxy A8 (2018) alone. It does not reveal anything about the larger variant, the Galaxy A8+ (2018). Also, the report does not state if the Galaxy A8 (2018) will make its way to the other markets outside South Korea.

Talking about the Galaxy A8 smartphones, these devices resemble the Galaxy S8 flagship smartphone duo with the Infinity Display design. Both the devices come with support for Gear VR and Samsung Pay, the contactless mobile payment service. Notably, the Galaxy A8 (2018) and Galaxy A8+ (2018) are the first smartphones from Samsung to feature dual selfie cameras at the front.

To refresh the specs of the Galaxy A8 (2018), the smartphone boasts of a 5.6-inch FHD+ Infinity Display with 18.5:9 aspect ratio. Under its hood, there operates an Exynos 7885 SoC paired with 4GB RAM and two storage configurations - 32GB and 64GB. The imaging aspects of the device comprise of a 16MP rear camera sensor with a wider f/1.7 aperture and digital image stabilization and dual selfie cameras comprising of 16MP and 8MP sensors with f/1.9 aperture and support for Live Focus for the bokeh mode.

The Samsung Galaxy A8 (2018) runs Android 7.1 Nougat and not the latest Android 8.0 Oreo. The device comes bundled with connectivity aspects such as 4G VoLTE, a USB Type-C port, and other standard aspects. There is the IP68 rating for dust and water resistance, a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor and a 3000mAh battery operating under its hood.