Samsung Galaxy A9 Officially Revealed As First Smartphone With Four Rear Cameras

Samsung has officially announced the Galaxy A9, the very first smartphone to have four rear-facing cameras. The upcoming handset may be a mid-range device, but it will cost £549 or around $725 when it’s released in November.

The Samsung Galaxy A9 looks a lot like a typical Samsung Android phone up front, but the vertically-aligned quad-camera setup on the back certainly makes it stand out from the rest. The handset comes with a 6.3-inch Super AMOLED display with a screen resolution of 2220 x 1080 and an 18:9 aspect ratio. Bezels on the sides are minimum, while the top of the display doesn't have a notch.

The device also comes with a glass back and it will arrive in three different colors: caviar black, lemonade blue and bubblegum pink. Despite having a glass back, the Galaxy A9 doesn’t have support for wireless charging. What it does support, however, is fast charging over USB Type-C which should be more than enough to fully charge its 3,800mAh battery at a faster rate.

Inside, the Galaxy A9 is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 processor with 6GB/8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. There’s also a microSD card slot which will allow users to expand storage up to 512GB. The Snapdragon 660 may not be as powerful as the Snapdragon 845, but it has already proven to be more than adequate for devices like the Nokia 7 Plus and the BlackBerry Key2.

The real stars on the Galaxy A9 are its four rear cameras, which is a first on a smartphone. Samsung was also able to outdo the LG V40 ThinQ and the Huawei Mate 20 Pro that arrived with triple-camera modules on their backs, as pointed out by Android Authority.

The camera at the very top is equipped with an 8MP sensor with an ultra-wide f/2.4 aperture lens and a 120-degree field of view. The one below it is a 10MP camera with a telephoto 2x zoom lens and an aperture of f/2.4. The third camera is the main shooter and it is equipped with a 24MP sensor and a wide f/1.7 aperture lens. Lastly, the fourth camera features a 5MP sensor with an f/2.2 aperture lens and is designed to capture depth to produce Live Focus pictures.

The hardware might already be enough to impress a lot of people, but Samsung also added some new software features to support the four cameras. The Galaxy A9 comes with 19 different image enhancements modes which are designed to provide custom settings depending on where the user is pointing the camera. Up front, the device also has an impressive single 24MP shooter with an f/2.0 aperture lens.

Overall, the Galaxy A9 is a formidable mid-range Android phone that could potentially shake up Samsung’s lineup. The inclusion of the four rear cameras may also indicate what Samsung’s plans are for its future flagship handsets. The only thing that’s disappointing about this handset is that it’s running Android 8.0 Oreo instead of Android 9 Pie, according to Phone Arena.