Galaxy S8

My main concern is I'm already at the point where my phone is a little too big for my handlebar mount and they're only getting bigger.

 

Hadn't thought of that. I barely ever use it as a phone to be honest, everyone texts me.

 

Apparently the S8 has a peak brightness of 1020 nits, and the S8+ more than marginally outclasses the S7 Edge's battery life, despite having 100 mAh less capacity. Now, if only Samsung can deliver Android O in a timely manner, the standby battery life should be really attractive.

Samsung Galaxy S8 named “best smartphone display”, concludes DisplayMate
Samsung Galaxy S8+ battery life test result is out

 

Any details on the rumored S8(+) "Special Edition" with higher performance?

I've only heard a couple of mentions, but no details for specs or timing.

It's not the same as the Microsoft "Special Edition"... or the other provider "Specials".

 

After seeing what the Galaxy S8 offers, I am not tempted to upgrade from my S7, same battery, same camera, slightly bigger...... nothing special here......I prefer the smaller size anyway

Oh and weird placement of the fingerprint scanner and the same single firing bottom speaker........ epic fail.......wait.....was that 800 USD again? no thanks

 

Same here, waiting for the Note 8 or if there really is a higher performance S8(+) model I'd be interested in checking out the improvements.

The S7 Edge has been great for me too

 

It's rather inconvenient to use in a car dock. The rumored Apple product #8 was rumored to have fingerprint reader in front, underneath the display panel. No idea how it would work but I'll hope for the best..

Front of this phone looks actually pretty good. For looks only reason my current phone front bezel is black, and the wallpaper is black. The seamless look works for me I haven't been much of a fan of those previous galaxies.

 

I'm keeping my S7E until either my carrier offers me a good upgrade or it breaks.

 

Yeah, I guess most of the upgrades are incremental, the real upgrade being the display. The camera is actually not the same, even if it has the same pixel count and aperture. In addition to the multi-frame processor announced on stage, akin to Google's HDR+, the sensors in use are the Sony IMX333 and Samsung S5K2L2. It will be interesting to see if the camera samples from actual review units will differ from initial shots from the Unpacked event.

 

I'm really more interested in other features, and I am already pretty happy with the S7's camera, but whatever moves more units I guess.

 

For me, the jump from a 1.12 μm IMX298 to a properly utilised 1.4 μm IMX333 sensor would be plenty noticeable. I'd also love to get my mittens on a larger, current-gen OLED, with a high resolution for VR. On the other hand, I appreciate getting official LineageOS builds, where I can expect Android O not long after its launch. If I had an S7 Edge myself, I wouldn't have been nearly as tempted to upgrade. It's already a great phone.

 

S7E does work very well in VR already, though the Gear VR has collected some dust lately after I got the Vive.

 

Don't worry, the Vive dust layers will catch up with the GearVR dust coverage soon enough

 

We'll see. I'm still working my way through free content and haven't managed to get bored with it yet.

 

Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus vs iPhone 7 Plus Camera Test Comparison

 

John.

 

Looks like a few S8 have been reported having a red stained display, So if you are buying from a country were it is hard to get a refund do thorough check before parting with your money.

John.

 

Samsung Galaxy S8 red tint fix to arrive next week

 

I bet none of the review models had a red tint, how can they leave the factory looking like that, are they blind or working in the dark.

The only reason i ever buy Samsung is for the oled display.

John.

 

Had S8+ Black in my hands for quite some time and I'm not impressed...Here's my take at it.

Quick points -
The Speaker grille is not flush and small vs Prev flagships, The phone grip is super slippery, the 18:9 is pathetic when it comes to the using the full "Infinity Display" (What's the point when you stretch the 16:9 to 2:1 it cuts the edges and zooms it, apps scaling issues due to the different ratio, Google posted a tip now, but I suspect how many will deploy this for a couple of phones G6 and this ? & is it worthy ? while you cut off the edges and add it at top which is essentially same except for the grip you are looking for which is too slippery), Feels not metal at all, Note 5 feels more sturdy over the S8+ due to more metal frame plus the edges are more chamfered and matte finished to give better feel and look and grip, S6E is also slippery despite the metal built style like the Note5 that's why Note 7 and S7E fix that, I wish there was no edge display version along with normal rectangle panels as opposed to the curved panels..

The Device's bottom IO / Speaker grille is not at all even, the USB is not aligned to the others (One more minor nitpick the USB port has plastic shroud like most of the flagships except a few like iPhone, HTC 10, OP3 it adds less weartear overtime if it's metal like these) The backside FPS is a Major Bummer, the Flash and Heartrate sensor have got the shielding of the back Gorilla glass it's a plus but the back glass is never my choice, Metal metal metal - Yes I'd take metal built and grip over the wireless charging perk...

Screen -
Screen quality is superb (Mobile HDR Premium certification by the UHD alliance), Camera also, rounded corners are bit gimmicky like the edge. But the default FHD+ res mode is not noticeable but when you look at the QHD+ mode the text clarity/sharpness is improved not massively but you can see it, takes a bit of time to see through this, I suspect this is not noticeable with the pictures but could be depending on the eye & the picture, Portraits might see the sharpness effect, Maybe due to the QHD->FHD scaling it doesn't work as QHD better scales to HD which is further uselessly blurred (Yes that option also exists).


Battery -
The phone's 3000 mAh battery seems meager for this QHD+ device (s8), s8+ at 3500 mAh also with the less wear overtime, a huge bonus, it definitely enjoys better battery-SOT (Screen On Time) the S8 stands at 8Hrs, Didn't get to check S8+'s..
But the competition Mate 9 (4000mAh) and SOT at 12hrs on 16nm CPU vs the S8s's (3000mAh) 8hrs at 10nm vs OP3T (3500mAh) at 8hrs with 821 14nm. It would have been better if they had gone for the more capacity, yeah we can guess why, the Note 7 disaster made them look at a safer approach..

Further -
Also HTC10's Audio is spectacular vs rest due to the dedicated amps for both the speakers powering the Tweeter-Woofer pair plus the High-Res certified, and a quality DAC with 24Bit spec, with good quality & again High-Res certified IEMs in the box vs AKG headphones, which are not at all $100 worth as they advertise, their sound/built is meh over RHAs/Dunus/Yamaha/Shures etc at same price point, Another marketing gimmick..V20 is also a good choice here due to the Quad DACs, ESS with High-Res certification too along side the flagship specs and quality.

Mi Mix is better, Real bezel-less innovation with proper aspect ratio, better specs vs price - 6GB RAM, 256GB UFS2.0 with 4400mAh massive battery vs 4GB/64GB UFS2.1, rounded corners are there here too but not noticeable at all (less rounded) & flat phone (better colors, no edge distortions like on these Edge panels) even from pictures (never got to try in hand) with 18K gold rims, and Ceramic body which is better than Glass (The edges where the glass curves to metal, black phone S8+ catches dust, the gap exists and overtime It'll spoil the look, A nitpick but worthy point to make) - All for 650 change, except that it doesn't have a few US LTE bands despite QSD821, As Xiaomi never sell phones in US due to Patent issues (These OEM's phones also suffer form lack of development due to the company's worst stand at the GPL system)

Price of Samsung's latest flagships is not worth for all these cosmetic things over previous flagships which have better UX vs the TouchJizzed Bloatware, Bixby doesn't work. Knox is a huge bummer as all know, It can't be unlocked ever if you do the warranty trips and irreversible, Exynos developement and QSD development is patchy and not worthy at all for an $800+ handheld.

No use at all for those who are having Nexus 6P, OP3(T), Pixel XL, HTC10, V20, Note5, S7E or any flagships from previous generation node processors, 6P's 810 is an exception due to the massive development and optimization of that overheating SoC.

 

I don't understand why some people are getting really bent out of shape about this. Some iPhone 7s shipped with yellow-tinted displays at launch, and the fix involved user calibration with a series of sliders:

http://osxdaily.com/2016/09/16/yellow-screen-iphone-7-fix/

Now some Samsung Galaxy S8s have shipped with red-tinted displays at launch, and the fix involved user calibration with a series of sliders. Yet people are acting like Samsung dropped the ball in some huge unprecedented way.

 

That`s just the way i feel, when you pay hundreds of dollars you should should expect a premium product to have been thourally checked especially after the Note fiasco and not expect customers to calibrate there own display by moving sliders when it should have been calibrated at the factory using expensive and accurate equipment.

As i said the oled display was the only reason i buy Samsung phones over other brands.

John.

 

#itsokwhenappledoesit

 

Mac laptops and Dell Precision laptops that costs several thousand dollars apiece include sliders for user calibration of monitors. It's not like this is a feature something normally only seen on bargain-price devices.

Samsung has publicly stated that if you have a red-tinged display and the software update doesn't fix it, you can exchange your phone for a new one.

Of course, internet comments sections (where Samsung is the #1 company that people love to hate, surpassing even Microsoft as a popular villain) continues to crow how Apple never would have had this issue, despite the fact that Apple never actually officially acknowledged the yellow-tinged iPhone 7 screens in the first place.

 

Spoiler: Watch the video 1st...

I don't understand why Linus can't get the Android power settings tuned, it's really not that hard.

There are other android tools like Greenify that when used in conjunction with disabling built in apps / services, and power saving plan - along with the new - high power plan - set to a schedule - with all those options you can easily get exactly the profile of use you need.

It does take some time (ok the first few times it's a lot of time) to learn it all and get settings correctly - and add on things that turn up on their own later, but that only takes the first few hours now after knowing what to expect and do after a few phones.

Sometimes his videos are expose's on what Linus needs to focus on in his life to master and conquer, rather than actual failures on the hardware or software - his "just make it work, DWIM!!" shows through, it's adorable

 

Thanks for the additional notes. I'm not getting the S8 yet, but my S7's last update completely broke everything I did to make it not terrible power-wise, and I haven't fixed it yet, perhaps that app will help.

 

So far all the updates, including the major one to 7.0 have all gone well, not a problem on my S7 Edge.

I do go into all the settings and verify them, and then go back into Greenify to set up for hibernation all the apps that I want to go quiet. Then go in and disable all the system apps and services I don't use.

If you are having problems, you could try a soft reset, or a hard reset, here's the info if it helps:

Soft Reset (Frozen / Unresponsive Screen) - Samsung Galaxy S7 / S7 edge
https://www.verizonwireless.com/support/knowledge-base-203269/

"WARNING ! Hard Reset will erase all of your data - All described operations you are doing at your own risk."

Hard Reset SAMSUNG G935F Galaxy S7 Edge
http://www.hardreset.info/devices/samsung/samsung-g935f-galaxy-s7-edge/

You may need to research other methods, I haven't needed to do it on this S7 Edge myself yet

 

I'll try out Greenify first, see if that helps.

 

Cant agree with this enough, the HTC10's DAC is freaking amazing. I sometimes actually prefer it over my DM3's DAC. Obviously the latter' ESS DAC implementation is piss poor and sounds decent at best, specially when using 3 or 5 driver IEM's.
I use my Dunu Titan 1's at work for casual listening with the HTC10, and boy does it sound amazing. Not swtiching phones anytime soon, specially not to the bootloader locked down world of Samsung.

 

Get a CASE guy`s

http://www.deccanchronicle.com/tech...axy-s8-review-a-beautiful-delicate-beast.html

John.

 

Another scary bit from that article:

 

Gorilla glass 5 does not seem to be up to the challenge, it`s may be stronger but they keep making it thinner, we need an alternative to glass, maybe synthetic ruby ect.

John.

 

That's a bit upsetting.

 

Is there any corroborating evidence of the S8 display being so easy to scratch rather than relying on one article that could be partisan, In this world of fake news we need multi sources of information.

John.

 

SquareTrade and JerryRigEverything got a contrary result. While it's vulnerable to drops, it is very scratch-resistant.

http://www.businessinsider.com/sams...ow-well-the-galaxy-s8-stood-up-to-scratches-6

 

That makes more sense to me, just from experience with phone screens breaking, the ones that claim more scratch resistance seem to have lower impact resistance.

 

The same with metal the harder you make it, the more brittle it becomes, As i said before they make the surface of the glass harder but they then make it thinner, with curved glass edges being easy to break when impacted.

John.

 

That's what I thought, too bad self-healing glass seems to be vaporware.

 

New promotion for the S8/S8+, short fuse => 5/3/2017 - 5/16/2017
https://samsungpromotions.com/entertainmentkit.html

"Buy a Galaxy S8 or Galaxy S8+ and you’ll get a free Samsung Entertainment Kit —$170 value. It includes a Clear View Standing Cover, a 64GB EVO+ memory card plus six months of Netflix. The free Samsung Entertainment Kit is the perfect way to get the most out of your new Galaxy S8 or S8+ that will include Samsung Earphones Tuned by AKG.*"

 

I'm impressed.

 

S8/S8+ fragile new gorilla glass, lots of first week broken screens

Unboxing Boxes #28: DON'T BUY a Samsung S8+ RANT Edition.
3:28 - Samsung Galaxy S8+ RANT WARNING!

 

Why you won't be using Bluetooth 5 on your Galaxy S8 just yet - Gary explains

 

Managed to get the Oreo Beta on the S8+.. and hot dang this thing is smooooTh and fast AF.
And this is just a beta build..

 

Link ?

 

There isn't isn't any in particular.. they opened the beta program registrations yesterday on first come first serve basis Through the Smasung + and Smasung Members app (depending on the region ) for Tmobile/Spring and unlocked phone owners.

 

Links?

 

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...WMAs&usg=AOvVaw3zm_j9tMQl0956Yu6fu21w&ampcf=1

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...JMAU&usg=AOvVaw2ZgOT1v5dlB6oEUyljCv2x&ampcf=1

Almost every Android Coverage website posted an article yesterday as well.