Despite being the No.1 handset maker in the world, when it comes to public perception Samsung has always found itself in Apple's shadow. Right or wrong, Samsung has been seen as the follower to Apple's innovator. With the Galaxy S8, this perception deserves to change. The Galaxy S8 is a smartphone unlike anything from Apple, or anyone else for that matter – a bold, beautiful design, with just one major flaw.
The headline feature of the phone is the Infinity Display, a curved edge-to-edge display with almost no border. The Galaxy S8 perfects the curved screen design Samsung began building back in 2015 with the S6 edge. The smooth aluminium edges and curved front and back glass panels make for the most beautiful phone I've used, and the most comfortable to hold.
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Hands on with the Samsung Galaxy S8
Peter Wells takes a first look at Samsung's latest mobile device at its New York launch.
I was mocked in the comments of my S8 hands on for fetishising the phone, but I stand by it. The Samsung Galaxy S8's style is unique, and will sit alongside the Nokia 3310 and iPhone 4 in future industrial design museums.
As Samsung has been manufacturing these curved displays for two years now, they've ironed out the software kinks as well. The phone knows when you're touching the screen to tap a target, and when you're simply holding the screen because there's nothing else to grip.
The AMOLED display is gorgeous – a little more vibrant than the awesome LG G6. Like LG's flagship, the screen is narrow and tall, sporting an 18:9 ratio. The thin design makes using the phone one-handed a little easier. Not every app supports the new ratio, but with Samsung and LG both moving to this new design with their flagships, it can't be long until the apps that matter are updated.
With those tiny bezels, Samsung can fit a huge 148mm (5.8 inch) display into a shell not much larger than an iPhone 7 – and Samsung still found room for a standard headphone jack. Included in the box a pair of wired headphones from AKG, which sound great for in-box headphones – an area too many manufacturers scrimp on.
Like the jet-black iPhone 7, the handset is surprisingly grippy. I was terrified the device would slip out of my hands like a bar of soap, but it's actually a little easier to hold than most new phones.
The camera of the Galaxy S8 is unchanged from last year's S7 and Note7. This was disappointing news to some, but the Galaxy S7 was already the leading Android lens on the market, and I'm sure Samsung had a few million components lying around after the Note7 recall. Either way, this is the premier low light shooter in any smartphone. In optimal lighting conditions, the stills and video are as good as the iPhone can produce – the main difference being iPhone images have a more natural colour balance, while the S7 punches up the colour.
The front-facing "selfie cam" has been improved. It now shoots in 8MP with super-fast autofocus, to help with group and stick selfies. Laugh all you want, but this will be a deal-breaker for some. The S8's selfie camera also has the best "face smoothing" engine I've seen, to flatten out wrinkles and smooth the skin, without going so far that you look like a milk-white porcelain doll.
Everything about the Galaxy S8 is impressive – except the fingerprint reader on the back of the device. I've used many Android phones with fingerprint readers on the back, and they usually just take a day or two to get used to. But while most phones place the reader squarely in the centre of the device, Samsung positioned its version up the top, beside the camera lens.
The fingerprint reader – always out of reach
This meant I could never reach the fingerprint reader one-handed without spinning the unit around. And when I used my other hand to try to hit the fingerprint reader, I'd usually just smudge up the camera lens instead. The back of the phone looks cleaner with the fingerprint reader alongside the camera, but it's terrible for usability.
To deal with this, Samsung has two alternative biometric unlock options. The first is Iris Scanning which debuted in the Note7. It took me four days and over 20 attempts just to register my irises, but when I finally did, I found unlocking the phone with them far too slow to ever be practical.
The Galaxy S8 will sit alongside the Nokia 3310 and iPhone 4 in future industrial design museums
The less secure method is facial recognition – less secure because a photo of your face can also unlock the S8. But while a 2D image can trick the sensor into unlocking your device, wearing a hat or glasses will totally confuse it – so that method didn't work for me either.
Modern Android phones have a few more unlock options built in – including setting your home location as a "safe space" where the phone remains unlocked, or keeping the phone unlocked while a Bluetooth device is connected to it, so it's a problem that can be worked around – but it's frustrating to work around something as important as the security of your smartphone.
For the record, I stuck with fingerprint unlocking and let the phone stay unlocked when it was connected to my Fitbit. That seemed like the best compromise of security and convenience.
For the majority of users, this won't be an issue - they'll fall back to another, less secure way to unlock their phone and be done with it. But for me, it's the one flaw in an otherwise near-perfect design.
Beyond the physical design, there are two more features worth mentioning. Bixby, Samsung's new personal assistant, and DeX, the little hockey puck accessory that transforms the S8 into a desktop computer. Both are intriguing, but rely on support from app developers and months of real world use before we can evaluate them fully.
Then there's the more established Galaxy accessories, the Gear VR and the new and improved Gear 360 camera. If you're wanting the best mobile VR experience, it's hard to go past Samsung's Gear suite. The updated Gear 360 shoots VR-ready video in 4k, and can now live stream when connected to a phone – and the Gear VR give the best bang-for-buck VR experience, if you're into that sort of thing. And while Samsung is expanding the 360 camera to support iPhones, the best experience of sharing, streaming and editing is still found on Galaxy devices.
Overall, the Samsung Galaxy S8 is a stunning piece of hardware. I just wish they'd moved the fingerprint reader down the phone a little, where I could comfortably reach it.
The Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ will go on sale in Australia on Apr 28 for $1199 and $1349 respectively – in black, grey and gold. Plans through major telcos start from $70 a month. Pre-orders are currently being accepted.
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