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 1^st 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: