Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ Review

Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ Hardware

Since 2016, Samsung has built its flagship phones with aluminum frames and glass fronts and backs. And as good as the Galaxy S6 series was, the refinement in this year's phones is noticeable. The curved glass front meets the metal frame at the same gradual angle as the back, which maintains symmetry that debuted on the Note 7, but here looks even better.

Part of that comes down to Samsung's color choices — color-matched metal around the Midnight Black model, or muted purple hue of the Orchid Gray — but much of it is about curves.

The corners curve; the display curves; the glass curves. This is a phone that has no sharp corners, nowhere to focus our attention away from the massive screen. If you think back to the proposition of the Galaxy S3, all the way back in 2012, Samsung wanted the focus on its "pebble design" and Nature UX. This phone, five years later, is the culmination of that journey, for better or worse.

That shape and choice of materials also lends the phone an unprecedented slipperiness. You probably shouldn't try to nestle the Galaxy S8 in the crook of your neck while you're talking on the phone. After a few hours — sometimes a few minutes, even — the phone will be fingerprint-smudged and slippery, so if you're clumsy you will probably want to invest in a case, or a microfiber cloth.

Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ Specs

Category	Galaxy S8	Galaxy S8+
Operating System	Android 7.0 Nougat	Android 7.0 Nougat
Display	5.8-inch AMOLED 2960x1440 (570 ppi)	6.2-inch AMOLED 2960x1440 (529 ppi)
Processor	Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 or Samsung Exynos 8895	Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 or Samsung Exynos 8895
Storage	64GB (UFS 2.1)	64GB (UFS 2.1)
Expandable	microSD up to 256GB	microSD up to 256GB
RAM	4GB	4GB
Rear Camera	12MP Dual Pixel, f/1.7 1.4-micron pixels OIS	12MP Dual Pixel, f/1.7 1.4-micron pixels OIS
Front Camera	8MP, f/1.7 auto focus	8MP, f/1.7 auto focus
Connectivity	Wi-Fi 802.11ac MIMO Bluetooth 5.0 NFC, GPS, Glonass, Galileo, BeiDou LTE Cat.16	Wi-Fi 802.11ac MIMO Bluetooth 5.0 NFC, GPS, Glonass, Galileo BeiDou LTE Cat.16
Charging	USB-C Fast charging Qi wireless Powermat wireless	USB-C Fast charging Qi wireless Powermat wireless
Battery	3000mAh	3500mAh
Water resistance	IP68 rating	IP68 rating
Security	One-touch fingerprint sensor Iris scanner Samsung KNOX	One-touch fingerprint sensor Iris scanner Samsung KNOX
Dimensions	148.9 x 68.1 x 8 mm	159.5 x 73.4 x 8.1 mm
Weight	155 g	173 g

The main takeaway here, and the reason we feel comfortable combining the two phones into a single review is because, unlike their predecessors, the S8 and S8+ are merely two sizes, and even then, aren't that drastically different. The Galaxy S8 is 5.8 inches, with a new 18.5:9 aspect ratio; the S8+ is 6.2 inches, which makes it a bit taller and slightly wider, with a battery 16% larger.

But hold it in your hand, and it feels fantastic. You're getting either a 5.8-inch or 6.2-inch QHD+ display, but both use Samsung's latest AMOLED panels, at a 2960x1440 resolution. We're not going to get bogged down by semantics, but as Alex Dobie points out, the screens themselves are not their exact sizes; instead, they're closer to 5.3 and 5.7 inches if you compare them to traditional 16:9 screens. Whatever the case, you're getting more vertical realestate in a phone you can hold and use in one hand. The larger of the two, the S8+, is a little less amenable to single-paw use, but it's still far narrower than something like the Pixel XL, and has far more usable screen real estate.

The screens are amazing. Great viewing angles are expected these days, but Samsung has once again found a way to make the Super AMOLED panel on both versions of the phone bright and, more importantly, accurate. They are DCI-P3 compliant, which gives them a wider color gamut than a typical RGB palette. That, in addition to being HDR certified, makes them technically proficient, which is great, but you're also getting one of the most pleasurable viewing experiences on a phone today.

Even though wide-angle video is cut off (though some apps make minor crops to fill the display), the tradeoff is worth it. As good as the LCD panel is on the LG G6, Samsung practically owns the OLED space, and it's becoming clear that the thinner display technology is the future of mobile screens.

It really can't be overstated how beautiful this hardware is.

That screen — the so-called Infinity Display — is not a huge departure from something like the Galaxy S7's edge, but it eliminates as much of the bezels above and below the display as possible. LG did it first with the G6 — well, Xiaomi did it with the Mi Mix, and Huawei has been inching towards it for years — but this is a truly remarkable achievement nonetheless. Samsung did it, in part, because it finally removed the home button from the front of the phone, adopting on-screen navigation buttons for the first time in its history. And you can't talk about that without talking about what you're losing.

So there's no physical home button, just three on-screen navigation keys. They're in the traditional "reverse" Samsung order — recent apps, home, back — but you can change that. The achievement comes in the form of an "invisible" home button, a tactile area below the on-screen home button that offers real feedback from a precise haptic engine.

The most controversial change to the Galaxy S8 is the placement of the fingerprint sensor.

Not only does this alleviate some of the angst around losing that physical key, but it allows you to turn on the screen as you would that physical counterpart by pressing at any time — even when the display is off. That, combined with the ultra-fast face recognition built into the S8, made me miss that front-facing fingerprint sensor a lot less.

Yes, the most controversial change to the Galaxy S8 is the placement of that fingerprint sensor. Now on the back, right next to the camera, it's not quite as bad as it looks — especially on the smaller S8 — but it's still not great. Rumor has it that Samsung was working on a way to outfit the S8 with a below-the-glass biometrics, but couldn't make it work in time. And while I wish Samsung would have thrown symmetry to the wind and placed it center, below the camera, I found myself only using the fingerprint sensor when the face recognition wasn't feasible.

Thankfully, starting with the Galaxy S7 series and continuing here, it appears thinness is no longer a top priority for Samsung; the Galaxy S8 is 8mm thick, while the S8+ is 8.1mm, perfectly suited for a modest, but not huge, battery, and the complete elimination of a camera bump. The 12MP rear sensor on the back is completely flush with the glass, ringed by metal and flanked by an LED flash and heart rate sensor on the left and the fingerprint sensor on the right.

On software updates

Galaxy S8 owners have a valid concern in wondering how long Samsung will take to update the Galaxy S8 to future versions of Android. The Galaxy S7 took more than five months to begin receiving Nougat, and the unlocked model in the U.S still doesn't have it, with neither timeline nor explanation from Samsung. That doesn't instill a great amount of trust in the process, even though the company is now updating its 2015 models, the Galaxy S6 series and the Note 5, to Nougat.

Samsung has been pretty good about rolling out monthly or quarterly security updates in cooperation with all the U.S. carriers. The takeaway is that you'll probably get a major updates for a couple of years, but you'll wait — a while.