Samsaung Galaxy "S8 is Hands-On"

     

        Samsung has launched its new flagship phone S8series. Its last big phone launch went down in flames,The company certainly isn’t shying away from expectations though. Its marketing in the run-up to the S8 has boasted about reinventing the smartphone taking it away from the boxy designs we’ve become used to, and their compromises.

 

         At a media event just before the S8’s launch, Samsung’s Rory O’Neill said mobile phones had been confined by their design a trade-off between getting the larger screens we all want without having to carry around huge phones. 

        The S8, he said, fixes all that. Its two models - the S8 and S8+ - fit massive 5.8-inch and 6.2-inch screens in a svelte package.After some time with the S8 and S8+, it’s clear that Samsung has stepped up its big foot this year.  

Design

           Just by looking at the S8, you can see that Samsung has done something new. Apart from a couple of thin strips at the top and bottom.The curved display from the S7 Edge, which wraps around the sides, features on both models and there’s no buttons on the front, a first for Samsung.

 

            Samsung has stuck to physical home buttons in recent years while others have abandoned them, but the S8 features a pressure sensitive screen instead. The fingerprint reader has moved to the back of the phone, next to the camera.

           In recent years, bigger screens have had to mean bigger phones, but the larger-screened S8 is actually more slender than its predecessor. The S8+ is significantly narrower and only a smidgen taller than the iPhone 7 Plus or Google Pixel XL, while packing in a bigger display.This means Samsung have been able to push the boundaries of what’s reasonable for one-handed phone use. Most plus-sized phones max out at around 5.5 inches but the 6.2-inch S8+ felt perfectly comfortable in my hands. Samsung’s cheated here slightly - the screen sizes include the curves, so aren’t quite a like-for-like comparison with rivals - but it’s still impressive.

 

         The screens are taller than you might be used to the aspect ratio is 18.5:9 rather than the 16:9 of most devices - but this is actually useful for most of the things you do on a phone, such as scrolling through social media feeds or mobile websites.Aside from the screen, the S8 comes in three colours on the back is black, silver and grey and the front is black on all of them.

Specification

         Samsung has upped the processing power. It’s iterative  a 10 per cent faster central processor and 20 per cent faster graphics than the S7 - but smartphones are approaching the limit of what’s useful here. The camera’s specs are similar to the S7, which had one of the best around. The camera app’s design has changed slightly - you can now slide back and forth along the bottom of the screen to zoom in and out - and there are filters and Snapchat-style face lenses.

          Samsung is choosing not to go down the dual lens route that Apple and Huawei have adopted, so you’re still relying on digital zoom.The main difference Samsung is touting is “multi frame image processing”. That means when you take a photo the phone takes three and uses two of them to sharpen the first. Samsung’s cameras are up there with the best, but it’s 

impossible to measure this in the demo room.  

Software

           The S8 runs Android 7.0 and zips around nicely enough as you’d expect, and from an initial glance there doesn’t appear to be too much of the unnecessary bloatware that Samsung has been criticised before.

There are not a whole lot of software innovations here. 

            Android’s multi-window feature, which allows you to run two apps side by side on the phone screen, has been around for a while but could be particularly useful on the taller screen. The always-on screen that shows the time and notifications also returns.

           There’s facial recognition for the first time. The Note 7 had iris scanning which was a little clunky, but the S8’s facial recognition seemed very easy and quick in the demo. Some people hates fingerprint. If you’re one of those people that doesn’t like fingerprint readers on the back of the phone, you might prefer this.

Bixby

          The S8 will also feature Bixby, Samsung’s new intelligent assistant. The company says Bixby is a bigger deal than Siri or Google Assistant as well as simply asking for the weather, it will be deeply integrated with the phone’s everyday functions such as taking photos and sending them to people.

Samsung has put a dedicated Bixby button on the S8 on the left hand side.

 
also

• The S8 is IP68 water resistant, so will deal with most day to day liquid accidents
• It is capable of download speeds of up to 1GBps on the latest mobile networks

The battery capacity is roughly on a par with last year’s S7, although with the bigger screen it remains to be seen how it stands up to scrutiny.

It charges over USB-C as well as with wireless charging.

 

          “Well after the huge expectation it launched now let see what else it brings”