Samsung Galaxy A80 review

Design and 360-degree view

Take the phone in hand and you'd immediately appreciate one of the Galaxy A80's defining features - its display. A 6.7-inch SuperAMOLED with minimal bezels and zero unsightly camera cutouts - that's what Infinity display should only mean in our book.

Now, if you whip out the calipers, you may notice the top border is a tiny bit thicker, but even the most particular ones among us don't really notice it. But when you do expressly note that, it springs to mind that there's no earpiece as such.

Samsung makes no big deal out of this, but it's apparently using one of those piezo solutions that vibrate the display. It does an okay job and you hear calls alright, it's just that at higher volume people close to you will be able to hear the other party too.

Other things which typically reside in these quarters, but you won't find here include an ambient light sensor, a proximity sensor, and a notification LED. The first one is placed underneath the display, around 3cm below the top edge and 2cm from the left one.

For proximity, we gather the phone uses the touchscreen and triggers when there's a large enough area being touched - we couldn't get a reading by simply covering any part of it with a piece of paper.

As for the LED light? That one's missing altogether.

And since we've started listing things the A80 doesn't have, let's point out that Samsung's scrapped the headphone jack for the A80, instead relying on the USB-C port for audio.

You'll also need to rely on the internal 128GB of storage exclusively, as the card slot only takes a couple of nanoSIMs, abut no microSD. Bummer.

Infinity display • Camera facing forward • Dual SIM slot, but no microSD and no 3.5mm jack

On the other hand, not having a feature could be a good thing - we're talking about the hardware Bixby button, which the A80 omits. We're back to the classic Samsung control scheme with a power button on the right and volume buttons on the left. The keys are where you expect them to be, and click nicely, no complaints there.

Power button on the right • Volume controls on the left • In the hand

With all the stuff getting scrapped and a selfie camera nowhere in sight, could the A80 not be able to take selfies? That is of course out of the question and here's where the pop-up camera mechanism comes in. Comes out.

A motor inside the A80 elevates a platform on the rear of the phone and as soon as it clears the front, the camera ensemble flips 180 degrees to face forward. So, in theory, you should be getting selfies with the same quality as photos from a primary camera.

Update, June 26: We noticed that Samsung's also changed things up a bit on the back of the rotating assembly by adding a couple of ridges to slide against the top edge of the main body as the module extends and retracts. On the previous unit, the back of the camera assembly was flat.

Few phones right now offer that luxury and most recently the Zenfone 6 had us all excited about the new possibilities. Unlike Asus's offering, however, the A80's camera isn't able to take automated panoramas or even function in any in-between states - it's either facing back or front.

It feels like a gentle assembly and you can force the camera rig in an unnatural position, though it does return to the flush state when you retract it. We'd refrain from such experiments, generally.

Camera facing back • Camera facing front

What will inevitably happen even without ill intent is dust entering the space between the camera assembly and its platform, as well as the platform and the silo it slides into. In the time we spent with the phone, we didn't experience any malfunction and perhaps a quick wipe of the tiny particles accumulating on the moving bits will go a long way towards assuring the A80's longevity.

Speaking of, the phone's back is made of the latest iteration Gorilla Glass 6 for the best Corning has to offer in terms of shatter resistance. Meanwhile, the display is covered with Gorilla Glass 3, which was when scratch resistance peaked. Naturally, there's no IP rating on the Galaxy A80, but there's a gasket on the SIM slot, for what it's worth.

The Galaxy A80 measures 165.2x76.5x9.3mm and weighs a hefty 220g, making it one of the biggest and heaviest phones around. Thanks in part to the tall 20:9 ratio and the extending camera it also feels a little top-heavy, almost as if it will topple over if you're not careful enough. It's a two-hand phone by all accounts, is what we're saying.