There is a new mid-range device from Samsung called the Galaxy A8. And Samsung, known for using plastic for their devices, surprisingly, equipped it with a full metal body. This is how it competes with another popular, metal-bodied device in the market, the HTC One M9.

Design

The One M9 has all the hallmarks of a high-end device. It has a polished metal body with an impressive finish and comes with rounded edges. Its colors include a gold/silver combination, a gold/pink combination and a gunmetal gray and amber gold version. Its features, however, lag behind the Galaxy A8, as it does not come with a fingerprint sensor.

The device from Samsung comes with a fingerprint scanner and is also the bigger device of the two. It has a full metal body, which comes in three colors, white, black and gold.

Display

The Galaxy A8 overpowers the competition in this category, thanks to its bigger 5.7 inch super AMOLED screen which has a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels and a density of 386 pixels per inch. As for the One M9, it has a super LCD3 screen measuring 5.0 inches with a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels and a density of 441 pixels per inch.

Specs

When it comes to speed, the One M9 is ahead, as it has the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 chipset and it is coupled with an octa-core CPU comprised of four Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 1.5 GHz and four Cortex-A57 cores clocked at 2 GHz along with an Adreno 430 GPU. In the Galaxy A8 is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 chipset, an octa-core CPU with four Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 1.8 GHz and four Cortex-A53 cores clocked at1.3 GHz along with an Adreno 405 GPU.

Memory

There is a similar memory slot on each device and each can be used to add up to 128 GB of external storage. As for RAM, the Galaxy A8 lags with 2 GB, ase the One M9 has 3 GB.

Camera

The 20 megapixel camera on the HTC One M9 outguns the 16 megapixel version on the Galaxy A8.

Price

The Samsung Galaxy A8 has a price tag of around $564 without a contract, while the HTC One M8 is priced at $199 with a two-year contract.