Samsung Galaxy Alpha on Vodafone

Vodafone offer most of the top designs in their Pay Monthly selection these days, and have included the Samsung Galaxy Alpha alongside the S5, Nexus 6, Apple's iPhone 6, and various LG, Blackberry, Nokia Lumia, Sony and HTC products.

You can get it free on contract from £30.50 a month, £4 less than the S5. Or, you can get that down to £22.50 a month if you stump £149 upfront, and agree to a 24 month contract for 100 mins, 100MB and unlimited texts.

Currently Vodafone haven't added this phone to their Pay Monthly range, but you can get it unlocked elsewhere for roughly £450-500. That price is an accurate reflection of the specification, where it's close to being a leader without ever actually heading the pack.

First impressions were that someone must have made a horrible mistake and sent me an old white iPhone 4. Or, that's the style sheet it's singing quite loudly from. Thankfully the Alpha is a bigger and lighter phone than Apple's old device, and the time of delivery it was running Android KitKat 4.4.4 on some impressive internal hardware.

At the heart of this slimline package is a Samsung Exynos 5 Octa ARM SoC and the Mali T628MP6 GPU, a very powerful combination. The Exynos is something special, dynamically switching between four light duty cores and four heavy processing ones on demand. Indeed, when benchmark tested, the Alpha it is actually quicker than the excellent S5. This says a lot for how technological developments have enhanced its silicon even between these two related designs.

The standard RAM allocation is 2GB with 32GB of Flash storage that's not expandable. Why there is no MicroSD slot option I'm at a loss to say, because the back is removable and even the battery can be replaced. To complete the circle of that muck-up there isn't a 64GB model to negate it. That's an odd choice, and cements the Alpha as a curious mix of good, bad and the pretty much inexplicable.

One of the better aspects is the new 4.7" 720p Super AMOLED display panel. While other phones have higher resolutions. I've not seen anything previously that makes the colours zing quite like this one does. It's Joseph's Amazing Technicolor dream-screen, and a good a good way to show it off is to wield the accomplished 12MP rear camera. Admittedly the S5 has a 16MP one, but - as if to prove that megapixels aren't the be-all-and-end-all of such matters - I got much better images out of this one with the minimum of fuss.

It has an easy-to-access HDR mode, background blurring and it will even capture 4K quality video if needed. The only reason for not using this video mode is that it disables simultaneous stills capturing, if you use that.

Initially, the Galaxy Alpha ticked plenty of boxes, but that came to an abrupt end when I realised how Samsung had butchered the OS on the alter-stone of product differentiation. Perhaps it's me, but I don't like its TouchWiz UI, or any of the inconsistent interface changes introduced with it. You can download and use the Google Now Launcher, but why should that be necessary?

There is also a finger print reader that falls short of Apple's attempt, and new health related applications for those daft enough to see their phone as a means to achieve fitness.

Vodafone for its part in this tha taken a backseat to Samsung's excesses, choosing to only add a few branded applications. People prefer a more vanilla experience on Android, and Vodafone clearly understands the market better these days.

Battery life is what we've all come to expect from modern Smartphones, where they don't have the legs for a single days heavy use, and a second day isn't realistic even on moderate usage. We buy these things, it's our fault.

However, where the Galaxy Alpha falls down is when we consider what we'd like in a new phone. Nowhere on any wishlist we've ever written would is a phone that's mimicking something Apple launched in 2010... with TouchWiz UI as its primary interface. I don't care how wonderful the display is, if I'm forced to suffer something that is inferior to the stock Android interface on it.

We're not sure what Samsung was thinking. At best the Galaxy Alpha is a muddled and inconsistent attempt to lure people who have had enough of their old Apple device. That's a shame, because strip all that away and there is some really wonderful things in this gorgeously engineered phone. Mark Pickavance

A beautifully crafted, well specified, phone that seems to want to lure old iPhone users.

Samsung Galaxy Alpha specifications
• 4.7" HD Super AMOLED (1280 x 720) display
• Android 4.4.4 (KitKat)
• 12MP Camera
• Standard Google mobile services
• Bluetooth
• Near Field Communications
• 1860 mAh Li-ion battery
• 2GB RAM
• 32GB storage (No micro SD slot)
• 132.4 x 65.5 x 6.7mm
• 114g