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The Samsung Galaxy S8 Is Here, and It’s Worth the Wait

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We’ve waited months, and after a particularly anxious morning waiting for 11am to roll around, the wait is over. The Samsung Galaxy S8 is official, and it’s everything we were expecting. Well, it helped that we had a hefty dose of leaks. What we get is a huge redesign of the smartphone and a departure from the design language of previous models.

Let’s talk about bezels. They’ve been slimmed down dramatically, practically scrapping the typical smartphone design in favor of maximizing the on-screen real estate. The physical front navigation buttons are gone, replaced with on-screen buttons that disappear when not in use. The fingerprint reader is confirmed to have been moved to the back, in an awkward position next to the camera lens. There’s no logo or other identifying features on the front, other than the usual cluster of sensors at the top including the front camera, earpiece, iris scanner, and proximity sensor.

There are two sizes of the S8: the “regular” Galaxy S8 will feature a 5.8-inch display, and the Galaxy S8+ will have a bump to a 6.2-inch screen. This is, quite literally, a huge change. The latest in the phablet Note series were 5.7”; the regular-size S8 will be a bit larger than that, and the S8+ will be absolutely massive. Combine that with the minimal bezels and curved edge, and that’s a lot of screen. Oh yeah, the “Edge” display is no longer optional; the screens of both models will curve along the long edge. Both displays are certified as HDR (high dynamic range) by The UHD Alliance.

The specs under the hood are impressive as well. The S8 will be powered by four 2.3GHz cores and four 1.7GHz cores, and the S8+ gets a little boost: four 2.35GHz cores and four 1.9GHz cores. As usual, the US will get a Qualcomm chip (the new 835) while the rest of the world will have to make do with Samsung’s own Exynos 8895. Both devices will have 4GB of RAM, 64 GB of storage (expandable with a MicroSD slot), a USB-C port, and IP68 water and dust resistance. The S8 has a 3000mAh battery similar to the S7, but the Galaxy S8+ packs a 3500mAh battery, which is a 100mAh downgrade from the Galaxy S7 Edge. Is Samsung being a little conservative due to the catastrophic battery failures in the Note 7? We expect the execs to make an announcement regarding that question at some point.

In the camera department, a 12MP rear camera (seems the industry has hit the ceiling in this department; see iPhone 7 and Google Pixel) with optical image stabilization, and the front shooter gets an upgrade to 8MP. Samsung is boasting the S8 will have two connection-based firsts: the first phone with “gigabit-class” LTE connection and the first to carry Bluetooth 5, both of which are pretty cool but not entirely clear at this point.

All year long, Samsung has been pushing their new voice assistant, Bixby. To this end, they added a dedicated hardware button to the device, along the labs. Bixby has a lot of promise; it’s the brainchild of Viv Labs, founded by personnel who were part of the original team behind Apple’s Siri and later acquired by Samsung. Bixby is all about context; it can search for images, translate languages, and give you information about landmarks and icons. Aim the camera at a product, and Bixby will try to help you buy it online. Such a massive leap forward in this kind of technology will undoubtedly have glitches, so we’ll wait until we get some hands-on time before we pass judgement. Samsung also promises to release an SDK for Bixby, allowing third party apps to utilize it.

As we’ve mentioned before, Samsung needs the S8 to be the best phone it’s ever made. The lack of a phablet has left a big hole in the company’s product lineup, and they’re counting on the S8 and S8+ to fill that hole while making us forget about the nightmare PR the Samsung faced in 2016.

Both devices will be available for preorder on March 30th and we’ve been promised shipping in the US on April 21st. It will be launched in five colors: black, gray, silver, gold, and coral blue, and early speculation sees the phone starting at $720 for the S8 and $840 for the S8+. There’s all sort of deals from every major carrier (even Best Buy is offering the device unlocked at launch) so be sure to check with your provider.

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Samsung Galaxy S8: Looking Good So Far

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Excited for the next Samsung Galaxy phone? It’ll be a long, hard fight to get back into the positive spotlight for the South Korean company after a tough 2016. The Note 7 fiasco…well, we don’t have to get into that. But Samsung is looking to focus on its flagship smartphone and remind everyone why they’re on top of the game worldwide.

Samsung was planning to launch the Galaxy S8 on March 29th, but that seems to have been pushed back a month. Thanks to some leaky sources (mostly manufacturers of accessories who received test devices) we’ve been seeing photos, videos, and even press images leak ahead of its debut. A fresh batch of images have leaked today by a case maker, and they give us a slightly better look than most. Looks like Samsung is making some big design changes to its flagship smartphone.

It’s nice to see a close-up the new on-screen home button we’ve been hearing so much about. And just look at how just how small the front bezels are! The new all-screen look has clearly been aided by removing the physical home button from the front of the display, akin to the LG V20.On the back of the device, you can see the fingerprint reader in a rather odd place: right next to the camera bump. This confusing design choice appeared in early leaked photos and many hoped that this wouldn’t be the final spot by the time it got released. Oh well. It’s also interesting to know that the S8 will reportedly be sold with curved edges only, and not as options like with the S6 Edge and S7 Edge.

Samsung plans on releasing the S8 in two sizes: the 5.8-inch Galaxy S8 and 6.2-inch Galaxy S8+. Besides the sizes, both devices are identical from a hardware standpoint. You get an extremely bright and clear QHD+ SuperAMOLED display with 18.5:9 aspect ratio. The phones are powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chipset. And Samsung’s digital assistant, Bixby, makes its debut, presumably triggered by a dedicated hardware button (maybe the fingerprint sensor doubles as a home button/Bixby button?). The official unveiling is set for March 29, when Samsung will hold an event titled “UNPACKED” in New York City.

As usual, our technicians’ mouths are watering, waiting to get their hands on the S8. No word yet on whether it’ll be as difficult to repair as previous models, but they’ve yet to meet a phone they couldn’t fix. Pre-order your S8 as soon as possible, safe in the confidence that you’ll be able to bring it to iFixYouri if you accidentally smash that beautiful curved screen.

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The Samsung Galaxy S8 Needs to Be the Best Phone Ever, for Everyone’s Sake

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2016 was a rough year for Samsung, with their Note 7 fiasco being an absolute PR nightmare. No one could imagine a phone starting fires and causing injury and property damage…much less the same issue occurring after a recall, with the “fixed” devices. After an even bigger recall, a ban on bringing the Note 7 onto airplanes, and ultimately their forced deactivation, Samsung desperately needs a boost, and they’re putting all their chips on the Galaxy S8 due to be released this spring. Following the popular S7, the S8 will be similarly styled with an emphasis on curved edges. The screen will be even larger while the phone itself remains the same size as its predecessor. The South Korean tech giant plans to move the fingerprint-sensing home button to the back of the phone instead of on the bottom chin, bringing it in-line with other Android devices like the Google Pixel and LG G5. This allows the display to take up virtually the entire front of the device, the 5.8-inch QHD AMOLED display being even larger than the Galaxy Note’s 5.7-inch display. Not just a pretty face, the S8 should be even faster as well. While the phone may include different systems-on-chip depending on sales region, manufactured by either Qualcomm or Samsung (this is nothing new for these devices) they’ll all have processors created using 10-nanometer fabrication methods. Reports say this will make the phone 11 percent faster than the Galaxy S7 overall, with 23 percent faster graphics processing while being 20 percent more energy-efficient. Energy efficiency is important, as battery life for the S8 is reported to be nothing impressive.

New to the Galaxy family will be a USB-C connector (instead of micro-USB) and Samsung’s new AI assistant Bixby. Refreshingly not-new are the standard 3.5mm headphone jack, as well as a microSD removable storage slot to boost internal capacity by up to 256GB. 4GB of RAM is another S7 holdout, but that seems to be the current upper benchmark for smartphones. The 12-megapixel rear camera seems to be from the S7, as well, but the front-facing “selfie” camera is now 8MP. There will be two sizes of the S8, 5.8” and 6.2”, and both will feature the same rounded corners of the Samsung S7 Edge.

We mentioned Bixby, the AI assistant earlier, and Samsung plans to make it an integral feature to the S8 user experience, claiming it will be able to handle more complex commands (such as multi-part instructions). Another new feature is the ability to connect the S8 to a computer monitor and control it with a keyboard and mouse. It’s called Samsung DeX, and although it will require a separate HDMI-enabled dock, it’ll prove to be an important feature for those who wish to use their smartphone as part of their workstation.

Overall, we’re excited to see what the Samsung S8 can do in the hands of its users and hopeful that we get one in our hands soon. It should be a huge success, as most Samsung phones are, and should help the brand hold its place at #1 in terms of worldwide smartphone market share. Samsung desperately needs the phone to be a hit, and you can be sure that they’re going to go the extra mile to make this the best Galaxy smartphone they’ve ever made. The company lost about $17 billion in the wake of the Note 7 debacle and took a major publicity blow when news of the malfunctioning phones went viral. The S8 needs to deliver…and then some.

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Samsung Ending Production of Note 7; Replacement Phones Also Combusting

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South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics is officially stopping the manufacture of its troubled Note 7 phone. The news comes days after major networks, such as AT&T and T-Mobile, announced they would stop issuing replacement devices to customers. Reportedly, five Note 7’s that were received by customers as replacements for the faulty, flammable phones have caught fire…in one week. It seems to be a more complicated issue than initially thought, and swapping out the battery is not the definite fix. A Samsung rep told the BBC that they’re putting the manufacturing on hold to “[adjust] the production schedule to ensure quality and safety matters.” This has been an ongoing nightmare for Samsung, with over 100 reports of catastrophic battery failure in the devices in the US alone since its release in mid-August and at least a dozen people receiving burns or other injuries.

 

UPDATE 10/11: Samsung has decided to permanently cease production of the Note 7 and is warning all users to power down the devices and bring them in to a retailer immediately for an exchange.

 

If you currently own a Galaxy Note 7, we recommend contacting your mobile provider to see what your replacement options are. AT&T and T-Mobile are offering other devices in exchange (including the Galaxy S7) with credit to make up the cash difference. Of course, iFixYouri is here to fix any problems that your new phone might give you…and hopefully those problems are a little less severe than an outright explosion.