Samsung Galaxy S8 Review – a Beauty and a Beast?

Here comes the Samsung Galaxy S8 and this is our short, simple review of the phone.

The Good:

  • Screen: 5.8″ stunning display with Super AMOLED: looks vivid and sharper with 18.5:9 aspect ratio and it even works well under direct sunlight. Takes up more than 80% of the device front.
  • The Samsung Galaxy 8 come with a unified front, feature a black bezel which offers curved and perfectly symmetrical body with the 6mm thick on the edge making it comfortable to hold with a single hand.

  • Camera: Samsung had maintain the same 12MP sensor feature at the previous model with a hallow f/1.7 aperture, and relatively large 1.4um pixel size for capturing more light, 26mm equivalent lens, phase detection autofocus, OIS and a single LED flash.

  • Android 7.0 Nougat with Bixby: There’s a dedicated button on the side of the phone to launch Bixby, a virtual assistant. Bixby’s Vision make it easy to search images, find products online, get information about nearby places , translate languages, decode QR, according to Samsung.

  • Premium AKG headphone (comes in the box)
  • Processor: The S8 is equipped with the industry’s first 10nm application processor that allow for faster and more efficient processing performance.
  • Gigabit Connectivity: The S8 feature with Gigabit LTE (Cat.16 downlink) and Cat.13 for uplink. Gigabit WiFi a/b/g/n/ac with 1024 QAM.

  • Bluetooth 5.0: For the Bluetooth connectivity, S8 is the 1st phone come with Bluetooth 5.0, which promising better range and ability to deliver audio to two different Bluetooth device at the same time.
  • Always On Display: Without unlocking the phone, the Always on Display (AOD) provides users with easy access to the time,  their schedule, alarms and the ability to  control their music.
  • Charging: S8 uses USB Type-C ports for wired charging (data transfer as well), and with fast charging capability, it took approximately 90mins for a full charge. Wireless Charging is supported.
  • Battery: S8 battery life lasted around 10 hours with heavy usage of the social media browsing, at least an hour of gaming, other general usage with AOD (Always on Display) turned on.
  • Water and Dust Resistance – IP68

The bad:

  • Pre-installed with bloat ware
  • Inappropriate of finger print scanner placement: People with large hand (and long fingers) may experience difficulties reaching the fingerprint scanner especially on your left hand.
  • Bixby is quite similar to Google Assistant and only supports two languages: English and Korean
  • Due to the unusual screen aspect ratio (18.5:9), a number of photos & videos don’t display well in the screen
  • Loud speaker not loud enough
  • Heavy price tag at RM3,299 (compared to S7 at RM2,699 launched just one year ago)

Here are the key specifications:

Processor Octa core (2.3GHz Quad + 1.7GHz Quad), 10 nm process
Display 5’8” AMOLED, 2960 x 1440, 570ppi
Camera Rear : Dual Pixel 12MP OIS (F1.7) Front: 8MP AF (F1.7)
Memory 4GB RAM (LPDDR4), 64GB (UFS2.1) expandable up to 256GB with microSD
Network LTE Cat.16
Battery 3000 mAH
Dimension 148.9 x 68.1 x 8.0 mm
Weight 155g
OS Android 7.0 with Touch Wiz
Others USB-C, 3.5mm headphone jack, IP68 water & dust resistant

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