This is the brand new Samsung Galaxy Alpha. This device was announced before the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and this was the only premium looking Samsung device that has been ever made because it was made of aluminum, the Galaxy Note 4 wasn’t announced, the Galaxy S5 was not a premium handset in terms of making it with metal it was still made out of plastic. And this device kind of combined the best of both worlds with a nice aluminum outside shell and also a very lightweight build because it’s still made out of plastic on the front and the back.

A big shout out to 28Mobile for helping us get this model in for review. Make sure to check them out at 28Mobile.com where you can actually pick up your own Galaxy Alpha at their website. So let’s go ahead and take a quick spin around the box.

The box is pretty simplistic, pretty big for a phone with a smaller display compared to the rest of the Samsung pack. But it’s pretty minimal on the box’s design. You basically have the Alpha branding on the front, all the specs on the back, and just different types of branding like LTE-A and some Korean language written on the sides. So let’s go ahead and open up the box and take a look at what’s inside.

First things first is obviously the brand new Samsung Galaxy Alpha in white. It has a beautiful-looking aluminum banding going around the sides of the phone. So let’s go ahead and move that out to the side. And inside, you’re going to see a whole host of information. First up is all your manuals and literature that you’re not going to take a look at. And then you have just a big selection of things including this huge power brick, which actually is for Europe. You have your USB cable, your headsets—all the stuff that you’re really not going to take a look at. You might take a look at the headsets and other things. But you also do get an extra battery and a separate battery charger, like an external battery charger.

Back to the Samsung Galaxy Alpha. This guy has a 4.7-inch display. It is a Super AMOLED display but the resolution is only 720x1280, which brings it around 312ppi, a little bit less than the iPhone 6 and a lot less than the Samsung Galaxy S5, and now even the more supreme 515ppi on the Samsung Galaxy Note 4. In terms of processing power, taking a look at the Exynos 5 octa-core processor. That means two quad-core processors, one at 1.8GHz and the second one at 1.3GHz. We’re also looking at 2GB of RAM and built-in 32GB of internal storage. The camera on the back is a 12MP sensor, not the top of the line but it is able to record 4K video and also 1080p at 60p. And you do have 1MP front-facing camera but we won’t get too much into it.

The Galaxy Alpha is a very solid-feeling device. It’s probably one of the best feeling devices in the hand other than the Samsung Galaxy Note 4. For some reason, I think the Galaxy Note 4 feels a little bit more solid but this one feels very nice, especially because it is a smaller device.

Booting this guy up is pretty normal. It’s running Android 4.4.4 with TouchWiz on top of that. And it’s actually one of the smoother experiences of TouchWiz I’ve had in quite a long time. Especially on startup where things usually tend to lag on TouchWiz, it’s smooth sailing on the Samsung Galaxy Alpha. Now I know a lot of you guys are worried about the pixel reduction in terms of resolution. What I have to say about that is don’t you worry because it actually looks pretty good. The Super AMOLED display is very bright and very saturated. But again, 315ppi is still very pixel-dense and pixelization is not that big of a deal unless you’re really looking very hard and text and very fine text, you’ll be fine.

So that’s been the unboxing and first look at the Samsung Galaxy Alpha. Make sure to leave me a comment below on what you would like to see.