Samsung has finally unveiled its Galaxy S8 smartphone at its event folks! The devices are easily one of the most anticipated to come out this year and are also being looked at as Samsung’s redemption after the Note 7 debacle. The Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus devices are sleek, state of the art, and worth the anticipation. Without further ado, let’s dive right in into the meat of the matter.
Let’s start with what hits you in the face as soon as you lay your eyes on a Galaxy S8 smartphone — well, it is the device itself. The phone is quite good looking. Samsung of course, is out on a mission to eradicate the world’s bezels and the S8 and its plus counterpart are all about the screen.
Samsung’s new Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ feature a sleek design. The company has removed the home button from the phone’s face, virtualized it and moved it to the bottom of the display. To unlock the device, you no longer have to depend upon your fingers. That is so old school after all. Instead, you can use the built-in Iris scanner, or scan the whole of your face to unlock the phone. However, if you must, there is a fingerprint scanner on the back as well.
The company has also decided to narrow the bezels situated above and below the display. These changes combined with the fact that the sides still curve like they did on the S7 Edge mean that you get a lot of display real estate.
We tried to remove all of the bezels. It wraps around the display and is symmetrical on the front and the back. To do this, we had to redesign [the phone] from the inside out….the key part…is that people are consuming a lot of content. When it comes to browsing, shopping, ebooks, etc., you can see more and scroll less immediately from the display. It’s an amazing viewing experience for videos — almost like movie-style.
The back of the S8 and S8+ devices are glass. Despite that, they are quite comfortable to hold thanks to the curve on the sides that is reminiscent of the ill-fated Note 7. All in all, quite a bit of work appears to have gone into the designing process of the the S8 and the S8 plus.
Coming to the specs, the Samsung Galaxy S8 comes with a 5.8-inch Super AMOLED QHD+ display with 18:9 aspect ratio. Both the S8 and the S8 Plus have a 2960×1440 screen resolution, which is a bump up from the previous iteration. Under the hood, you get a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor.
Camera wise, you have a 12-megapixel rear camera and a 8-megapixel front-facing camera to shoot those selfies. The company appears to have given up the fight to cram as many mega-pixels as possible and has instead focused on making tweaks to its software for enhanced pictures.
Battery wise, you have a 3,000 mAh battery. The S8 also packs 64 GB of storage inside. Apart from all these regular features, the device also offers support for USB-C. The Galaxy S8 runs Android 7.1.1 Nougat operating system.
Moving on to the S8+, the device is a couple of inches larger at 6.2-inches. You get the same Super AMOLED QHD+ display with the same 18:9 aspect ratio. The processor also remaina the same and so do the front and rear camera. The only other major difference visible right on top is the battery, which has been bumped up to 3,500 mAh and the storage, which has been doubled to 128 GB.
Performance wise, the Snapdragon chip lives up to its name. We expect to have more data on this in a couple of days however, what we already know is that the performance of the S8 and the S8+ is quite unlikely to disappoint. While the devices still fall short of Apple’s iPhone 7 when it comes to single core, the power the manage to churn out when running multi-core is peerless.
The smartphones have a couple of other odds and ends that make them highly recommendable, provided you can sustain the hole they will burn into your pockets. For instance, the devices also mark the debut of Samsung’s very own Bixby virtual assistant. The AI is expected to work at a significantly more fundamental level as compared to the likes of Siri and Cortana. From understanding incomplete commands to being contextually aware, Bixby promises to give its counterparts from Apple, Microsoft and Google a run for their money — and in the process, augment the Galaxy S8 experience.
And of course, there is a brand new button on the side to call up the virtual assistant. Interestingly, you can also call up Bixby and talk to it like you would with a real person, by holding the phone up to your ear.
All in all, Samsung appears to have done a thorough job with the S8 and the S8+. Which is a good thing considering that they are going to be up against Apple’s iPhone 8, which from all we are hearing, is the result of Cupertino going totally overboard. Until the iPhone 8 launches though, the S8 is very unlikely to have a serious competitor with regards to specs, design and features. Let’s see what the South Korean company can make of the opportunity.
