The Samsung Galaxy S8 is the nicest phone I’ve ever held. It’s a beautiful combination of glass, metal, and an absolutely massive screen in a body that’s much smaller than you might expect.
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And that might not be enough lớn make it stand out anymore.
There are two versions of the S8: the standard Galaxy S8 with a 5.8-inch screen và the larger S8 Plus with a 6.2-inch screen. Both are available for preorder on March 30th và will be shipping in the US on April 21st. Pricing, as always with Samsung, is up to lớn the carriers — but you can expect them lớn command a premium price. The early word is that it will start at $720.
Here’s everything we learned about these two phones after using them for an hour or two last week.
Extending the screen khổng lồ near the bottom of the phone means that there’s no room for Samsung’s traditional hardware trang chủ button. Instead, it uses software buttons lượt thích other game android phones. It also uses some haptic feedback like Apple’s iPhones to lớn create a virtual feeling of pressing a trang chủ button, though it only works on the very specific spot where the software trang chủ button appears. One neat feature: some app android apps hide those main apk buttons when they go full screen, but you can still firmly press the bottom of the screen to lớn activate the trang chủ button.
Samsung borrows Force touch from the iPhone, at least for the trang chủ button
Getting rid of the physical trang chủ button also means that Samsung had lớn move the fingerprint sensor. It’s on the back now, right next lớn the camera. That’s not a very convenient place for it, honestly. It’s too high up on the phone to lớn comfortably reach và it’s also right next to the camera module, which might mean you’l be getting fingerprints on the camera more often than you’d like.
Speaking of fingerprints, because the S8 is nearly all glass, you’ll see them on the back a lot, but they’re not as prominent as you might expect (they’re worse on the LG G6, for example).
Both the USB-C port and the 3.5mm headphone jack (hallelujah) are located on the bottom of the phone. You have power nguồn on one side and volume buttons on the other, underneath which you’ll find a whole new button that’s dedicated lớn the big new software feature on the Galaxy S8, Bixby. There’s much more on Bixby below, but for now I’ll just note that dedicating a hardware button to this software feature is a big bet on Samsung’s intelligent assistant. If Bixby ends up being not that great, I expect many people will be looking for ways lớn remap that extra hardware button (or decrying that it’s vestigial).
Galaxy S8 Specs
Samsung Galaxy S8 & S8 Plus Specs
Processor
US: Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 Octa core (2.35 GHz Quad + 1.7 GHZ Quad)International: Samsung Exynos Octa chip core (2.35 GHz Quad + 1.9 GHZ Quad)Display
Galaxy S8: 5.8-inch OLED, 2960 x 1440, 570ppiGalaxy S8 Plus: 6.2-inch OLED, 2960 x 1440, 529ppiCameras
Rear: 12 megapixel, OIS, F1.7Front: 8 megapixel, tự động hóa focus, F1.7Batteries
Galaxy S8: 3,000 mAhGalaxy S8 Plus: 3,500 mAhDimensions
Galaxy S8: 148.9 x 68.1 x 8 mm, 155gGalaxy S8 Plus: 159.5 x 73.4 x 8.1 mm, 173gOther specs
Android 7.0 NougatUSB-C, 3.5mm tai nghe jackNFC và MST for Samsung PayIP68 water và dust resistantWireless chargingLTE Cat.16Bluetooth 5.0, can stream to two devicesWi-Fi a/b/g/n/acAs you’d expect, the S8 has the best specs you can get on an apk phone. Depending on the region, you’ll either get Qualcomm’s newest (and slightly rarer) Snapdragon 835 or Samsung’s own Exynos. In both cases, Samsung is touting that they’re built on a 10nm chip, which should theoretically help with power consumption. In my brief time with it, everything was whip-fast. Hopefully it will stay that way over time — Samsung phones often don’t.
The standard S8 has a 570ppi 5.8-inch screen, with a resolution of 2960 x 1440. The S8 Plus has the exact same resolution on its 6.2-inch screen, which works out khổng lồ 529ppi. For my money, the standard S8 is the way khổng lồ go. It still feels like a massive screen và the body is significantly smaller. The height of the screen is interesting, too: the aspect ratio is a super-tall 18.5:9, which adds a bunch of screen real estate lớn scroll through. I didn’t get to kiểm tra a bunch of third-party apps, so hopefully we won’t see too much weirdness with the new aspect ratio. Even if we do, Galaxy phones are popular enough khổng lồ prod developers lớn update their apps to support it.
In terms of other specs, it’s pretty bog standard stuff: 4 gigs of RAM, 64 gigs of onboard storage, và an expandable SD thẻ slot.
Galaxy S8 battery
Nearly 900 words in và I haven’t made an exploding phone joke (you’re welcome, Samsung). But now is the time to lớn point out that the last time the phone maker released a phone this big và beautiful, it literally set itself on fire on a disturbingly regular basis. The company’s responses khổng lồ this issue were botched và bad for some time before it pivoted, apologized, & introduced a new process for checking battery safety. Those safety checks are important, but Samsung still has khổng lồ own all the exploding phone jokes và hear them at every mention of its phones for a while.
So on the S8, Samsung did not push the envelope when it comes khổng lồ capacity. The S8 has a 3,000mAh battery and the S8 Plus has a larger 3,500mAh battery — the same capacity that the cảnh báo 7 had. But neither is especially large when you consider the fact that they need khổng lồ power towering screens. Samsung claims it has tweaked the battery chemistry khổng lồ help the batteries last longer after a year or two of use.
To 3d for it, Samsung is offering the usual suite of power nguồn options: Qualcomm Quick Charge and support for both major wireless charging standards. But I still have reservations about how long the batteries will last on these phones. In fact, it may be a reason to lớn seriously consider getting the larger S8 Plus.
Galaxy S8 cameras
Another place where Samsung hasn’t really pushed the envelope is the camera. The S8 uses the exact same rear camera as the Galaxy S7, a 12-megapixel sensor with OIS. Samsung says it’s done work on the software side khổng lồ improve picture quality, và in my short time with it I found it to be significantly faster than the camera on the Galaxy S7 Edge.
It is notable that the S8 Plus doesn’t get a better camera or a dual-camera setup. Excepting screen and battery size, both phones are identical.
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I suspect it’s using the “take pictures all the time in the background và just save them when you hit the shutter button” trick we’ve seen on other phones. It also borrows another trick from other app android phones: the shortcut lớn launch it is double-pressing the power nguồn button now (since the home button is virtual).
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The front-facing camera (aka the one you really care about) has gotten an upgrade. It’s an 8-megapixel sensor now, but more importantly it has autofocus. Switching between cameras was fast and easy, as was swiping over lớn get to lớn Samsung’s kajillion photo gimmick settings. But some of those gimmicks are pretty neat, I’m especially fond of the GIF mode, though I vì wish it was just automatic like you can vì with Apple’s Live Photos & the Motion Stills app.
In any case, the competition for the “best điện thoại thông minh camera” is way more interesting now than it was a year ago, when just Samsung & Apple were at the top. Now, Apple & LG are sticking multiple cameras in their phones while Google’s px has jumped khổng lồ the top of the apk camera quality game. It’s too early to say that Samsung is resting on its photography laurels with the S8, but it is fair to lớn say that there’s probably nothing here that will give other companies reason to worry.
Galaxy S8 software
That Samsung is capable of making great hardware should come as no surprise khổng lồ anybody. It’s the software where we have reason to be skeptical. Running all the way back lớn the bad old days of TouchWiz, Samsung has a well-earned reputation for taking Android và mucking it up with bad ideas.
For the past few years, though, the common refrain has been restraint, và I’m going khổng lồ repeat it again today. Samsung has done a pretty good job keeping its worst instincts in check. There are a ton of weird features to lớn find in the dark recesses of the settings menu, but out of the box the basic look, feel, & functionality of Samsung’s apk skinning is pretty good.
In my 10 minutes or so of playing with it, it didn’t fail khổng lồ unlock a single time. In fact, it was so fast that we a hard time filming it. I had to point the phone away from my face and then just tilt it up to look at myself. I unfortunately forgot khổng lồ print a glossy 8 x 10 of my face to thử nghiệm with, though, so I can’t say if maybe it’s tuned to be a little too forgiving when it tries to lớn see if it’s you. Samsung admits the face-detect system is less secure than the other ways of unlocking, so you will still need to lớn set up the iris or fingerprint scanners to lớn make payments.
There is one gimmick that in theory I should be excited about but in practice I’m just not: DeX. It’s a feature where, after buying a specialized dock, you can plug your Galaxy S8 into a monitor, keyboard, và mouse và get a full desktop mode. Unlike solutions we’ve seen in the past (RIP Motorola Atrix), the desktop mode here simply offers android apps instead of a full desktop browser. It looks well-designed for what it is, offering full access lớn your notifications và resizable windows. But it can’t escape the fact that outside a few apps like Samsung’s own browser, Microsoft Office, và Adobe’s creative suite, game android apps are bad on big screens.
People who unironically call themselves Road Warriors lượt thích they’re IT managers in 1999 will love it. The rest of us probably won’t use it. Và that’s fine.
Bixby, Samsung’s personal assistant
Samsung may not have put a ton of effort in changing its hardware kiến thiết language, updating its camera, or packing in a bigger battery. But it has been focused on figuring out how khổng lồ make software that people actually like, và it’s all centered on a new virtual assistant called Bixby.
As I mentioned above, Bixby is launched by pressing an honest-to-god dedicated physical button. It has basically three modes:
A short-press of the button takes you to Bixby Home (you can also swipe over to it from the home screen).Long-pressing the button turns on Bixby’s voice features.There’s a small button on the camera ứng dụng for Bixby’s augmented reality features.Let’s start in the middle with voice, because speaking to Bixby is the most interesting và challenging mix of features here. Essentially, what Samsung is trying to vày is create a new kind of virtual assistant, one that helps you use the device directly in your hands rather than ask random questions from the cloud.
I wasn’t able to kiểm tra this myself, unfortunately, but Samsung did run us through a couple demos. In one, you can xuất hiện the gallery app and then issue voice commands for editing a photo rather than trying to lớn dig through the interface lớn find the right button. “Bixby, rotate this photo left,” and “Bixby, send this photo to Dan.” If you live that Samsung Life, you can use Bixby to lớn send videos to lớn your TV or turn off your smart lights, too.
The goal is that “anything you can control with touch, you can also control with voice.” It’s a laudable goal, but it’s also one I very seriously doubt Samsung can achieve. For one thing, it only works with about 10 Samsung apps at launch. Also, it can only work with apps that are written to support Bixby. Unlike Google Now on Tap, Bixby doesn’t vì any screen reading khổng lồ try & guess what’s on the screen. So it might be a virtual assistant, but it’s very far from an artificial intelligence.
The other big question with Bixby is how exactly is it differentiated from the Google Assistant. It seems pretty clear, but then you discover that there’s a bunch of overlap. For example, you can bởi vì things like set alarms with Bixby. There’s also Bixby Home, which so far as I can tell is a giant, random set of information cards for things like your smart light bulbs, fitness data, local news & weather, & whatever else Samsung thinks belongs in a virtual assistant trang chủ screen. It looks lượt thích every widget screen you’ve ever seen on a phone, which is lớn say it looks like sort of a mess that you probably won’t use very much.
Last but certainly not least are Bixby’s camera features, which are Bixby’s best features. You can launch it either directly in the camera tiện ích or from Bixby Home, & what it essentially does is turn your camera into a photo search machine. Point the Bixby camera app at anything & it will identify it & suggest web searches for it. I tried on flowers and it gave me options khổng lồ buy flowers on Amazon or look at more flowers on Pinterest. It wasn’t able to precisely identify my game android Wear watch, but it did know it was a round watch and offered to let me buy a real one on Amazon.
It also works with more prosaic things. Samsung ran a thử nghiệm with wine labels & book covers, both easily identified and given options khổng lồ buy. Samsung says it’s working with specific partners for Bixby — including Amazon và Pinterest — but it doesn’t appear that it works with the biggest tìm kiếm engine of them all, Google. That’s not really a surprise.
Galaxy S8 release date, colors, & price
In the US, the S8 and S8 Plus will come in black, gray, and silver. Gold và blue are options internationally.
The Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus are available for preorder starting tomorrow, March 30th, & you should get a free Oculus headset with a controller và a set of games along with your preorder. The official release in the US is on April 21st. Unfortunately, Samsung won’t confirm pricing, leaving that lớn its carrier partners — again, it looks lượt thích it’ll start at around $720.