SAMSUNG GALAXY S8
Like the LG G6, the Galaxy S8 packs a huge display into a small body by eliminating as much of the front bezel as possible. But just shrinking the front bezel wasn’t enough for Samsung, who also doubled up on the big screen effect by making the S8 display curved on both edges. Samsung is calling this new design an “In$nity Display” and it really does look incredible. With no physical buttons on the front, tiny bezels at both the top and bottom, and a display that covers almost the entire front of the phone and cascades over the sides like an in$nity pool, it really feels like you’re holding just a display in your hand.
Those curved edges aren’t just for looks either, the curve allows Samsung to squeeze a wider display into a narrower body, making it easier to use one-handed than a similar size at phone. Of course, without a physical home button, that means there’s no $ngerprint scanner on the front of the phone. Instead, Samsung has moved the scanner to the rear of the device.
The S8 has a 5.8-inch 2,960 x 1,440 pixels display (570ppi) that is sharp, vibrant and very bright, making it easy to use even under direct sunlight. As usual, contrast is also fantastic with ultra-deep blacks. The S8 is also the only phone with a ‘Mobile HDR Premium’ certi$cation, which means HDR content on the S8 should look better than most other phones.
Specs-wise, Samsung hasn’t changed much with the S8’s rear camera, which uses the same 12-megapixel f/1.7 shooter as last year’s S7. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as the S7 had one of the better cameras of 2016, even if Samsung did pass on the whole dual-lens fad. The front camera has been improved, and is now a higher-resolution 8-megapixel shooter with autofocus.
The local version of the S8 and S8+ is powered by Samsung’s Exynos 8895 SoC, which is built around a cutting-edge 10nm process and features four of Samsung’s Mongoose M2 cores running at 2.3GHz and four ARM Cortex A53 cores running at 1.7GHz. It also sports ARM’s new Mali G71 GPU clocked at 550MHz.
After the Note7’s disastrous battery issues, Samsung has understandably been a little conservative with the battery inside the S8, and it uses a relatively modest 3,000mAh battery.