Samsung Galaxy S8 review for
THE GOOD
The best looking phone around crushes it in performance.battery life. water resistance and wireless charging. An external storage slot lets you keep more photos, videos and musicTHE BAD
Its awkwardly placed fingerprint reader leads to camera smears and longer unlock times, which is aggravating when you use it to unlock your phone dozens of times a dayTHE BOTTON LINE
The Samsung Galaxy S8's fast speeds and fantastic curved screen make it a top phone for 2017, but the annoying fingerprint reader could sour your experience
The Samsung Galaxy S8 is without a doubt the most beautiful, polished phone I've ever held. These words were true when I first reviewed it in April, and are still
All-new design
Not to be dramatic, but the Galaxy S8 really is a feast for the eyes. It adopts a new dimension -- 18.5:9 (that's almost 2:1 like the LG G6 ($534.99 at Amazon.com)) -- which means that it's tall and narrow. That makes it easier to use one-handed. Extremely slim bezels mean there's much more screen stuffed into the shape: 83 percent of the phone's face is all yours for tapping and viewing. The S8 is almost the exact same height as the G6, but those curved sides make the S8 feel narrower, slimmer and, in truth, much more vulnerable.
I was extremely nervous I'd drop it. It almost seems more like a museum piece than a tool I'm going to use every day. I've had a couple close calls so far, but it hasn't smashed to the ground yet. When it inevitably does, because butterfingers, I have a feeling those rounded edges will be easier to crack than a device with straight sides. I can't say for sure, but the bigger problem be the glass back.
Last year's G and my colleague Luke Lancaster in Sydney said his S8 slipped and slid out from under him, resulting in a bash. With the Galaxy S8's newer Gorilla Glass 5 topper, time will tell just how often this happens for others, too.
See what happened when we
There's no more physical home button, and honestly? I didn't miss it at all. The onscreen control you see on pretty much every other Android phone felt completely natural. In fact, going Home on the S8 was faster than going Home on a lightly used S7. By the way, you can swap the placement of the Back and Recents buttons if you want to.
The S8 is the first standard Galaxy S phone (as in, not an Edge or Edge Plus) to have curved sides and the Edge display. You can use it as a kind of speed dial for your frequent apps and contacts, news headlines and so on, which you can call up from any screen (and tweak the tab location so it's easy for you to grab). You can add a lot of panes in the settings, but I like it best when kept to two -- otherwise you waste time trying to find what you're looking for.
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