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FEAST YOUR EYES: Samsung's Galaxy Alpha has an 'entirely new appearance'

Wow, it looks like nothing else on the market, for sure

Samsung unveiled its new Galaxy Alpha on Wednesday – and it's an Android smartphone that comes encased in a thin all-metal coating.

Apple iPhone 5

The South Korean giant said the 4.7-inch Alpha will hit the shelves in early September. Samsung did not name any carrier partners, though EE has said that it will tout the handset in the UK.

Under the hood, the Alpha will sport Samsung's Exynos 5 Octa 5430 chipset: four 1.8GHz ARM Cortex-A15 cores and four 1.3GHz ARM Cortex-A7 cores that can all work together. The idea is to power up the A15 cores only when extra oomph is needed, thus saving the charge in the 1,860mAh battery by relying on just the lower-power A7 cores in the meantime.

The handset also features a 12Mp (4128 x 3096 pixel) rear camera, 2.1Mp second cam, 2GB of RAM and 32GB storage, though the Galaxy Alpha will not have a Micro SD slot. LTE and Wi-Fi connectivity are standard. The handset is 132.4 x 65.5 x 6.7mm (5.21 x 2.58 x 0.26in) in size and weighs 115g (4.06oz). It also has a fingerprint scanner.

The smartphone will ship with Android 4.4.4 KitKat and Google mobile web apps including Drive, Maps and Hangouts.

"With an entirely new appearance," Samsung Electronics CEO and head of IT and mobile communication JK Shin claims, "the Galaxy Alpha focuses on both beauty and functionality combining a stunning metal frame and slim, light weight design with the same powerful hardware and features users expect from a flagship Galaxy mobile device."

Perhaps the "entirely new appearance" Shin refers to is the white, gold, silver and blue finishes available for the Alpha. The handset has shiny metal side and back casing, and rounded corners.

Samsung's legal department will be thrilled. ®

Bootnote

No, that's not a Galaxy Alpha inlined above. Could you tell the difference between that and what the Alpha actually looks like? And here's the radically different Samsung Galaxy S5.

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