Samsung Galaxy A5 design and specs revealed in TENAA listing

Rumors about Samsung’s next mid-range metal smartphone have been circling the web for a few months now. While most has been speculation and sketchy leaks, the device has finally made an official pre-launch appearance on TENAA, China’s equivalent of the FCC. As usual, the listing comes with the customary front, back and side profile images as well as a collection of important specifications…

Looking at the images, we can see Samsung has decided to bring the A5’s design language in line with the Galaxy S6. Like the flagship phone, the Galaxy A5 pictured above features a metal frame with flat edges, sculpted towards the corners. The front has the same pill-shaped home button, while the glass protecting the screen seems to feature slightly curved edges. It also has a similar protruding camera, surrounded by a chrome frame and accompanied by a single LED flash. What’s more, the device is only 6.9mm thin, practically the same thickness as an iPhone 6.

This particular Galaxy A5 is model number SM-A5100, which is purportedly the model heading to China. Specs of the A5100 include a 5.2-inch AMOLED-based 1080p display, 2GB RAM, 1.7GHz processor (core-count not mentioned, but presumably octa-core) and a 13MP rear camera as well as a 5MP front-facing snapper. The base model will come equipped with 16GB built-in storage, which can be expanded up to an extra 128GB via MicroSD card. Sadly, there’s no Marshmallow-love for this device. The Galaxy A5 is going to launch with Android 5.1.1 out of the box, perhaps indicating that Sammy will save its Android 6.0 launch for the Galaxy S7 which we’re expecting to be announced in the first quarter of next year.

We’re not sure exactly when Samsung intends to announce the mid-ranger, but with it having appeared on TENAA, we presumably won’t have to wait long. Whether or not it’ll be launched before the end of the year is yet to be seen. The big question is whether it can compete successfully with the HTC One A9. On the spec/design front, it certainly seems the closest competitor the A9 will have. But its success versus HTC’s iPhone-clone will depend very much on pricing and marketing. Will it be priced aggressively, or overpriced like the One A9?