Samsung Galaxy S8 Review

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I know what you’re thinking. “But Danielle, Samsung will reveal the Samsung Galaxy S9 tomorrow!” Well, yes, but many will still be looking to buy Samsung’s 2017 flagship smartphone, and they may want to compare it to Apple’s 2017 models, the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X. I also am getting an HTC U11 shortly, so I thought it would be a good idea to be able to compare Android flagship phones from 2017.

Oh, you were more confused about me doing an Android review? I suppose mentioning the HTC U11 added to that confusion. You know, it’s not that unprecedented. I reviewed the Samsung Galaxy S5, the Amazon Fire Phone, the HTC One (m7) the Moto G4, and last—and absolutely least—the Verizon Elipsis 8 in the past. Sure, I’m an iOS user primarily, but I’ve developed for both iOS and Android, and currently make my living developing on Android. I will likely always prefer iOS to Android, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the customization and variety of the Android platform.

Introduction aside, I have a Samsung Galaxy S8 through work. I mostly compile apps to it and test on it, but I figured it was time to increase my usage of it to do a review. I’ve had it for months now, and I think its quirks and capabilities have become apparent.

Hardware Design

The Samsung Galaxy S8 is one of the sharpest looking smartphones on the market. Its glass front and back curve together to sandwich a slim strip of aluminum in between. The end result is gorgeous. It’s a phone that looks great and feels great in the hand. Due to the thin edge, I find it easier to grip than the iPhone X. Also, since the screen bends into the sides of the phone, the Samsung Galaxy S8 can maintain the same 18:9 screen ratio as the iPhone X, while being narrower. However, as Samsung put bezels on the top and bottom of the phone, the phones is considerably taller than an iPhone X.

The back of the phone has Samsung’s name, the model, and FCC markings. However, the contrast is low, and you can still appreciate the design. At the top of the phone, you’ll find a nearly flush camera (take note, Apple), with only a slight lip to protect the lens, flash, heart rate sensor, and, a fingerprint sensor right next to the camera lens. When using the fingerprint sensor with your index finger, you’ll likely put a smudge on the camera. I found a case with close cutouts helps reduce this issue, as you can more easily find the sensor without bumping the lens. I got a super cheap case for the Galaxy S8, which I won’t review here, but I have found it helpful and surprisingly protective, despite its low quality. The S8 is difficult to protect due to its shape. Thanks to the curve of the screen, a case would need a huge lip to protect the front. As a result, even with a case, you may damage your S8 in a fall.

Performance

The Samsung Galaxy S8 is equipped with a Snapdragon 830, which was the fastest Android chip available in the U.S. until recently, when the 835 was released. It also has 4GB of memory. It likely could have gone with a little more memory, although Samsung’s TouchWiz isn’t as much of a resource hog as it used to be. Thanks to Samsung finally reigning in TouchWiz a bit, it’s considerably faster. I presume the Google Pixel 2 XL would be a faster phone, due to stock Android having fewer customization placed on top of the OS, but it has been the fastest Android phone I’ve used. In games, I noticed no large framerate drops. Games certainly loaded considerably slower on the Galaxy S8 than the iPhone X. Once the games or levels have loaded, the performance is similar to the iPhone, but it’s clear that it’s not as fast. However, in day-to-day usage, you’ll find it does a mostly decent job of storing apps in memory and is quick to respond to touches. The difference between the lag I saw in the Samsung Galaxy S5 and the S8 is remarkable. Samsung really optimized responsiveness over their sluggish old phones.

Samsung devices seem to still have issues storing apps in memory, more aggressively clearing them out in the background than stock Android devices. In fact, the HTC U11 displays this well, by beating even the fastest version of the Samsung Galaxy S8 by a wide margin in a test that values processor speed and memory handling. As I mostly use this device for testing my own apps, I haven’t ran into problems, but if it was my everyday device, the memory issues could be an annoyance.

Screen

Samsung screens have a reputation, one that the S8 screen holds up. Samsung heavily oversaturates their smartphone screens. Colors pop, but details are washed out. They do this so the screens look better on first glance, but a closer inspection reveals that Samsung is cheating their customers for marketing’s sake. Loading up the same game on the iPhone X and Samsung Galaxy S8 shows just how little Samsung cares about color reproduction or details. Yes, the screen is big and beautiful, and wraps around the phone, but if you care about details and accuracy in your photos, you’re not going to be happy with Samsung’s optimizations here. One thing I did really like though is the blue filter. You can, with a tap, activate a blue filter that makes the screen warmer, and less likely to cause eye strain or disrupt your sleep cycle. This is one of the few Samsung customizations I actually like.

Camera

The camera on the Samsung Galaxy S8 is very good. It’s one of the best smartphone cameras you can get. It doesn’t measure up to the iPhone X, iPhone 8/8 Plus, HTC U11, or Google Pixel 2 phones, but it is ahead of many others, according to DxOMark. They report issues with sharpness out of the center of an image, but fast autofocus. It has a strong flash and overemphasizes ISO to produce bright photos, but details are lost. The screen makes photos look more saturated, and if you edit photos on device, you may end up desaturating them too much. That’s because the camera, for once in a Samsung device, doesn’t overly emphasize saturation. You wouldn’t buy the Samsung Galaxy S8 for its camera.

On the front facing camera. users will appreciate the wider field of view, though it can change the proportions of a person’s face. Personally, I like the slightly wider field of view. I believe the iPhone’s is too narrow. However, Samsung might have gone a bit too far, which can change the proportions of a person’s face from what you’re expecting. Not that Samsung has a problem with that. Their camera has a number of “beautification” settings that allow you to “smooth” skin tone (apply a rudimentary blur to skin), make your eyes bigger, make your face thinner, and add obviously fake lighting to your face. You can make yourself look like a dolled up alien with this, and the face thinning features are a little troubling. I can’t help but wonder if this could do damage to young people’s self image, especially those who are self conscious about their appearance or weight. Showing a “prettier” version of your face that is always thinner than your actual face could push people into anorexia. Such a feature certainly shouldn’t be in a default app. Samsung’s cameras are among the top Smartphone cameras, but they’re certainly not the best.

Battery Life and Charging

I haven’t needed the battery life very much for the S8, as it’s mostly attached to my computer for testing and debugging. However, I did notice a few interesting things. For example, like many Android devices, standby battery life is terrible. A weekend without any use can completely drain the battery. Letting it sit on my table doing nothing for a full weekend kills the battery. However, there are low power modes you can enable to save battery in actual use, which would help it last all day on a charge, if you’re careful. Like any other smartphone, I recommend charging it at the office and keeping it with a decent charge anywhere else. Between yesterday, when I left the office at 6pm, and this morning, when I checked it at 9am, it has lost 20% charge just sitting in my backpack.

You’ll be pleased to know that the Samsung Galaxy S8 does support QualComm’s fast charging, and that, out of the box, the S8 comes with a fast charger. The Samsung Galaxy S8 can also charge with the full 10 watts of power that can be passed over wireless charging (the iPhone X can only charge at a rate of 7.5 watts). So, while it might lose power quickly when you’re not using it, it’s quick to regain that power.

The Samsung Galaxy does use USB-C, but it comes with convenient converters. I forgot my USB-C charging cable at the office, but fortunately started keeping the adapter at home after a friend I was hanging out with was unable to charge his phone. We tried to find USB-C charging cables in drug stores and bodegas in my area, but not one of them had it. If you rely on USB-C for charging, make sure you buy a bunch of good USB-C cables (those recommended by Benson Leung) right away, they can be hard to come by.

Headphones and Speakers

The first Samsung device I reviewed had a single speaker on the back of the phone. Samsung did not do something so stupid with the Galaxy S8, they took a far more conventional approach with the speaker. The speakers aren’t even mentioned on Samsung’s page for the Galaxy S8, and it’s not hard to see why. There is only one speaker at the bottom of the device. The volume isn’t bad, but it sounds like you’re listening to it through a cup. The sound is hollow, lacks bass and treble, all while sounding like it’s resonating poorly throughout the device. Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by the iPhone X’s speakers, but it seems that, while Samsung realized the back of the phone is a terrible place for a speaker, they haven’t done much else to improve it.

Author’s note: I played the same song on both my iPhone X and the Samsung Galaxy S8 for this test. I totally rocked out for a while as a result, proving that good music can transcend a subpar speaker.

Samsung did do a few things right with the sound though. First, they provided a headphone jack. That means, if you want to listen to music with a headphone jack, you can, but you can also use an improved quality USB-C digital to audio converter like the Accessport or others. The headphones they include also sound better than Apple’s and, they actually will fit in your ear. They’re wrapped in fabric as well, making them easier to detangle. This only highlights again how lousy Apple’s EarPods are, and how much Apple needs to do to improve their lousy offerings.

TouchWiz/Software

TouchWiz is what Samsung calls their custom version of Android. It’s currently based on Android 7, Nougat, despite Oreo being out for about half a year. Android ‘P’ (Popsicle?) will soon be previewed, and Samsung still hasn’t updated their users to Oreo. Even after Samsung releases their Oreo update, it’ll still take weeks to months to go through carriers to get to all of Samsung’s users.

TouchWiz has been a common ire for reviewers in the past. I hated it so much on the Galaxy S5 that I actually preferred a slower smartphone with no customizations over it. It’s been vastly improved, and no longer creates significant lag on the device, but I still believe it to be a net negative for Samsung’s smartphones. It’s why I still recommend almost anything but Samsung when it comes to Android devices.

The Good:

The Galaxy software isn’t not all bad, honest! For example, there’s a really cool feature on the S8 involving the fingerprint sensor. You can set it to respond to gestures, so swiping down on it will open the notification pane, and swiping up on it will dismiss notifications. This is much more handy than reaching up to the top of the device with your thumb. Thanks to the tall screen and bezel, reaching up to the top of the Galaxy S8 is a bit of a pain, but thanks to this clever feature, users can easily bring notifications within reach.

Samsung has something called the Edge Launcher, which is an area of the screen that responds to touch and opens up a few panes. Widgets, clipboard items, contacts, and app shortcuts go in the Edge Launcher, and the user can customize what’s visible. I got little use out of it, but I can see how someone might like it. Personally, I just set up my home screens the way I like, with shortcuts into apps and important widgets getting their own space, and I’m content. Still, it’s certainly not a negative thing, and I feel like someone may get some good use out of it.

I also like Samsung’s Weather and time widget, which I keep at the top of my primary home screen. It’s simple, looks nice, and updates frequently enough that I’m rarely without the weather.

Samsung’s health app isn’t bad, though third party versions may have more features, it does have unique access to the heart rate sensor. If you don’t have an app that uses the camera for your heart rate, don’t have a fitness device, and don’t have a smartwatch, this might be useful to you. The heart rate sensor matched the readings from my Apple Watch, so it’s accurate. It can even detect and save blood oxygen levels, which I found I could vary by holding my breath, so it does appear to be accurate enough for exercise, if you found that useful. It’s not a fully featured health app like Apple’s and other third party apps, but it could be neat.

Finally, the bloat from Samsung’s customizations don’t seem to permeate throughout the entire experience. They’re more confined to individual apps and features, and they don’t appear to slow down the device too much. While it’s still true that Android devices with the same hardware and without Samsung’s TouchWiz are faster, the difference isn’t as significant as it used to be.

The Bad

TouchWiz is still the reason I say people shouldn’t buy a Samsung device, besides the fact that they copy other manufactures, out-market them, and produce inferior devices loaded up with gimmicks.

First, let’s start with Bixby, one of my larger complaints. Bixby is Samsung’s answer to Google Assistant. Actually, it’s Samsung’s second answer to Siri, Cortana, Alexa, and Google Assistant. Its first was S-Voice, which was also pretty lousy. Bixby requires a Samsung account, presumably so Samsung can collect your personalized usage data. In fact, nearly all of Samsung’s customizations require a Samsung account. In all tests I’ve seen, Bixby is underwhelming, being beaten out by Google’s offerings on the platform. But Samsung didn’t stop by making an inferior product, they took it a step further. The S8 has a dedicated “Bixby Button” on the side under the volume buttons. The volume buttons are quite high on this device, so you will press the button frequently and accidentally. Samsung does not let you customize the functionality of this button, however, they finally stopped fighting third party apps that overwrote the functionality of Bixby. I have mine set up to launch Google Assistant currently, though I almost never use voice assistants anyway. Samsung tried to force a lousy feature on their users through a hardware button, showing that they really care more about marketing than their customers or a good user experience. Bixby and the Bixby button set a perfect example for why Samsung is a company you should avoid.

On the home screen, you’ll find gestures, but if you use stock Android, they won’t make much sense. Any swiping, up or down, anywhere can open the app drawer. You’ll find the settings a bit more difficult to navigate as well, and your app drawer will be full of Samsung apps you’ll never use (and never delete, because you can’t). I quickly replaced the launcher with Nova Launcher.

Want to find an app you were just using? If you’re accustomed to other phone manufacturers, you just pressed Samsung’s back button. The back button is on the right side, pointing to the left. Because, to Samsung, this made sense. I did some digging in the settings and you can, fortunately, put this back the way it should be, with the back button on the left and the recent apps button on the right. Seriously, Samsung, do you just make customizations to appear different? Actually, yes, they do, it’s all part of trying to lock you down to a Samsung device.

Overall, I didn’t use any of Samsung’s customizations. I quickly replaced Bixby with Google Assistant through third party apps, added Nova Launcher for the home screen, avoided Samsung’s browser for Firefox instead, used Signal for communication, and Google’s own gmail app for email. Everything Samsung loaded this device up with was useless to me, with the few examples above being tiny exceptions. But, thanks to these awful customizations, Samsung users are nearly 6 months behind Google’s 6 month release schedule. We should have Oreo by the time Google’s releasing the developer previews of ‘P.’

Samsung Galaxy S8 Review Summary

The only reason I’d recommend the Galaxy S8 is if you were truly enamored with its design. If you can’t escape how beautiful this phone is, and that’s all you can think about, go ahead and buy it. I might also recommend it if you’re one of the few people who actually likes TouchWiz, but I’d rather recommend you buy any other device and replicate the features you like with third party apps that’ll do it better without forcing you to make another account and give your personal information to another company. Personally, I love Nova Launcher Pro and use 3rd party integration to add some great gestures. It keeps my Android experience customized, consistent, and backed up. I’m confident that most people who like Samsung’s software just haven’t used stock Android in years, and haven’t tried any customization. Really, if you’re not going to customize your device to make it perfect for you, why even bother with an Android phone?

If you were going to root your phone and replace every piece of Samsung software on it, I’d ask you why you bothered with a Samsung phone in the first place. It’s a beautiful phone, no doubt, but there are other beautiful phones, including the HTC U11, Google Pixel 2 XL, LG V30, and Essential Phone that will come with faster software and better hardware. If you’re a Samsung user who refuses to switch to a different smartphone manufacturer, I recommend you wait for the S9 and then get either it or the S8 at a reduced cost. But really, despite the fact that this is absolutely a good phone, there are better ones you should look at first.