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Samsung takes on Apple's iPhone 6 Plus with all-metal 5.5" Galaxy A7

South Korean electronics giant Samsung has officially unveiled the Galaxy A7, the latest entry in the company's premium all-metal Galaxy A series that brings a 5.5-inch Super AMOLED display, 2 gigabytes of RAM and an 8-core application processor.

Aside from the all-metal construction —  an effort by the company to appease critics of its plastic Galaxy S flagships —  the A7's most notable feature is under the hood. Samsung says that the octo-core processors are actually an amalgamation of two separate quad-core chips, "enabling users to quickly and easily perform data intensive tasks."

As before, the Seoul-based firm is shipping separate chipsets depending upon the specific model: the A7's single-SIM variant receives Samsung's own Exynos 5430, while the dual-sim version comes with Qualcomm's Snapdragon MSM8x39. The Exynos chip consists of one quad-core Cortex A15 at 1.8 gigahertz and one quad-core Cortex A7 at 1.3 gigahertz, while the Snapdragon brings two quad-core Cortex A53 processors at 1.5 gigahertz and 1 gigahertz.

Buyers will also receive 16 gigabytes of on-board storage alongside a 2,600 mAh battery. A 13-megapixel camera sits on the rear, while a 5-megapixel front-facing camera adds "advanced selfie features" like "auto selfie" mode, in which users can trigger the shutter with a voice command or by waving their hand.

On-board sensors include an accelerometer, proximity sensor, geomagnetic sensor, RGB sensor, Hall effect sensor, ambient light sensor, and an RGB sensor. The entire package weighs in at 141 grams and is just 6.3 millimeters thick, 0.8 millimeters thinner than Apple's iPhone 6 Plus and 31 grams lighter.

The Galaxy A7 will be available for approximately $600 in pearl white, midnight black, and champagne gold later this spring.