A week after getting unveiled in China, the Galaxy A8 has now been confirmed to be launching in Samsung's home market on July 24th. Samsung's thinnest smartphone ever with a waistline of 5.9 mm, the A8 will be available from carrier STK in white and gold for a price of 649,000 won – that comes up to around $560, a price that may or may not sit well with consumers looking to pick up a new smartphone.
The Galaxy A8 certainly has enough grunt to justify a high price tag. It features a 5.7-inch Full HD Super AMOLED display on top of a metallic body with very little bezel and a design that takes after the Galaxy S6. There's an octa-core Snapdragon 615 processor under the hood, along with 2GB of RAM, a 16-megapixel rear camera with f1.9 aperture, a 5-megapixel front-facing camera, 16GB of expandable internal storage, LTE connectivity, and a 3,050 mAh battery. The phone has a fingerprint sensor as well, and runs on Android 5.1 Lollipop out of the box with the latest, nicest and fastest version of Samsung's TouchWiz overlay.
Samsung hasn't announced launch plans for other markets yet, but the Galaxy A8 should be making its way to other regions in the near future. It's possible availability will not be widespread, as the company wouldn't want sales of the Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 edge+, which will go on sale in late August, to be affected.
