Samsung makes metal-trimmed Galaxy Alpha official

Samsung has made the Galaxy Alpha official after a bout of leaks. As expected, the Galaxy Alpha is Samsung’s first smartphone to venture away from an all-plastic design by adding a metal frame. Aluminum stretches around the edges of the Alpha, resulting in nice-looking design that has harder corners than most Samsung phones. The Galaxy Alpha can really be summed up by the fact that you immediately know that it’s a Samsung phone, but one that’s different from the rest.

That metal frame has also led the Galaxy Alpha to become the thinnest of Samsung’s smartphones at just 6.7mm. But aside from the design, what other specs does the Galaxy Alpha have going for it? Let’s take a look:

4.7-inch 720p Super AMOLED display
Octa-core Exynos processor: four cores at 1.3GHz, four cores at 1.8GHz
2GB RAM
32GB storage
12-megapixel rear camera
2.1-megapixel front-facing camera
1,860mAh battery
Android 4.4.4 KitKat with TouchWiz skin
Heart rate sensor
Fingerprint scanner

All in all, we have high-end phone here. It’s not quite up to the flagship specs, but Samsung doesn’t want to draw too many sales away from its main devices. The Galaxy Alpha will be available in five color choices: black, white, silver, gold and blue, though the blue option will be exclusively carried by Carphone Warehouse in the UK. As far as availability goes, Samsung says that the Galaxy Alpha will be available from the beginning of September onward. Details are only known for the UK so far with Carphone Warehouse, Three UK, EE and Clove all announcing that they’ll carry the Samsung Galaxy Alpha. Clove is the only one with known pricing, set at £499.99 off-contract.