Samsung Galaxy S8 Review

Imagine holding a phone,but it feels like you're holding just a screen. As long as you understand that,well,you've basically come in contact with the Samsung Galaxy S8,without leaving your seat. The cold glass on glass design,the awesome,over saturated 5.8 inch Super AMOLED screen,the 4GB of RAM and the sheer fact that this will cost you a lot is extremely marvelous to me,and should be marvelous to you too. When I first watched the concept video on YouTube,I could hardly believe that one day it would actually happen,and that it would be held in my hands. So,when I first heard that it had reached our shores,I went out and bought it,and up until now,not even a little bit of regret has crept in. 

While you may feel that Samsung pioneered this bezel-less trend,it was actually Xiaomi which started this craze with their unbelievable Mi Mix. That phone is a phone that will be continued to be referred to in the years to come. But to make the S8,Samsung just 'borrowed' Xiaomi's idea,perfected it and took the spotlight. And with all that said,here is my full review of the Samsung Galaxy S8.

DESIGN

Samsung ,as always,nailed it here. Both the S8 and S8+ have 5.7" and 6.2" screens respectively, but the bezels are so thin,it doesn't actually feel like you're holding a large phone. Heck,its even shorter than the OnePlus 3(and 3T). There is also no more "edge" nomenclature anymore as they all come with curved displays. Curves on the front and rear embellish the phone's looks annd Gorilla Glass 5 protects it from falls and scratches to a decent level. Though you might need to get a case due to how slippery this phone is,as you do not want this falling down.

The only real flaw I can think of with this phone is the fact that Samsung dedicated a button to their new assistant called 'Bixby'. While I find Bixby quite useful,I don't feel it's good enough to replace Google Assistant(which is also present),and I don't see why there should be a button for it. And annoyingly enough,it's positioned right under the volume down button,and it is so annoying to see the assistant come up when I was only trying to reduce the volume.

All in all,the design is great,and that's expected for a phone of this price.

The ports are in the usual places and surprisingly there's a headphone jack.Yes,with all the well known brands removing this antique but mostly needed piece of a smartphone,Samsung decided to keep it. Good job guys.

But,as with the s6 edge + phone,there is bound to be a design mishap. Have you guessed it? Yup,its the fingerprint sensor. Its not that it's a bad sensor by any means,just that the placement is awkward. Why not the middle like other phones? Why the top right? Why next to the camera? Why??? It now requires weird hand gestures to  unlock the phone,and whilst trying to,you have a high tendency to smudge it. Of course,there are other ways of unlocking the phone such as iris scanning,face unlockand your regular pattern,pin and password. But the iris scanner is awesome. It's dedicated,not like the one on the Camon C9 which scans the dendritic pattern of your eye's blood vessels. It sits right next to the 8MP front camera,which by the way takes great detailed selfies and shoots 4K video. More on that later.

It actually scans your two irises in the fraction of a second. During my first two days if use,after setting up this feature,I didn't even realise my phone was locked. I would just pop it out and look at the time and boom! Unlocked! Oh yeah,it also has an always on display. Which brings me to my next section:

DISPLAY

The S8 I have here is a 5.7" WQHD display with Super AMOLED tech and is just like the Xiaomi Mi Mix in terms of bezels. The aspect ratio has been bumped up to 18:1:9 which gives room for extra pixels. But this in turn,gives black bars when watching videos or playing games not optimised for this ratio. The display in itself is great blacks are inky deep,color saturation is okay,viewing angles are great,and I think this is actually the perfect display Samsung has been working on for almost 11 years now. Oh yeah,and it has 523ppi.But the fact that this is an AMOLED makes it susceptible to burn in. But beside that,punchy colors,great contrast,saturation levels higher than normal and support for HDR content makes this the best display for this year.

Its a good display,and Samsung knows that. So they made the theme of the Touchwiz on this phone colorful. And the colors seem to jump off the screen. And,it also has the apps edge which gives you quick functionality when you want to call a friend or open up an app.Personally,I don't see the need for this as it can be done on just about any smartphone that has a touchscreen using apps from the Play Store.

I will end this section by saying that the display is awesome,and the best on any smartphone right now(even the Mi 6)
There is also the option to reduce the resolution to FHD+ and HD+,and this is probably to save battery. You can also adjust the contrast and saturation of the display. Not bad.

CAMERA

As is the norm on thus blog,if a camera is great,its section comes right after the display section. And this camera is really good.It's the same sensor found on the S7,but with a larger arpeture and larger pixels.A 12MP sensor with f/1.7 arpeture with a flash to boot. It takes great photos with a lot of contrast and good,punchy colors. It tends to oversaturate in most cases,and this at times works in the camera's favor. Other times,it ruins the photo.

At f/1.7,the camera takes in all available light in very dark situations where other cameras fail. This leads to bright night time shots where they would otherwise have been impossible.

Photo samples:

SOFTWARE

It ships with Android 7.0 nougat,with customization of stock android very noticeable here.But here's the fact:if you love stock Android,this phone,good as it is is not for you. There is a near granular customization of the software here,and if you didn't read my first sentence,you probably won't know that this has Android N on it.That said,some of the customizations are useful,and some are just plain useless. And the fact that Samsung has it's own version of apps already provided by Google(including a store) makes this phone look redundant at times. And the worst part? Most of these apps can't be uninstalled. To wrap up,if you hate stock Android(like me),go ahead and get this. If you can't do without stock Android,the Pixel is your key.

PERFORMANCE

It ships with the latest Snapdragon® 835 chip,with Adreno 550 graphics and 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM. It also has Bluetooth 5.0 which I will make a separate post about later. Needless to say it performs smartly in all situations,and opening heavy apps takes seconds now. Fewer seconds. There were no lags at all,but I would like to see this phones performance after 1 year of use.

It scored 187000+ on AnTuTu which is impressive. On geekbench,1670 was it's single core score while a whooping 6690 was it's multi core score. Classic Samsung speeds,though the Single core score could be better.And all this great specs result into the best performance available on any Android phone today. Playing hardware intensive games was a breeze,and opening and closing apps is fast. Switching between apps is fast too,all thanks to that massive 4GB of RAM. Just rest assured that there are no problems with performance.

AUDIO

Samsung hasn't been the best at audio,and that problem repeats itself here. It's not that the audio is bad,it just isnt HTC BoomSound level. The bass is tinny though existent and general audio is just plain . Though it does come with a pair of $100 AKG earphones which make up for this somewhat ad audio performance,they won't pacify those who love to listen to music through the speaker.

Wrap up

To say that Samsung has overdone itself here wouldn't be far from the truth.That display,the design,the performance and the camera all justify the premium you'll be paying for this guy.And while the fingerprint sensor placement was a big let down,the other really secure methods of unlocking the phone really make up for it. I can't say it's a perfect phone,but it could be,it all depends in the way you look at it.