Samsung Galaxy S8 Review

This is a strong phone from Samsung indeed, although a lack of upgrades to the camera and battery do slightly irk. However, the rebooted screen is very attractive, and really makes a big difference to this phone – Samsung has ticked most of the boxes we were hoping it would here.

The Samsung Galaxy S8 is one of those phones that just has to do well – it's up against some massively impressive competition in 2017 – and the good news is that this is, indeed, a very strong phone.

The amount of S8 leaks we've seen are staggering, both in their volume and accuracy, but they don't tell the whole story about a phone that's certain to be at the top (or very near the summit) of most 'best phone'.

The Infinity Display is the headline feature of this handset – while it's not all screen, it's as close as can be.

Samsung has also been very clever in the way it's got around the loss of the front-facing home screen button, managing to make the handset usable without requiring the mechanical key on the front of the Galaxy S8.

Design

The look of the Samsung Galaxy S8 is what will sell it to the legions of fans clamoring for a new phone from the brand – and to a wider audience as well.

While there aren't that many internal upgrades, the front of the phone is mostly just display, and it’s by far the lowest bezel-to-screen ratio we've seen on a globally-available flagship phone so far.

The effect will definitely impress the first time you pick it up – while the Infinity Display (as Samsung is calling this edge-to-edge effort) isn't completely bezel-less at the sides, it still seems to spill over to the back of the phone.

Every corner and edge has been rounded on the Samsung Galaxy S8, giving it a very pleasing feel in the hand. It's the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge with a bit more courage in the design – Samsung has spent two years convincing the world that a curved screen is best, and the fact it's on both this handset and the larger Galaxy S8 Plus is testament to that effort.

That said, it's not a small phone. The 5.8-inch screen is packed tightly into the frame but it's still large at 148.90 x 68 x 8mm, and you'll struggle to reach all corners of the screen with a single thumb.

The fingerprint scanner is on the back, by the camera, and it's rather hard to use from the natural holding position for a phone in your palm. It is something you could get used to, but we're not sure why Samsung put it so close to the camera when it could have been closer to the middle of the phone.

However, we don't want to take away from how impressive the Galaxy S8 is in the hand, with the 5.8-inch screen squashed into an impossibly-small chassis – and one that packs in wireless charging and a IP68 rating, so you'll be able to immerse this phone in water and dust with little worry... and not even need to plug in a cable to charge it.

Screen

Let's spend a little more time on one of the headline features of this phone: the screen.

Before we dive into details though, it's worth noting that the Samsung Galaxy S8 display has taken the title of "best smartphone screen" in DisplayMate's in-depth testing - putting it above all overs on the market. In short then, the screen on the Galaxy S8 is very, very good.

The 5.8-inch Super AMOLED display is clear, bright and colorful, with a QHD resolution (and a little bit more, thanks to the screen being extended further down the chassis and now offering an 18.5:9 aspect ratio).

However, it's worth noting that the QHD element has been reduced by default: you'll be looking at a Full HD offering to start with, and you'll need to choose to enable the full resolution capability in settings.

Bixby

Samsung has shocked us in a small way by announcing Bixby, its own take on an intelligent assistant, before the lanuch of the phone. The Samsung Galaxy S8 is clearly the launch vehicle for the AI service, and there's even a dedicated Bixby key on the side of the Galaxy S8 so you've always got instant access to the portal.

Specs

In terms of the Samsung Galaxy S8 spec, there are no surprises here for anyone who’s been keeping tabs on the leaks. 4GB of RAM sits alongside either the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chipset, or Samsung's own Exynos 8895; we've not had these chips confirmed to us yet, nor which region is getting which variant, but our sources have told us that this is the configuration we can expect.

Interface

Samsung has, once again, refined its user interface to provide its own Samsung Experience (formerly TouchWiz) skin on top of Android 7.0 Nougat. This UI is unfairly maligned by some, and the new upgrades fuse Android and Samsung's own design ethos together well.

Camera

In terms of the camera on the Samsung Galaxy S8, we're oddly seeing little in the way of improvement over the (admittedly impressive) snapper on the Samsung Galaxy S7 from 2016, despite promises to the contrary.

The specs tell the same story as the experience: a 12MP sensor on the rear, with an f/1.7 aperture a fast autofocus. Those specs contributed to, arguably, the best camera on a smartphone in 2016, and Samsung clearly doesn't want to tinker with the formula.

Battery

There's only a 3000mAh battery in the Samsung Galaxy S8, but that doesn't mean it's going to be a problem – the only issue we can see is that the longer screen that's on offer has more pixels to power, but with a CPU/GPU combination that’s more powerful than before there are some efficiencies to be offered in terms of saving the battery life.

Accessories

There are a host of accessories on offer for the Samsung Galaxy S8, and our favorite by far is the Samsung Dex, which turns Android into a true desktop-class environment.

The effort is minimal: plug your phone into the dock, connect a monitor and keyboard and you're away. You can edit documents on the go through Google’s productivity apps or Microsoft Office, or connect to a remote desktop using Citrix or Amazon WorkPlaces.

It's a really slick service (although slow to boot up and disengage, with a few blips of slowdown with the interface) and it makes us feel that Samsung should have launched a laptop shell for the system... that would have been a huge leap forward for what phones can do (pour one out forMotorola’s dockable Atrixthough).

The AKG headphones that come bundled with every Samsung Galaxy S8 (and S8 Plus) are powerful, without erring too hard on the side of bass. They're far more lightweight than we were expecting, but the sound quality was natural enough, and many will be pleased with what's on offer in the box.