Samsung A8 Released In China; To Launch Galaxy J5, J7 Smartphones In India On Thursday

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has launched its Galaxy A8 smartphone in China, several tech sites reported Wednesday. The company's website for China also now lists the A8.

The A8 -- at only 5.9 mm -- is still not the slimmest handset in the market, but it integrates a fingerprint sensor into the home button. The phone has a slightly larger 5.7-inch display compared to the A7, which has a 5.5-inch display and is 6.3 mm thick. Both phones, however, run on the same Snapdragon 615 chipset with an eight-core processor and the Adreno 405 graphics processor.

Other similarities with the A7 include two 4G SIM slots, with one doubling as a microSD card slot that allows expansion of storage to 128GB. The A8, however, packs in a more capacious 3050mAh battery and a camera with 16MP resolution versus the 2600mAh battery and 13MP camera on the A7.

A8 ships with Android Lollipop 5.1.1 out of the box, while an upgrade to Lollipop hasn’t happened yet in India for the A7, which runs on the KitKat 4.4.4 version.

Meanwhile, Samsung is set to launch its Galaxy J5 and J7 phones at an event in New Delhi on Thursday. While the teaser it has posted on Twitter doesn’t give details, the web address to the microsite for the launch includes both J5 and J7.

The J5 is a 5-inch device with a 2600mAh battery and the Snapdragon 410 chipset, while the J7 has a 5.5-inch screen, 3000mAh battery and the Snapdragon 615 processor. The phones would be the first in a series of mid-range smartphones the Korean smartphone giant would launch in India this year, The Economic Times reported last month.