Samsung was also at the forefront of a trend it started, that of extra large screens. The large, plastic Galaxys had little overlap with the small, metal iPhones. Remember that the iPhone 5s had a 4.0” screen compared to Galaxy S5’s 5.1” screen (not to mention the Galaxy Note, Mega and other jumbo-sized phones).
This sets the stage for the Samsung Galaxy Alpha – a phone whose main purpose was to shake up the company’s design language. While it was announced in August, the phone would go on sale in September, the same month as the iPhone 6.
The 4.7” Super AMOLED display of the Alpha anticipated a major change in Apple’s design philosophy. The original iPhone had a 3.5” screen with 3:2 aspect ratio. The iPhone 5 made the screen taller (4”, 16:9), but kept the width the same. Two years later the iPhone 6 would be the first model to properly increase the screen size... to 4.7” with 16:9 aspect ratio.
Samsung was criticized for the low resolution display, 720p. But that only counted against the Galaxy Alpha when compared to Android flagships and those weren’t its target – its screen had just about the same pixel density as the iPhone (312ppi vs. 326ppi).
The frame of the Galaxy Alpha was made of machined metal with squared off sides, breaking away from the mostly rounded plastic that has been a part of the Galaxy S DNA since the beginning.
At the time, this was the thinnest Android phone that Samsung made – 6.7mm. And it weighed just 115g. For comparison, the Galaxy S5 from earlier in 2014 measured 8.1mm and 145g while the iPhone 6 from the same year was at 6.9mm and 129g.
In some ways the Galaxy Alpha was Samsung’s stepping stone to the major redesign for the Galaxy S6. The 2015 S-series flagship had a metal frame and was 6.8mm thick. That wasn’t the biggest departure from the S5 design, however.
Samsung sealed the S6 battery behind a glass back. To add insult to injury, that battery had a smaller capacity than the one in the S5 (2,550mAh vs. 2,800mAh). To be fair, the company had reasons to believe that this will work out okay.