Samsung’s flagship phone is here! The Galaxy S8 Plus packs a punch!
Here is my non-technical quick review
I love the Galaxy S 8 Plus, it looks great, feels great and runs very smoothly – so far ( I only have it two months!). Coming from a 16 GB Apple iPhone 6, I found the abundance of storage (expandable too) … almost overwhelming- I no longer see warning messages regarding storage capacity being depleted that plagued my iPhone.
Apple, why did you make a phone which such a low storage capacity?
That aside, the best part of this phone has to be the screen.
Screen
Samsung has a name for this type of screen, it’s called an infinity screen, and Samsung has really spent a lot of time perfecting this generations display.
Yes the screen looks amazing, and as this is a non-technical review, I won’t go into the specs, but this is a display you need to see in person!
There is a curve on the screen (it’s not as pounced as it is in the Galaxy Edge 7 – but it’s there all the same), at times this can be annoying, but mostly – it just looks really cool!
The Android software on the Galaxy S8 has been adopted by Samsung so if you come across applications that do not support the unusual screen size and unusual curvature, you can have the phone crop the display so you can use a whole lot of this curved display. Or conversely, un-crop the screen if the app looks strange. Yes! It does look a bit odd for some applications and games, mind you, but mostly it works just fine.
On the day you buy this phone make sure you also purchase a decent cover for it! The back of the phone easily accumulates hairline scrapes, and unfortunately, the screen, as beautiful as it is, seems rather delicate and prone to scrapes and scratches. You need to protect the screen, somehow.
I already have a deep scratch on my screen, and a quick internet search seems to indicate – it’s common enough for this to happen. Yes, I hate covering such a beautiful phone, though – but it needs to be done!
Charging
Wow! Samsung was not lying when they said this phone offers ‘fast charging’ – this phone charges faster than any phone I’ve ever had. Not just a marketing gimmick!
I also bought the fast charging wireless doc this phone supports, it is not as fast charging as connecting it directly, but a small price to pay – I suppose, if you want to use the handy wireless feature.
Features & Software
Samsung’s version of Touch ID, that is, the fingerprint reader, is in a very unusual location – at the back of the phone right beside the camera lens! What a place to put it. Not a great idea at all and feels a little ‘last minute’, but you know – you do get used to it.
However, you often end up putting your finger over the camera lens… smudging it for any future photos. There are a number of other ways of unlocking your phone, such as the retina reader, which, when it works is a very handy feature, and of course the face recognition feature.
I will admit, tapping in the PIN works just as well for me!
I had been, up until I bought the Galaxy S 8 Plus, an iPhone user, I had switched back from Samsung, because I found the implementation of touch wiz – that is the Samsung implementation of Android operating system on their phones a massive annoyance, it was slow, glitchy and just a massive pain to use.
Thankfully, those days are behind us, and so far (fingers crossed) the Galaxy S 8 seems to have no problems for me in terms of software smoothness.
I’m happy, I bought this phone overall and Samsung has put a lot of work into this years flagship phone.
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