Physical Features and Call Quality
Alpha Galaxy with high quality Samsung, one hand device. 5.2 by 2.57 by 0.26 inches (HWD), it is narrower and slimmer than the iPhone 6, and the same width as Motorola's Cult classic 2015 Moto X. This being Samsung, the phone has large buttons physical home at the bottom of the screen and two capacitive touch buttons next to it.
Samsung clearly taken cues from Apple's iPhone 5 when designing this one, most notably in smooth polished aluminum frame with chamfered edges, and the bottom speaker port. It is not a pure design clone, though. The back is textured Samsung fake-leather, and it peels off to reveal a removable battery. The metal frame fixed at defuses my main complaint about the design of the Galaxy S5, ridiculous accent, chrome ridged plastic that makes the whole thing look cheap; Samsung succeeded in creating a device that the body feel a premium here. We made a slideshow all about how the Galaxy Alpha is made, and it was pretty cool; Look.
The Super AMOLED screen is the same panel as the Galaxy S5, marked down to only a 4.7-inch, 1280-by-720 size. Why Samsung did not take the opportunity to give us 1080p phone will forever be a frustrating mystery. If you like color saturation, though, you'll love this screen; It defaults to an almost psychedelic level of hyper-color, although you can turn down those settings. It is gorgeous, and makes it look staid iPhone 6 screen.
Call quality and battery life here are both very good, better than the iPhone 6, but not as good as the Galaxy S5. With our high intensity LTE video streaming test, we got 6 hours, 33 minutes in Alpha, compared to 7 hours, 9 minutes Galaxy S5 and 4 hours, 33 minutes on iPhone Keeps 6 Our test screen the whole time, and the power-sipping OLED screen makes a big difference here when compared to the LCD-packing phones like the iPhone and LG G3.
Voice call quality is also excellent, and I recommend this handset Heartily as a voice phone. The earpiece and speakerphone are both unusually sharp for a model of AT & T, like the great results I got Galaxy S5 and clearer than the iPhone 6 Transmissions through the microphone, speakerphone, and a Bluetooth headset are all very sharp, with excellent noise cancellation. Only the BlackBerry Passport has better voice quality on this phone.
The Galaxy Alpha is designed for the AT & T network, and it will not work properly with any other network US. It is only Tri-band 3G, losing heavily AWS band used by T-Mobile. Its LTE bands (1/2/3/4/5/7/17) include AT & T, T-Mobile, and some international bands, but not Sprint or Verizon. So you should not rely on this phone when it comes out the other carriers.
Alpha Galaxy has GPS, NFC, Bluetooth 4.0 LE, and Wi-Fi 802.11 a / b / n / ac. Wi-Fi performance against our Meraki MR16 router slightly better than the iPhone 6 that until we got more than about 75 feet away, where it became slightly worse.