Samsung has just confirmed that its thinnest phone ever, the Galaxy A8, will not be released in the UK. In a statement to Expert Reviews, Samsung said, "The Galaxy A8 will not be coming to the UK. It will currently only be available in Singapore and China."
Samsung officially unveiled the handset yesterday. Measuring a mere 5.9mm thick, it's the thinnest phone Samsung has ever made, beating the 6.3mm Galaxy A7 and 6.8mm Galaxy S6 by quite some margin. Like the rest of the Galaxy A series, the A8 has a metal chassis, but it also comes with a fingerprint scanner built into the main home button.
Despite its svelte dimensions, Samsung has still managed to pack plenty of power into the Galaxy A8, including a massive 3,050mAh battery, an octa-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage (which can be expanded up to 128GB via microSD card) and a 16-megapixel camera with a f/1.9 lens.
Part of the reason why it can accommodate such a huge battery is thanks to its large 5.7in Super AMOLED. This puts it firmly in phablet territory, but its 1,920x1,080 resolution means it won't be quite as sharp as the 5.5in Full HD Galaxy A7. This may be why Samsung isn't releasing the Galaxy A8 in the UK, as it probably wants to avoid confusion with the A7 - particularly since both phones use the same processor as well. There's also the small matter of the Galaxy Note 5, which is launching at IFA in September and is also thought to have a 5.7in screen (or 5.78in, to be exact). To have another large phablet on sale might just be one phone too many for UK consumers.
Still, it would have been interesting to see whether Samsung would have brought over a modified version of its new Chinese interface for Android 5.1.1, as the Galaxy A8 UI's that's been specifically designed to match Chinese user habits along with a custom localisation page. With no plans to release the A8 in the UK, though, it's unlikely we'll see any new TouchWiz features for the foreseeable future.
