What The Reviews Say About The New Samsung Galaxy S8 And S8+ Phones
Samsung is swinging for the fences with the Galaxy S8 and S8+ after the literal flaming PR disaster that was the Galaxy Note 7. The S8 phones run a customized version of Android 7.0 (that's "Nougat"), flaunt a curved-edge screen and feature Samsung's new digital assistant, Bixby. Do the upgrades and little changes set this phone apart, or is it just another glass rectangle? Here's what reviews say:
Get A Load Of Those Big, Beautiful Screens
The big reason the S8 looks so different from any other phone is its new screen, which Samsung has dubbed the "Infinity Display." It features a new 18.5:9 aspect ratio that's similar to the 18:5 screen on the LG G6, but taller and skinnier than the traditional 16:9 screens the vast majority of other smartphones have.
For each phone, the Edge-style lack of left- and right-hand borders lets Samsung provide more a generous amount of screen space without making the phone wider and therefore more of a strain on your fingers. Beyond that, the company reduced the top and bottom borders, thereby allowing it to increase the vertical screen height beyond that of garden-variety phones.
It's a very high-resolution, 2,960×1,440-pixel display, and that makes text, images and video absolutely pop, even in direct sunlight. You should know, though, that the off-standard dimension means you'll have to either be cool with black bars on the sides of videos you play (called pillarboxing), or you'll need to tap a screen control to crop-to-fit.
[CNET]
You Trade A Home Button For That Extra Screen Space, And That's OK
There's a pressure-sensitive area built into the device, below the screen, that allows users to press down as if there was a button there. This means there's more real estate for a screen, which is great when watching a full-screen movie, although the digital buttons tend to hang around on a black bar at the bottom of the screen when using most apps, making the screen feel smaller than it actually is.
[Quartz]
It's not unlike the iPhone's Force Touch feature, but it's limited to just the spot where a home button would have been if the screen wasn't there taking its place. It's a clever solution and provides virtually the same experience as a physical home button, so longtime Samsung users should feel… right at home with it.
Like Having Wired Headphones? So Does Samsung
There's a USB-C port on the phones' bottoms, and next to that? The headphone jack. We've seen companies ditching this classic port, claiming that it took up too much space. The S8 and S8 Plus are perfect repudiations of that line of thinking. Oh, and they don't get in the way of waterproofing, either. Both devices are IP68 dust and water-resistant, which meant they could lounge for up to 30 minutes in the ridiculous wine bath we poured.
[Engadget]
Samsung bought the audio firm Harman back in November, and the S8 comes bundled with a pair of the company's AKG earphones. The sound quality on $100 headphones is decent (you can hear actual bass on songs!), and a world better than most other bundled-in earphones. Samsung's new phones also have the ability to pair with two different sets of Bluetooth headphones at the same time, meaning no more sharing headphones.
[Quartz]
The Single Rear Camera Is Still No Slouch
Most surprising is the lack of a second rear camera. Rapidly becoming a standard smartphone feature, the dual-camera system is responsible for the LG G6's wide-angle prowess and the iPhone 7 Plus's portrait mode, and it was widely assumed that the S8+ would simply follow suit to keep pace. However, while Samsung experimented with a second camera, it ultimately decided that it didn't need it.
[PC World]
Standard photos on the Galaxy S8's single 12-megapixel are consistently good. They're crisp, colorful and eminently sharable. Low light shots are relatively bright and detailed (the darker the scene, the more image noise you'll see), and selfies on the 8-megapixel front-facing camera are also terrific. I especially like the new auto-focus feature, which frees you from having to stretch out your arm and tap the screen to focus.
[CNET]
And as for your front-facing selfie camera:
Samsung did find meaningful room for improvement in the front-facing camera: It bumped up the resolution to 8MP and added auto-focusing. It also cheerfully knocked off Snapchat's live augmented-reality effects from Snapchat, giving you the ability to adopt various silly disguises simply by looking into the camera.
Nobody Likes Where The Fingerprint Scanner Is Placed
My biggest problem with the phone design is the fingerprint reader, which moved from the home button on the S7's front face to a narrow strip on its backing that looks a lot like a Tic Tac, just left of the camera mount. I have no idea what Samsung was thinking putting it here.
[CNET]
I have to practically perform finger stretches before I can reach it with any sort of regularity on the S8 Plus.
The camera app also repeatedly scolded me for having a smudged lens, presumably because I kept poking it instead of the fingerprint scanner button, which is next to it on the back of the phone.
[Quartz]
At times when I needed to use the fingerprint sensor for apps like Mint or 1Password, it took me several tries, sometimes to the point where it would have been quicker just to type in my password.
[PC World]
The iris scanner alternative isn't without faults either:
Most of the time the scanner is fast and frictionless. Often it didn't even show the guide to align your eyes with. Other times I had to open my eyes really wide and move the phone around until I either nailed the alignment or got frustrated and just punched in my PIN.
[Engadget]
Samsung's Version Of Android Is Actually Kind Of Nice
Built on Android 7.0 Nougat, the S8's software is remarkably restrained for Samsung. This is reflected by the simple home screen, which features just a handful of app shortcuts and a nice big weather widget front and center. A quick swipe up and I'm in my app tray, a swipe up again and I'm back to the home screen.
Managing apps is also easier. Long-pressing an app icon launches a pop-up window with options to add a shortcut to the homescreen, select multiple apps and uninstall or disable the ones you've selected. That last bit is crucial when you're dealing with carrier-mandated bloatware, like the multiple T-Mobile apps on our review unit. In days past, you had to disable uninstallable apps from the device's settings; now you can do it wherever your app icons live.
[Engadget]
Bixby Voice Isn't There Yet, And Bixby's Other Functions Are Lackluster
Samsung is also touting Bixby, its entry in the AI assistant race that already includes Apple's Siri, Google's Assistant, and Microsoft's Cortana. But Bixby Voice, which Samsung says will let you speak to accomplish any task you'd otherwise perform via the touch screen, won't be available until later this spring.
Once Bixby is enabled, swiping right on the homescreen or mashing the dedicated button brings up the Bixby Home panel. There, you'll find your calendar appointments, the local weather, your daily activity, reminders and lots of news from Flipboard. Right now there are only a handful of third-party apps that connect to Bixby Home, including CNN, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Spotify and Giphy. It's a perfectly serviceable alternative to Google Now.
[Engadget]
Finally, Bixby Vision is a camera filter like Google Goggles or Bing Vision on a throwback Nokia Lumia. You can use it to scan words on a business card or package of food and translate it into 52 languages, with varying results. It can identify a book cover, landmark location or a bottle of wine through partner Vivino, a feature that worked for some bottles, not all. Partners such as Pinterest help handle the image search. I'm still looking for a natural reason to use this.
[Quartz]
Finally, The Battery And Storage Are Solid, But Not Mind-Blowing
The smaller S8 routinely lasts between a day and a half and two days of consistent use. The S8 Plus's bigger battery gets me closer to two full days of use on a single charge. That's with the screen set to its maximum resolution, too — expect even better battery life if you dial the displays down to Full HD+ or lower.
[Engadget]
And while it certainly exists in the same stratosphere as other premium phones, its price, $850 for 64GB of storage, is actually more of a value than previous Galaxy S phones.
[PC World]
TL;DR
The S8 and S8+ appear to be more-than-worthy successors to both previous vanilla Galaxy offerings and Samsung's Galaxy Edge phones. Tech reviewers seem universally impressed by the enormous S8 screens. It seems like there's a competent Android phone beneath all that glass, backed up by an AI assistant that's at least OK (with potential to get better). Oh, and of course — none of their review phones exploded.
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