Samsung releases the Galaxy A9 (2018), the first quad-rear camera phone

Last week, there were reports of Lenovo’s plans to release the first quad-rear camera ever. Well, the Chinese OEM were a tad slow and have been beaten to the punch by Samsung, with the South Korean giants officially launching the Galaxy A9 (2018) today—four rear cameras in tow.

The A9 sports a 6.3-inch FHD+ display. It is, of course, an AMOLED panel and doesn’t feature a notch. Keeping things running smooth is a Snapdragon 660. It comes standard with 128 GB of storage, although buyers have a choice to supplement that with either 6 GB or 8 GB of RAM.

The A9’s unique selling point is undoubtedly its camera hardware. The four cameras at the back comprise of a 24 MP main camera with f/1.7 aperture, 10 MP telephoto camera with f/2.4 aperture and 2x optical zoom, 8 MP wide-angle camera with f/2.4 aperture and a 120-degree FoV, and a 5 MP depth sensor with f/2.2 aperture. At the front of the A9 is a huge 24 MP selfie shooter with f/2.0 aperture.

All in all, the camera hardware on the A9 (2018) is impressive. Of course, the last camera being a 5 MP depth sensor sounds like a cop-out just to ensure the A9 has the honor of being the first quad-rear camera device in a world where more sensors seem to be the norm. We’d appreciate it more if the last sensor was a monochrome one, although a number of  factors would be at play there—space and ISP capabilities being major ones.

The A9 (2018) gets its juice from a sizeable 3800 mAh battery and runs on Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box. It’s available in Lemonade Blue, Caviar Black, and Bubblegum Pink—all of which are a tad pretentious for color names but we don’t judge over here.