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Cellphones

Samsung To Discontinue Galaxy Alpha For Cheaper Galaxy A5 47

Posted by samzenpus from the end-of-the-line dept.
An anonymous reader writes that Samsung is giving up on their Galaxy Alpha smartphones. "Samsung will reportedly stop producing the metal-clad Galaxy Alpha early next year, and instead position the Galaxy A5 smartphone as its replacement. According to a report, with the launch of Galaxy A5 in South Korea - which can be as early as mid-January and as late as early February - Samsung will phase out production of the Galaxy Alpha once the current inventory of materials is exhausted for the smartphone, reported Korean publication ET News on Friday."
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Samsung To Discontinue Galaxy Alpha For Cheaper Galaxy A5 More

Samsung To Discontinue Galaxy Alpha For Cheaper Galaxy A5

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  • Cheaper crap, same retail price?

  • Galaxy Alpha - We Hardly Knew Ye (Score:3)

    by Tailhook ( 98486 ) on Monday December 29, 2014 @12:50PM (#48690543)

    The Alpha only recently became available in the US, and it certainly had my eye, being not phablet sized but still a "flagship" class phone and very well built. I'd have been happy to pay the price, but I passed, for one simple reason:

    TouchWiz.

    No thanks Samsung. Not having it. Your TouchWiz crapped up A5 can sod off as well.

    • Get a Sony Z3 from a retailer who doesn't add network crap to it (IE carphone warehouse in the UK). Samsung are their own worse enemy. Great phones but ruined with dreadful UIs and a poor android upgrade record. They look destined to repeat all HTCs mistakes!

      • Updates are my biggest problem with Android. I'm due for a new phone in a couple months and I would really like to go with Android because it fits all my needs in everything except the updates department. With the way Apple handles things, you can be reasonably sure you'll get updates for a couple years. With Android it's hit and miss depending on the handset you get, and sometimes depending on your carrier. I got burned on the last phone I bought where it never received any updates after I bought it. I t

        • A Nexus 6 is what you want then.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by punkr0x ( 945364 )
          Updates are not the problem they used to be. Most manufacturers have realized the importance of supporting their flagship devices with timely updates. And google has rolled a lot of the functionality updates into the google play services app, which can be updated through the play store independent of the OS. If this is really the only thing keeping you from Android, I would say look at the track record of some of the major manufacturers over the past two years and see if any of them are satisfactory.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Threni ( 635302 )

          As has been pointed out, updates aren't that important any more. Sure, Lollipop looks a little different to previous versions (although it's hard not to laugh when you compared it with the previous versions, having read all the PR fluff from the last 8 months or however long it's been since it was "announced", and it's still only on about 0.2% of devices so far, and it'll be another year before it's on even 10% of devices) but the apps themselves have largely been updated with the new UI principles. Ma

        • With Apple, and their evangelists pushing App developers to always use the bleeding edge features of the iOS API, you are guaranteed that your 'updated' iDevice will get updates for several years and then quickly be abandoned in the App store. With Android, the smart app developers reach back as far as practical in OS compatability. So your older Android phone lasts longer. Plus you can always get a Nexus device with no SD card slot if you don't mind storing everything 'in the cloud' so Google can sift t

    • TouchWiz.

      No thanks Samsung. Not having it. Your TouchWiz crapped up A5 can sod off as well.

      What alternative is there, besides iPhone?

      For reference, I have an older HTC (Sensation), and it's crapped up too with HTC's bloatware and "Sense" UI. It's horribly slow and I can't wait to get rid of this POS, and my next phone definitely won't be an HTC. Since I really don't want to join the cult of Apple, and I sure as hell am not going to get a Windows Phone, Samsung appears to be the default choice.

      • Still a few Android flagships to choose from if you don't want any of those:

        Motorola Turbo

        LG G3

        OnePlus One (if you can get an invite)

        Sony Xperia Z3

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Scoth ( 879800 )

        I picked up the HTC One M7 when it was new, and the Sense 5.0 is a drastic, drastic improvement over the previous iterations. Plus more recent updates (up to 6.0 now, I think) you can even disable Blinkfeed completely and the like, giving it a feel very close to stock. I've been fairly happy with it. The only thing really making me consider upgrading now is the terrible camera.

        • Yeah, but the other problem is that I'm pissed that HTC stopped bothering with updates to this phone almost as soon as I got it, and it's been steadily getting slower and slower, and is almost unusable now. Why would I want to reward a company that doesn't do any after-the-sale support with more business?

      • Uh, Nexus?

    • The Alpha only recently became available in the US, and it certainly had my eye, being not phablet sized but still a "flagship" class phone and very well built. I'd have been happy to pay the price, but I passed, for one simple reason:

      TouchWiz.

      No thanks Samsung. Not having it. Your TouchWiz crapped up A5 can sod off as well.

      You don't have to get your undies in a bunch.

      There are plenty of launchers that you can use instead of TouchWiz. I Use Nova Launcher Pro on my S4.

    • I like TouchWiz.

    • I was sadly limited to samsung only phones at my new employer (apparently they are the only phones to pass security mandates ... well other than iPown). Personally I have a 2013 Moto X and love it for its 99% stock android UI. all my previous phones were either nexus or immediately flashed to AOSP. Anyway chocked on the idea of Touchwiz and even the idea of a work phone bigger than my personal phone ... so I got the Alpha.

      It was a great choice. For a work phone. The phone is amazing to behold, very slick, a

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by diebels ( 893147 )
      Buy the phone for the hardware and replace the launcher. Replacing TouchWiz with Apex works fine.

  • Whatever... (Score:3)

    by rodrigoandrade ( 713371 ) on Monday December 29, 2014 @01:21PM (#48690843)
    I'll take a plastic phone over a metalic one any day. Plastic is lighter, doesn't bend permanently (hello, iPhone 6 Plus), doesn't scratch as easily as metal, a damaged back cover is cheap to replace, etc.

    Having said that, it's nice to see Samsung dropping one of its 943329658 SKUs for a change. Choice is great, sure, but too many choices is bad and confusing for most.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      Well, if an object is stressed sufficiently, *something* has to break or deform permanently. And then there are plastic chassis which develop cracks at stress points, which I find really annoying.

      It seems to me that at well designed chassis should last a couple of years of normal, daily use with only cosmetic damage, whether that chassis is primarily metal or plastic. But if you are going to make a really cheap POS, plastic is the only way to go. I've worked plenty of devices whose plastic chassis I've cu

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