Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus
If you believe that more screen equals better screen, you're in luck. The Galaxy S8 Plus is exactly the Galaxy S8 with a larger display: 6.2 inches instead of 5.8.
If you’re yet to decide between the Samsung Galaxy S8 or the Galaxy S8+, then there’s only one thing you need consider: how big do you want your phone?
For most people, the smaller 5.5-inch S8 will be best. It’s more manageable in one hand, and will comfortably fit in your pocket. But if you’re accustomed to larger handsets such as the iPhone 7 Plus, Google Pixel XL or Nexus 6P then I’d suggest opting for the S8+.
It’s a masterclass in engineering and performance, and comfortably the finest big smartphone you can buy right now. What’s remarkable is that the elegantly curved screen has dramatically grown half an inch from last year’s 5.7-inch Galaxy S7 Edge, yet the phone is nearly the same size. It’s just a bit taller thanks to the elimination of needless bezel and Samsung’s familiar oval-shaped home button.
For the most part, Samsung’s Galaxy S8 Plus is a slam dunk. It’s brilliantly designed, brimming with horsepower and has a beautiful screen. That’s all most people will need, and our gripes are minor. It’s too bad Bixby is still incomplete — its voice interface doesn’t work yet, and the stuff we did get can be hit-or-miss. Fortunately, Bixby is strictly optional, and the rest of the phone is remarkably polished. Long story short, if you’re looking for a new phone, this should be at the top of your list.
Samsung Galaxy S8+ Design
The Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus design is exactly what we’ve wanted for several years – almost. We’ve been asking for a bigger screen, but on a phone that’s still small enough to be easy to hold.
The Samsung Galaxy S8+ is stunning from every angle. It’s easily the slickest Android phone I’ve ever held, and makes the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus feel old-fashioned in comparison. It’s futuristic but it doesn’t sacrifice usability for style.
The 6.2-inch screen size sounds huge, especially since the majority of larger handsets stick to screen sizes between 5.5 and 5.7 inches. The last flagship phone I can remember to sport a 6-inch display was the Motorola-built Nexus 6 and that was a nightmare to use. But it’s a different story here. This is a big-screened phone that feels great, and credit has to be given to Samsung for crafting a phone that feels this good.
The curved front and back help it to nestle in your hand, and the narrow design means your palm isn’t stretched quite so much as it is when holding an iPhone 7 Plus. It’s actually about the size as an iPhone 7 Plus although that has only a 5.5-inch display and it’s shorter than the hulking Sony Xperia XZ Premium.
The screens don't extend any farther down the phones' sides than the S7 Edge's display did, but the bezel surrounding them has almost completely disappeared. LG's G6 packs a similarly long 18:9 screen, but the S8 line's eye-catching curves and impressive precision give Samsung a distinct advantage. Like the G6, the screens on the S8 and S8 Plus are longer and narrower than usual, helping them fit more snugly in your hand.
This is especially true of the S8. I thought I'd prefer the Plus's large display, but there's something reassuring and alluring about this smaller body. For one, my hands never strained while reaching for the screen's far corners, and I never felt like I'd drop the S8 because my hand wrapped around it so well. (The phones' backs are made of glass, though, so they still slide around on tabletops.) That's not to say the S8 Plus feels too big. It's plenty comfortable to hold, although your thumbs will still get a workout reaching around the display.
Everything about the Galaxy S8 Plus design seems to highlight the real star attraction, the 6.2-inch screen. This includes the rather muted Galaxy S8 colorsof Midnight Black, Orchid Gray, and Arctic Silver, Maple Gold and Coral Blue .
The same goes for the now-understated rear camera design, and the S-A-M-S-U-N-G logo no longer adorning the top of the screen and staring back at you every single second you use your phone; the logo is now on the back, and everything is a lot cleaner that way.
Samsung has eliminated the ugly rear camera bump, and simply outlines the flat lens with a tiny lip. We’re in favor of this decision – a protective camera lip may save your camera if you do happen to drop it and crack the back glass. We’ve found out the hard way that the bump-free, unprotected Google Pixel XLwill spiderweb when just about any part of the back glass shatters, rendering your main camera useless.
If you're not paying attention, you'd easily miss one of the S8 line's biggest additions: a small button below the volume keys on the phones' left sides. This is what you'll use to invoke Bixby, Samsung's homebrew virtual assistant. The button doesn't do much yet — you'll eventually be able to long-press it to speak directly to Bixby, but for now, it just brings up a screen with upcoming appointments, news and such. Even worse, Samsung has blocked attempts to remap the Bixby key for other functions, which has only pissed off potential power users.
Just like the S7, the S8+ is IP68 rated for water-resistance and can be submerged in 1m of water for about 30 minutes. Unlike the S7, however, Samsung has ditched those hardware buttons and gone virtual. The home button even features a haptic response and can be accessed from anywhere by just pushing down on the lower portion of the display.
There's a USB-C port on the phones' bottoms, and next to that? The headphone jack. We've seen companies ditching this classic port, claiming that it took up too much space. The S8 and S8 Plus are perfect repudiations of that line of thinking. Oh, and they don't get in the way of waterproofing, either. Both devices are IP68 dust and water-resistant, which meant they could lounge for up to 30 minutes in the ridiculous wine bath we poured.
The stuff inside the S8 and S8 Plus isn't exactly a surprise. Both US models pack Qualcomm's new octa-core Snapdragon 835 chipsets, along with 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM and Adreno 540 GPUs. That horsepower is paired with 64GB of internal storage, and you can add up to 256GB of additional space with a microSD card. In addition to the usual array of LTE and Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac radios, the S8 and S8 Plus also pack support for Bluetooth 5.0, an updated version of the standard that promises faster data speeds and longer range.
What’s ancient is the single speaker at the bottom, and we’re disappointed to see it. It’s easy to accidentally cover up the grille when watching YouTube videos in landscape mode, and really, when Apple is beating you to something with the iPhone 7, you know there’s a problem.
Samsung Galaxy S8+ Display
The Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus has the world’s best phone display, and for more reasons than simply because it packs in a lot of extra pixels. That’s definitely not all that’s happening here.
Seriously, the Super AMOLED panels here are indeed awesome. Color reproduction on both is excellent and, as always, there are different screen modes in case your tastes are more specific. The screens get bright enough to combat the warm spring sun and viewing angles are excellent, too.
There’s no Edge variation this year, and that’s because both the S8 and S8+ sport those eye-catching curved sides. They’re not as steep as before, though, and as such are more of a design trait than a practical feature. If you were put off by the edges on the S7 Edge, don’t let that sway you here.
Samsung has also further optimised its software to do a better job at rejecting accidental touches along those edge portions of the handset, something that was needed.
Its new 18.5:9 aspect ratio elongates the screen’s dimensions to give you more viewing space; you can train your eyes on two to three Facebook stories at a time in your newsfeed, instead of having to continuously scroll just to read portions of one.
It’s all thanks to the impressive 88% screen-to-body ratio of Samsung’s ‘Infinity Screen’. The Galaxy S7 Edge had what we thought was a good 76% ratio, while the iPhone 7 Plus sits at about a 68% screen-body ratio.
Reading is certainly easier, and split-screen multitasking feels less cramped, but because it deviates from the traditional 16:9 aspect ratio, the phone throws up black bars when playing video content. This didn’t bother us as much as we thought it would, and it’s partly because every S8 color option has a black front face. It blends really well.
Samsung also gives you some familiar options you’ll remember from when HD first came onto the scene in an SD world. You can choose Smart Cropping, which fills the entire extra-wide screen (some content is cut off at the top and bottom), or Fit to Screen with black bars.
As with any AMOLED panel, the best attribute is the colour reproduction. It will display the deepest black and brighter shades such as red and green are gloriously vivid without being oversaturated. Like the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, the Galaxy S8 can display the entire DCI-P3 cinema-grade colour gamut – and, in certain cases, it will go beyond 1000-nits of brightness.
Interestingly, out of the box the phone defaults to 1080p rather than 1440p. I assume this is to save battery, but it looks good nonetheless. Although, if you’re happy spending £700+ on a phone then I’m going to assume that you’ll want to get the most out of it. You can hop into Settings to up that resolution.
The screen is a joy to use outdoors as a result of that impressive brightness, and even though the curved edges do reflect the sun a little more than would be the case with a flat screen, it certainly isn’t something we notice regularly.
Samsung Galaxy S8+ OS
For the first time, Samsung really impresses with its software. The Galaxy S7 improved a lot of things over the poor TouchWiz experience on the S6, but the new ‘Galaxy Experience’ on the S8 feels like the most cohesive and functional Android layer yet.
The Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus both ship with Android 7.0 Nougat, but you'd be hard-pressed to tell at a glance. Samsung has once again painted over Google's work. Though, TouchWiz has finally grown up. A lot. Look at the S7's interface: It's full of garish icons and brightly colored circles. The S8's, in contrast, is subtle and thoughtful in its design choices.
Samsung is known for packing as many features as possible into its versions of Android, and while this is still the case here, most are off by default and hidden away. So unless you have a particular need to scroll through web pages with your eyeballs, you won’t be bugged to every few minutes.
For one, the app launcher button is gone now you just swipe up or down on a homescreen to see everything you've installed. Even better, there's a search bar at the top of the launcher. Managing apps is also easier. Long-pressing an app icon launches a pop-up window with options to add a shortcut to the home screen, select multiple apps and uninstall or disable the ones you've selected. That last bit is crucial when you're dealing with carrier-mandated bloatware, like the multiple T-Mobile apps on our review unit. In days past, you had to disable uninstallable apps from the device's settings; now you can do it wherever your app icons live.
Also returning from the Note 7 is a Game Launcher app and the device optimizer in settings, which lets you quickly close down background apps and delete unneeded files. My personal favorite feature is the Secure Folder, which allows you to hide files and install separate instances of apps away from the rest of your stuff. For example: Photos taken from the camera app within the Secure Folder can only be viewed when you've successfully unlocked the folder.
Not all the new software additions hit the mark, though, and on occasion it feels like Samsung is trying too hard. Bixby, a sort of Siri and Google Assistant rival, was announced to lofty claims of allowing you to control every part of the phone with your voice. But at launch it can’t do that; you can’t talk to it at all. Instead, it’s just a basic home screen page that isn’t as useful as Google Now. There are cards from apps (it always pesters me to ring my Mum), some weather updates, and a boat-load of adverts for Samsung themes and wallpapers.
There are some Bixby elements in the camera, too, but again they feel unfinished. Like Google Goggles, you can point the camera at landmarks and it will throw up some similar pictures, plus there’s basic product scanning too. It’s rubbish, though – and, bizarrely, uses Pinterest from which to search.
Bixby is a dud, that’s all there is to say. The fact it has a dedicated button that can’t be officially remapped is bonkers, and it’s just repeating old Samsung mistakes. Google Assistant is fine – I don’t need two personal aides on my phones. Bixby can’t be completely turned off, but you can toggle off the homescreen page.
The other big addition is DeX, a combo of software and hardware that turns the Galaxy S8+ into something comparable to a basic desktop PC. You’ll need to buy a DeX dock to get started – plus a second power cable if you don’t want to use the one included with a phone, HDMI cable, keyboard and mouse – but once that’s set up, it’s all pretty straightforward.
Dock the phone in the cradle, turn on your monitor and the device transforms into pseudo-Android-Windows 10 mashup. There’s a desktop, you can resize apps, and in general it works well. Some apps don’t work at all – Spotify, being the biggest – and I’m not really sure who would use it for more than a few minutes. However, it’s an interesting look to the future nonetheless. I’ve found that after being unplugged from DeX, the Galaxy S8+ is noticeably slower until a complete restart is performed.
Even though Bixby is a dud and DeX is limited, neither of these really take anything away from the phone. The software experience on the whole is impressive, and it’s really Samsung’s best attempt yet.
There are a couple of other new software additions that help avoid any issues with the new aspect ratio. Most Android apps can natively rescale to fit the dimensions, but you can also manually stretch apps to fit that huge 6.2-inch display. If you’re watching a YouTube video – the majority of which are shot in 16:9 – a tiny icon pops to crop in, removing the black bars at either end. As with anything cropped, you’re likely to lose certain details – and it’s a real pain for subtitles – but it’s nice to really fill up that screen.
Samsung has been messing about with different methods of unlocking phones for a while now, but they finally all come together in the Galaxy S8+. As already mentioned in the Design section, the fingerprint sensor – which is placed frustratingly next to the camera – is difficult to use.
It’s a good job then that, on the whole, the other biometric unlocking methods are a success. From the three ways to unlock the Galaxy S8, the face recognition has become my go-to option. It isn’t as secure as the iris scanner or the fingerprint sensor, but it’s faster and reliable once your mug has been properly scanned. The iris scanner is implemented more effectively here than on the Note 7, and it works better in low light than the face recognition. However, it’s slower and more fiddly.
The proof is in the performance. 4GB of RAM coupled with either the speedy Qualcomm 835 or even faster Samsung Exynos 8895 chipset topped all of our benchmark tests.
It’s these smaller 10nm chipsets that make this phone more powerful, and they also draw less energy than last year’s 14nm chips. Samsung’s Exynos chips are always a little more powerful, but Qualcomm’s have the US-essential CDMA capabilities to work with Verizon and Sprint.
Our Geekbench benchmarking gave the Exynos chipset a 6,630 multi-core score, while the Qualcomm chipset averaged a 6,000 multi-core score. More importantly, we experienced no slowdown other than gradually appearing Bixby animations – that’s not actual slowdown.
That’s great news for anyone who wants to step into the future of mobile virtual reality with the new Samsung Gear VR, or simply avoid slowdown two to three years down the road. The S8 and S8 Plus have fully capable chipsets to power’s VR next generation the 3D graphics, and everyone benefits from this smartphone powerhouse.The S8 and S8 Plus are effortlessly fast machines, and hardly anything I threw at them over a week of testing got them to stutter. This is mostly due to the shiny new Snapdragon 835 and 4GB of RAM onboard. Bixby is often a little slow to launch, but swiping through Samsung's improved interface and jumping between running apps is painless. If this is what the 835 is capable of, we can't wait until these things are everywhere. Workday multitasking, games like Hearthstone and Dead Trigger 2, even playing emulated GameCube games it all ran fabulously. I unconsciously stopped thinking about performance altogether. As you'd expect, the S8s killed it in our usual suite of benchmarks, too hardly anything came close.
Samsung Galaxy S8+ Camera
The 12-megapixel sensors on the back haven't changed much since last year. That's not a bad thing since they were great cameras to start with; just don't expect any huge jumps in quality. Photos were uniformly well-exposed with excellent color reproduction. And as always, these dual-pixel cameras focus incredibly fast, and the optical image stabilization does an excellent job keeping subjects crisp and clear. Low-light performance was in line with the S7 cameras, which is no surprise since they both have 1.4µm sensor pixels and f/1.7 apertures. Still, expect to see the occasional fuzzy edge and less-accurate focusing when it gets a little too dark. Samsung says it improved the processing pipeline so there's no lag between capturing a shot and being ready to snap the next.
The S8 and S8 Plus also double as solid video cameras. They capture quality footage at up to 4K with great colors and minimal jittering. I just wish Samsung offered more flexibility there's a record button, and that's about it.
There is an improved 8-megapixel front camera with a wider field of view for group selfies. It has a f/1.7 aperture too, so it's decent enough in low light and in general it's a great performer. Selfies were clean, detailed and nicely colored, especially when viewed on the punchy AMOLED screen. Even better, you can hold up a palm to snap a selfie, no fumbling with buttons required.
Samsung also spent time cleaning up the camera interface, which was already pretty elegant. You switch between the front and rear cameras with a swipe up or down, and the list of usual photo modes food, selective focus, slow motion and "pro" is smaller and more streamlined. This time, though, swiping right opens up a list of Instagram-friendly color options to give your photos a little more character.
Aside from the overall size, and of course price, the biggest difference between the two Galaxy S8 flagships are their batteries. However, I’ve found they both last about the same amount of time, so don’t pick up the S8+ expecting it to last multiple days without needing a charge.
Samsung also packs the S8 Plus with software optimization tools to eke out more battery life when you’re down to 15%. It really clings to those last single digits while counting down to the exact time it’ll power down (it’s never exactly right, but it’s nice to have a ballpark estimate).
The Galaxy S8 Plus retains perks like fast charging and wireless charging. Its easier-to-plug-in USB-C port means wireless charging is now a minor convenience, but still one we like seeing.
The smaller S8 routinely lasts between a day and a half and two days of consistent use. The S8 Plus's bigger battery gets me closer to two full days of use on a single charge. That's with the screen set to its maximum resolution, too — expect even better battery life if you dial the displays down to Full HD+ or lower.
They stood well in our standard video rundown test, where we loop an HD video at 50 percent screen brightness while the phones are connected to Wi-Fi. The S8 and its 3,000mAh battery stuck around for 13 hours and 27 minutes — just a hair better than the S7 and the Google Pixel and well ahead of the bigger 3,300mAh battery in the G6. The clear winner, though, is the S8 Plus and its 3,500mAh battery. It clocked in at 15 hours and 8 minutes, longer than the Pixel XL, Note 7 and Moto Z Force.
Considering the Galaxy Note 7 burst into flames due to issues with batteries, I don’t think it’s much of a surprise that Samsung has been somewhat unambitious when it comes to the cells here. This is a phone with a sizeable screen and I haven’t yet been able to fully kill it in a day of moderate use which feels like a win to me.
The Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus aren't perfect, but they're as close as Samsung has ever gotten. That's a hell of a rebound for a company whose phablets... well, you know. Beyond the gorgeous design and the boost in horsepower, they feel like devices built in response to our preferences and nitpicks.
Picking between the Galaxy S8+ or the S8 is simply a matter of deciding upon you preference of size. If you’re coming from a Plus-sized iPhone or any previous Android phablet and are happy with that size, then the S8+ is for you. It’s big, yes, but you’re getting the very best screen packed into an super-attractive body.
We truly believe the S8+ and the S8 are the best Android phones out there. The screen is amazing, camera stunning and ergonomics unmatched. We also appreciate all the little extras that others often leave off: water-resistance, wireless charging, 64GB base storage and microSD, to name but a few.
The year is still young and we'll certainly see strong responses from Google and Apple. But for now, if you're looking for a new smartphone, the S8s should be at or very close to the top of your list.
Break the boundaries of your world
Last year's Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge were excellent phones, and so was the Galaxy Note 7... until it started bursting into flames. While some within Samsung were tasked with figuring out what happened and how to prevent it from happening again, others were trying to build a phone that would make people move on. Meet the new Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus.
If you believe that more screen equals better screen, you're in luck. The Galaxy S8 Plus is exactly the Galaxy S8 with a larger display: 6.2 inches instead of 5.8.
It’s a masterclass in engineering and performance, and comfortably the finest big smartphone you can buy right now. What’s remarkable is that the elegantly curved screen has dramatically grown half an inch from last year’s 5.7-inch Galaxy S7 Edge, yet the phone is nearly the same size. It’s just a bit taller thanks to the elimination of needless bezel and Samsung’s familiar oval-shaped home button.
The 6.2-inch screen size sounds huge, especially since the majority of larger handsets stick to screen sizes between 5.5 and 5.7 inches. The last flagship phone I can remember to sport a 6-inch display was the Motorola-built Nexus 6 and that was a nightmare to use. But it’s a different story here. This is a big-screened phone that feels great, and credit has to be given to Samsung for crafting a phone that feels this good.
The curved front and back help it to nestle in your hand, and the narrow design means your palm isn’t stretched quite so much as it is when holding an iPhone 7 Plus. It’s actually about the size as an iPhone 7 Plus although that has only a 5.5-inch display and it’s shorter than the hulking Sony Xperia XZ Premium.
This is especially true of the S8. I thought I'd prefer the Plus's large display, but there's something reassuring and alluring about this smaller body. For one, my hands never strained while reaching for the screen's far corners, and I never felt like I'd drop the S8 because my hand wrapped around it so well. (The phones' backs are made of glass, though, so they still slide around on tabletops.) That's not to say the S8 Plus feels too big. It's plenty comfortable to hold, although your thumbs will still get a workout reaching around the display.
Everything about the Galaxy S8 Plus design seems to highlight the real star attraction, the 6.2-inch screen. This includes the rather muted Galaxy S8 colorsof Midnight Black, Orchid Gray, and Arctic Silver, Maple Gold and Coral Blue .
The same goes for the now-understated rear camera design, and the S-A-M-S-U-N-G logo no longer adorning the top of the screen and staring back at you every single second you use your phone; the logo is now on the back, and everything is a lot cleaner that way.
Samsung has eliminated the ugly rear camera bump, and simply outlines the flat lens with a tiny lip. We’re in favor of this decision – a protective camera lip may save your camera if you do happen to drop it and crack the back glass. We’ve found out the hard way that the bump-free, unprotected Google Pixel XLwill spiderweb when just about any part of the back glass shatters, rendering your main camera useless.
If you're not paying attention, you'd easily miss one of the S8 line's biggest additions: a small button below the volume keys on the phones' left sides. This is what you'll use to invoke Bixby, Samsung's homebrew virtual assistant. The button doesn't do much yet — you'll eventually be able to long-press it to speak directly to Bixby, but for now, it just brings up a screen with upcoming appointments, news and such. Even worse, Samsung has blocked attempts to remap the Bixby key for other functions, which has only pissed off potential power users.
Just like the S7, the S8+ is IP68 rated for water-resistance and can be submerged in 1m of water for about 30 minutes. Unlike the S7, however, Samsung has ditched those hardware buttons and gone virtual. The home button even features a haptic response and can be accessed from anywhere by just pushing down on the lower portion of the display.
There's a USB-C port on the phones' bottoms, and next to that? The headphone jack. We've seen companies ditching this classic port, claiming that it took up too much space. The S8 and S8 Plus are perfect repudiations of that line of thinking. Oh, and they don't get in the way of waterproofing, either. Both devices are IP68 dust and water-resistant, which meant they could lounge for up to 30 minutes in the ridiculous wine bath we poured.
The stuff inside the S8 and S8 Plus isn't exactly a surprise. Both US models pack Qualcomm's new octa-core Snapdragon 835 chipsets, along with 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM and Adreno 540 GPUs. That horsepower is paired with 64GB of internal storage, and you can add up to 256GB of additional space with a microSD card. In addition to the usual array of LTE and Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac radios, the S8 and S8 Plus also pack support for Bluetooth 5.0, an updated version of the standard that promises faster data speeds and longer range.
What’s ancient is the single speaker at the bottom, and we’re disappointed to see it. It’s easy to accidentally cover up the grille when watching YouTube videos in landscape mode, and really, when Apple is beating you to something with the iPhone 7, you know there’s a problem.
Samsung Galaxy S8+ Display
Seriously, the Super AMOLED panels here are indeed awesome. Color reproduction on both is excellent and, as always, there are different screen modes in case your tastes are more specific. The screens get bright enough to combat the warm spring sun and viewing angles are excellent, too.
There’s no Edge variation this year, and that’s because both the S8 and S8+ sport those eye-catching curved sides. They’re not as steep as before, though, and as such are more of a design trait than a practical feature. If you were put off by the edges on the S7 Edge, don’t let that sway you here.
Samsung has also further optimised its software to do a better job at rejecting accidental touches along those edge portions of the handset, something that was needed.
Its new 18.5:9 aspect ratio elongates the screen’s dimensions to give you more viewing space; you can train your eyes on two to three Facebook stories at a time in your newsfeed, instead of having to continuously scroll just to read portions of one.
It’s all thanks to the impressive 88% screen-to-body ratio of Samsung’s ‘Infinity Screen’. The Galaxy S7 Edge had what we thought was a good 76% ratio, while the iPhone 7 Plus sits at about a 68% screen-body ratio.
Reading is certainly easier, and split-screen multitasking feels less cramped, but because it deviates from the traditional 16:9 aspect ratio, the phone throws up black bars when playing video content. This didn’t bother us as much as we thought it would, and it’s partly because every S8 color option has a black front face. It blends really well.
As with any AMOLED panel, the best attribute is the colour reproduction. It will display the deepest black and brighter shades such as red and green are gloriously vivid without being oversaturated. Like the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, the Galaxy S8 can display the entire DCI-P3 cinema-grade colour gamut – and, in certain cases, it will go beyond 1000-nits of brightness.
Interestingly, out of the box the phone defaults to 1080p rather than 1440p. I assume this is to save battery, but it looks good nonetheless. Although, if you’re happy spending £700+ on a phone then I’m going to assume that you’ll want to get the most out of it. You can hop into Settings to up that resolution.
The screen is a joy to use outdoors as a result of that impressive brightness, and even though the curved edges do reflect the sun a little more than would be the case with a flat screen, it certainly isn’t something we notice regularly.
Samsung Galaxy S8+ OS
For the first time, Samsung really impresses with its software. The Galaxy S7 improved a lot of things over the poor TouchWiz experience on the S6, but the new ‘Galaxy Experience’ on the S8 feels like the most cohesive and functional Android layer yet.
The Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus both ship with Android 7.0 Nougat, but you'd be hard-pressed to tell at a glance. Samsung has once again painted over Google's work. Though, TouchWiz has finally grown up. A lot. Look at the S7's interface: It's full of garish icons and brightly colored circles. The S8's, in contrast, is subtle and thoughtful in its design choices.
Samsung is known for packing as many features as possible into its versions of Android, and while this is still the case here, most are off by default and hidden away. So unless you have a particular need to scroll through web pages with your eyeballs, you won’t be bugged to every few minutes.
The virtual navigation keys also allow me to fix one of my biggest pet peeves. Samsung devices typically have their recent apps key on the left side and the back key on the right basically every other Android phone has it the other way around. Fortunately, you can swap the order they appear. You can also now swipe down on the rear-mounted fingerprint sensor to open the notifications shade, a neat trick we first saw on Google's Pixels.
The majority of Android 7’s basic feature are present, too, like the Google Assistant and native split-screen multi-tasking, which is welcome on such a big screen. Although Samsung has canned any support for Daydream VR, probably because of its own competing Gear VR.
The majority of Android 7’s basic feature are present, too, like the Google Assistant and native split-screen multi-tasking, which is welcome on such a big screen. Although Samsung has canned any support for Daydream VR, probably because of its own competing Gear VR.
Also returning from the Note 7 is a Game Launcher app and the device optimizer in settings, which lets you quickly close down background apps and delete unneeded files. My personal favorite feature is the Secure Folder, which allows you to hide files and install separate instances of apps away from the rest of your stuff. For example: Photos taken from the camera app within the Secure Folder can only be viewed when you've successfully unlocked the folder.
Not all the new software additions hit the mark, though, and on occasion it feels like Samsung is trying too hard. Bixby, a sort of Siri and Google Assistant rival, was announced to lofty claims of allowing you to control every part of the phone with your voice. But at launch it can’t do that; you can’t talk to it at all. Instead, it’s just a basic home screen page that isn’t as useful as Google Now. There are cards from apps (it always pesters me to ring my Mum), some weather updates, and a boat-load of adverts for Samsung themes and wallpapers.
There are some Bixby elements in the camera, too, but again they feel unfinished. Like Google Goggles, you can point the camera at landmarks and it will throw up some similar pictures, plus there’s basic product scanning too. It’s rubbish, though – and, bizarrely, uses Pinterest from which to search.
The other big addition is DeX, a combo of software and hardware that turns the Galaxy S8+ into something comparable to a basic desktop PC. You’ll need to buy a DeX dock to get started – plus a second power cable if you don’t want to use the one included with a phone, HDMI cable, keyboard and mouse – but once that’s set up, it’s all pretty straightforward.
Dock the phone in the cradle, turn on your monitor and the device transforms into pseudo-Android-Windows 10 mashup. There’s a desktop, you can resize apps, and in general it works well. Some apps don’t work at all – Spotify, being the biggest – and I’m not really sure who would use it for more than a few minutes. However, it’s an interesting look to the future nonetheless. I’ve found that after being unplugged from DeX, the Galaxy S8+ is noticeably slower until a complete restart is performed.
Even though Bixby is a dud and DeX is limited, neither of these really take anything away from the phone. The software experience on the whole is impressive, and it’s really Samsung’s best attempt yet.
There are a couple of other new software additions that help avoid any issues with the new aspect ratio. Most Android apps can natively rescale to fit the dimensions, but you can also manually stretch apps to fit that huge 6.2-inch display. If you’re watching a YouTube video – the majority of which are shot in 16:9 – a tiny icon pops to crop in, removing the black bars at either end. As with anything cropped, you’re likely to lose certain details – and it’s a real pain for subtitles – but it’s nice to really fill up that screen.
Samsung has been messing about with different methods of unlocking phones for a while now, but they finally all come together in the Galaxy S8+. As already mentioned in the Design section, the fingerprint sensor – which is placed frustratingly next to the camera – is difficult to use.
It’s a good job then that, on the whole, the other biometric unlocking methods are a success. From the three ways to unlock the Galaxy S8, the face recognition has become my go-to option. It isn’t as secure as the iris scanner or the fingerprint sensor, but it’s faster and reliable once your mug has been properly scanned. The iris scanner is implemented more effectively here than on the Note 7, and it works better in low light than the face recognition. However, it’s slower and more fiddly.
Samsung Galaxy S8+ Performance
The Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus is the fastest and most powerful phone we’ve ever tested. It doesn’t have 6GB of RAM outside of China, but it doesn’t really need it.
It’s these smaller 10nm chipsets that make this phone more powerful, and they also draw less energy than last year’s 14nm chips. Samsung’s Exynos chips are always a little more powerful, but Qualcomm’s have the US-essential CDMA capabilities to work with Verizon and Sprint.
Our Geekbench benchmarking gave the Exynos chipset a 6,630 multi-core score, while the Qualcomm chipset averaged a 6,000 multi-core score. More importantly, we experienced no slowdown other than gradually appearing Bixby animations – that’s not actual slowdown.
Samsung Galaxy S8+ Camera
The S8 and S8 Plus also double as solid video cameras. They capture quality footage at up to 4K with great colors and minimal jittering. I just wish Samsung offered more flexibility there's a record button, and that's about it.
Samsung also spent time cleaning up the camera interface, which was already pretty elegant. You switch between the front and rear cameras with a swipe up or down, and the list of usual photo modes food, selective focus, slow motion and "pro" is smaller and more streamlined. This time, though, swiping right opens up a list of Instagram-friendly color options to give your photos a little more character.
And speaking of character, Samsung took a page from Snapchat's playbook and added face-tracking filters that are bizarre and fascinating. They range from the cutesy (kawaii cats and rabbits eating carrots) to stranger fare, like a cowboy filter that fires a pistol when you blink. The S8 and S8 Plus come with 31 of these filters, and if nothing else, they're perfect for amusing toddlers who are otherwise busy getting loaded on Easter candy.
Samsung Galaxy S8+ Battery
The 3500mAh cell inside the Galaxy S8+ is a nice upgrade over the 3000mAh cell in the regular S8, but considering it has that much bigger 6.2-inch display, you’ll still be reaching for that charger every night.
You might be able to stretch it beyond that, though, especially since Samsung offers many different ways of tuning the phone to your requirements. If you want to eke out more juice, you can reduce the resolution (it’s set to 1080p by default) or the performance. There are some beefy power-saving modes on offer as well and they make a real difference if you can live with the sacrifices.
You might be able to stretch it beyond that, though, especially since Samsung offers many different ways of tuning the phone to your requirements. If you want to eke out more juice, you can reduce the resolution (it’s set to 1080p by default) or the performance. There are some beefy power-saving modes on offer as well and they make a real difference if you can live with the sacrifices.
The Galaxy S8 Plus retains perks like fast charging and wireless charging. Its easier-to-plug-in USB-C port means wireless charging is now a minor convenience, but still one we like seeing.
The smaller S8 routinely lasts between a day and a half and two days of consistent use. The S8 Plus's bigger battery gets me closer to two full days of use on a single charge. That's with the screen set to its maximum resolution, too — expect even better battery life if you dial the displays down to Full HD+ or lower.
They stood well in our standard video rundown test, where we loop an HD video at 50 percent screen brightness while the phones are connected to Wi-Fi. The S8 and its 3,000mAh battery stuck around for 13 hours and 27 minutes — just a hair better than the S7 and the Google Pixel and well ahead of the bigger 3,300mAh battery in the G6. The clear winner, though, is the S8 Plus and its 3,500mAh battery. It clocked in at 15 hours and 8 minutes, longer than the Pixel XL, Note 7 and Moto Z Force.
Considering the Galaxy Note 7 burst into flames due to issues with batteries, I don’t think it’s much of a surprise that Samsung has been somewhat unambitious when it comes to the cells here. This is a phone with a sizeable screen and I haven’t yet been able to fully kill it in a day of moderate use which feels like a win to me.
Should You buy the Samsung Galaxy S8+?
You have to really want a phone with a screen that’s the biggest size and best quality to sink this kind of money into the Galaxy S8 Plus. It doesn’t hurt that it also has other accolades attached to it, like the best camera and newest chipset.
We truly believe the S8+ and the S8 are the best Android phones out there. The screen is amazing, camera stunning and ergonomics unmatched. We also appreciate all the little extras that others often leave off: water-resistance, wireless charging, 64GB base storage and microSD, to name but a few.
The year is still young and we'll certainly see strong responses from Google and Apple. But for now, if you're looking for a new smartphone, the S8s should be at or very close to the top of your list.
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