Giving a bit of credence to the rumors, a certain A5000 and A5009, variants of the same A500 model, have been seen in China's TENAA. Based on the images and specs hosted there, these would indeed seem to be lower spec'd variants of the Galaxy Alpha, a smartphone that heralded Samsung's excursion, or some would say return, into the realm of metal.
Just after the Galaxy Alpha was announced in August, rumors have started to come up that there will be more to come, albeit with a lower spec sheet than this supposedly premium-looking, though still somewhat mid-range, metal-clad smartphone. Leaks about some of those models, namely the A300, A500, and A700, mostly came from web page UAProf (user agent profile) or hearsay. These entries in TENAA now confirm their existence. Luckily for us, unlike the FCC, TENAA includes almost all the important specs for the device.
Those specs do concern what we've heard about the A500. It will have a larger 5.0-inch screen but the same 720p resolution of the Galaxy Alpha. Naturally, it has a lower processor, a 1.2 GHz quad-core, which would also match speculations of a Snapdragon 400 running on the device. RAM is also 2 GB and storage is capped at 16 GB. Here we see one of the other big difference between the A500 and the Galaxy Alpha, with the former shipping with a microSD card slot. The camera is strangely given with 3 figures: 13 megapixels, 5 megapixels, and 8 megapixels, leaving the door open for a 13/5 combo or 8/5 pairing like in previous leaks. Whichever way it goes, the front camera seems to be designed to cater to selfie lovers.
The TENAA entry, of course, also provides photos of the device and here we can notice a few things as well. The front and sides of the device do bear the marks of the Galaxy Alpha, but the back design strays quite a bit. It would seem that Samsung has split the flash and the heartrate sensor on both sides of the camera, if it does have a fingerprint scanner at all. Unfortunately, TENAA certifications do not usually include that information. The A5000 and A5009 are basically the same save for supported bands, with the A5009 supporting only CDMA while the A5000 does TD-SCDMA and WCDMA. Of course, both support GSM and TD-LTE.
VIA: TENAA (SM-A5000), (SM-A5009)