Samsung A9 has four rear cameras

The first-ever smartphone with four rear cameras is here. 

On Thursday, Samsung has officially unveiled the A9, a photography-oriented mid-ranger with a total of four rear cameras. 

The concept behind this camera overload is similar to what we’ve seen on Huawei’s P20 Pro and LG V40, both of which have three rear cameras — there’s one main sensor and the other sensors do specific tasks.

In the A9’s case, the 24-megapixel, F1.7 main sensor is coupled by a 10-megapixel, F2.4 telephoto sensor which offers 2x optical zoom, an 8-megapixel, F2.4 ultra-wide sensor, and a 5-megapixel, F2.2 depth sensor for the Live Focus effect. 

On the front, the phone has a 24-megapixel, F2.0 selfie camera. 

It’s somewhat odd for Samsung to launch a phone with world-first features that’s not a flagship, but the A9 is plenty powerful. It has a 6.3-inch, 2,220×1,080 pixel, AMOLED screen and is powered by a Snapdragon 660 chip. It comes with 6/8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, expandable with microSD cards with up to 512GB of space. It has a 3,800mAh battery and runs Android 8.0. 

The A9 closely follows Samsung’s A7, a triple-camera phone that was launched in September. The A9 is an overall more powerful phone and likely a good indication of where Samsung’s Galaxy flagships will go next. 

The Samsung A9 will launch in black, blue and pink in November, but there’s no word on the price yet.