FOR YOUR EYES ONLY

Samsung’s latest top-of-the-line phone must boast the best screen in the world

There is no getting around it: the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus (and the smaller regular S8) knocks all rivals out of the water with its phenomenal screen sharpness and size compared to the size of the phone. The screen to body ratio is an amazing 83%, which means a bigger screen on a smaller phone. Moreover, the Gorilla glass 5 technology attracts less fingerprint smudges than most phones.

After using the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus phone for a week, my eyes were so pleased with the vivid, ultra-colourful, near-4K resolution that it made moving back to my personal phone quite painful (never did my personal phone, last year’s top phone, look so blurry and dim). It’s simply the best screen you can find on Earth, now.

It’s easier to grip and pick up from flat surfaces than Samsung’s S7 Edge from last year, but still not as easy as other typical non-curved phones. Even with its huge screen, it’s easy to handle and is comfortable to use for data consumption and to make calls because it has no sharp edges to dig into the ears or hands.

But, with all its glossiness and glass, the phone is very slippery. So, extra attention is needed when putting the phone into the pocket to keep it from falling out.

Personally, I don’t bother locking my phone, but it seems everyone locks their phone these days. And this phone has so many biometric technologies to unlock the screen. Some work fast and reliably, like the new iris scan or the face scan, others don’t. The fingerprint scanner is located in a hard to reach spot next to the rear camera.

Double pressing a button is still the fastest way to take photos with a locked screen and double pressing the power button will take you straight to the camera app in approximately one second. Although, compared to Samsung’s 2016 S7, pressing the home button at the bottom of the screen is easier to activate especially when trying to do it from within your trouser pockets or from your bag without looking.

The “bokeh” effect (blurring out some part of the photos) is good. The photos you get from this phone are saturated and extremely vivid in colour. It will make a few professional photographers cringe with the heavily over-sharpened and over-the-top colourfulness of the photos. Personally, I love it.

This is one of the few phones that has a fast bulit-in wireless charging function, which is perfect for easy battery top up, eliminating messy wires.

The phone has IP68 water resistance, which means photos and videos can be taken underwater. The phone can also be washed if dirty. However, this doesn’t come without a drawback — the speakers produce a bland noise and have little base, but are loud.

Many gripes that people have towards curved screen phones is that they mistakenly touch the side of the curved screens with the palm of their hands. Luckily, Samsung has managed to tweak the curves to not accept any touch. So, your palm will not stop your scrolls.

This is the first phone that comes with Bluetooth 5.0, which allows it to be paired with two Bluetooth speakers simultaneously. However, the function is not yet operational as the Android system doesn’t support it. But it can be used in the future.

Samsung’s user interface has been known for being bloated with functions (usually way more than an average user would normally want) and is very cartoonish. Luckily this time, they’ve slimmed it down. The phone has very little lag (occasionally lag is inevitable on an Android system).

This flagship has an interesting function called “DeX”, which enables the docking of the phone to a specific station called “DeX Station” and is sold separately. It connects the S8 to a screen, mouse and keyboard to give you a fully-fledged working environment, pretty much like Windows or Mac. This may give you a glimpse of the future where you don’t need Notebooks or PCs to do actual work.

Maybe because of last year’s Galaxy Note 7 explosion incidents, the S8 packs less battery than many top-of-the-line phones, even less than the S7 Edge.

A “hidden” home button, which is located beneath the middle bottom part of the screen, reduces bezel space giving a real, all-screen design, but can be a little difficult to figure out in dark places.

I think, if you already have last year’s S7 or S7 Edge, the upgrade is not worth it.

Samsung has added a dedicate button to call up “Bixby”, who is supposed to make life easier, much like Siri or Google Assistant, but is still not at its full potential in all countries, except Korea.

If you’re looking for the best phone that money can buy right now, look no further.