James Phang

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Samsung A80 - Rotating Camera!

Samsung has unveiled a new quirky smartphone that shows their intent and innovative approach to create a bezel-less smartphone. The phone in question is the Samsung A80, which has an unusual trait with the use of a rotating camera. The Samsung A80 features a 48-megapixel main camera along with an 8-megapixel wide lens. The camera section also includes a 3D depth camera and IR sensors. The Samsung A80’s party skill is that when choosing to take a selfie image, the camera module will pop up and rotate to turn the camera towards you. Doing this eliminates the need for a dedicated camera module at the top of the screen which will occupy a certain amount of space.

The smartphone is equipped with a 6.7inch HD full screen that uses Samsung’s Super AMOLED ‘New Infinity Display’ with no notch. It is powered by the new Snapdragon 730G that has 8 core under the bonnet with two cores clocking at 2.2 GHz and six cores clocking at 1.7 GHz which are paired with 8GB of RAM to keep the phone quickly. The A80 comes with an in-display fingerprint sensor, 126gb internal storage, however it’s not expandable via microSD card.

Verdict

The main selling point of the A80 is the rotating camera. With two moving parts (the pop-up and the rotation of the camera) it may cause the phone to be unreliable as we know that with any moving parts the chance for malfunctioning is high and once those moving parts malfunction with this smartphone, you won’t be able to take selfie images.

Although the implementation of this method is great for achieving that bezel-less display, in the long run, the risk of the camera module malfunctioning due to the moving parts is high. Of course, Samsung would have tested this part to function millions of times during its lifecycle. However, people tend to retain their phones for longer now and therefore the camera module is likely to die before the whole phone stops functioning.

This phone is for sure going to be priced lower than the recently unveiled Samsung S10 line, however by how much is yet to be confirmed.

Samsung Galaxy A80 Hands On by SuperSaf