Living with a Samsung Galaxy S8+

For the past couple of months, I've been using two terrific Android phones—the LG G6 and the Samsung Galaxy S8+—as my primary smartphones. Both have been excellent performers, merely each has its strengths and weaknesses. In this post, I'll talk about using the S8+; concluding time, I looked at the LG G6.

The Samsung Galaxy S8+ is the peak-terminate Android device correct at present, with the fastest processor and the best display currently on the market. Information technology has a few quirks—notably the placement of the fingerprint reader on the back of the telephone—merely information technology's more often than not a great device to bear.

The first matter you notice about the Milky way S8+ is how sleek it is, especially for a phone with a vi.ii-inch display. Information technology has rounded edges everywhere, with a display that wraps around to the border of the phone (like terminal yr's Galaxy S7 border), and neither buttons nor logos on the front, only minor bezels on the meridian and the bottom. As a result, the brandish covers just about all of the front of the device (with room on top for the front-facing photographic camera, of course).

The S8+ measures half dozen.28-by-2.88-past-0.32 inches, and weighs six.ane ounces; as a result, it'due south a bit longer and heavier than the LG G6 (which has a 5.7-inch display) and the smaller simply like Galaxy S8 (which has a v.8-inch display), with the extra infinite accommodating a 6.2-inch brandish.

Like the G6 and the S8, the S8+ has a stretched display, in this case with an 18.5:9 ratio, significant you go a longer and bigger display in a phone that'south all the same about the width of a standard phone. It's just a tad chip longer than the Pixel XL, which has a 5.5-inch display, and it'southward smaller than any 6-inch phone I've carried. (The S8+ is about a quarter of an inch longer than concluding year's v.5-inch Galaxy S7 Edge, however, so it's not quite every bit pocketable. Most of the time, I didn't notice this difference to be much of an issue, but it is one of the tradeoffs of a longer display.)

The screen is gorgeous. I've come up to expect Samsung's OLED display to be the brightest and most vibrant in the industry, and the S8+ is no exception. The telephone actually defaults to a 2220-past-1080 resolution, but yous have the choice of running information technology at 2960-past-1440 pixels (530 ppi). In exercise, it was hard to tell the difference in well-nigh applications, and the extra resolution uses more battery. The biggest advantage of the higher resolution seems to be when you're using the device for VR; there it does seem to reduce—just not eliminate—the screen-door effect. Otherwise, I was happy with the slightly lower default resolution.

The most unusual thing about the Galaxy S8 line (and the before S7 edge) is how the brandish curves around the side of the phone with what Samsung has chosen an "Infinity Display." Y'all can apply the "edge" as a quick launch for often used applications, and I establish that this was pretty useful. In addition, you tin swipe again to get a "people edge," which is useful for sending quick messages to your most frequent contacts, or swipe a tertiary time to become a smart option tool that lets yous capture an prototype from the screen. Optionally, y'all can also set the edge screen to light up when you accept notifications, which I found neat but unnecessary. The screen besides defaults to an "always-on" way which displays notifications.

The U.South. versions of the Galaxy S8 line use a 2.35 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor with Adreno 520 graphics, which results in somewhat better performance compared to last yr's processor. The new 10nm processor should besides be more energy efficient. (International versions apply Samsung'south ain Exynos 8895, another 10nm chip which should accept like functioning, though with different networking.) In practise, the phone seemed quite fast, but I can't say I really noticed any major speed improvement in typical applications. The speed is more credible in gaming and VR. The device has 4GB of retention and 64GB of storage, with a microSD slot to add even more storage.

The S8+ has a single rear camera, which uses a 12-megapixel sensor with an f/one.7 aperture lens and optical prototype stabilization, which is a footling surprising given how many of the other flagship phones at present feature a dual camera configuration. (The Apple tree iPhone seven Plus uses its second camera for amend portrait shots, and the G6 has a broad-bending lens that is improve for capturing landscapes).

The camera did work quite well, and in general, it seemed to do amend in low-light than last year's model. Indeed, it seemed a bit faster than other Android phones I've used, resulting in less blur in some move shots. Almost of the pictures looked quite good, though in some lighting weather a few pictures seemed a bit blown out compared with the G6. Overall, though, I was impressed.

The S8+ can also take video at upwardly to 4K resolution, though information technology defaults to 1080p with video stabilization. It has numerous camera options, including saving both RAW and JPEG automatically; motion photos (which take a brusque video clip of what happens before each photo is taken), and voice control. The S8+ has an 8-megapixel front-facing camera that took good broad-angle shots, once more with many options, and these photos looked good likewise.

The phone runs Android 7.0 Nougat, along with Samsung'southward additions (formerly called TouchWiz, though that proper noun has been retired). In the T-Mobile version of the phone I used, there were a number of specific applications and offers, but most didn't make it the manner of running the standard applications. In general, Samsung now offers fewer apps that duplicate functions from standard Android, but there are a few exceptions, some of which work quite well, some of which still have a ways to go.

The most obvious addition to the S8+ is Bixby, Samsung'southward own assistant. Bixby is nonetheless a work in progress, with voice control in the U.S. (Bixby Voice) simply in a limited preview. Right now, if you press the special Bixby button on the left side of the screen, information technology volition bring up a set of cards showing your schedule, mail, weather condition, news, etc. This is prissy, but Google'due south ain tools can do that too. The S8+ does offer Bixby Vision, which lets yous have a picture and have the assistant detect similar things online—typically similar images or shopping data—and this is kind of cool, but I didn't find I used it very much. I'll exist very curious to encounter how Bixby develops every bit more features ringlet out.

Ane feature that seems duplicative but is actually quite useful is Samsung Pay. Like Android Pay (or Apple Pay, or simply well-nigh any other electronic wallet for that matter), you put the information from a credit card into the device, and you tin then apply the phone to make purchases. As in the other systems, you can do this via NFC past placing the device side by side to a supported card reader. But Samsung Pay goes further, working via magnetic secure manual to emit a signal that works with the magnetic stripe readers found in older credit card readers. Every bit a result, Samsung Pay works in more locations.

Samsung offers a diversity of additional accessories, including the Gear 360 camera and Gear VR headsets, which work very well. I plant the DeX docking station, which lets you drop your phone onto a dock connected to a monitor and full-size keyboard so yous tin can use the phone like a desktop, to work surprisingly well. I promise to cover these in more detail later.

The S8+ has a 3500mAh battery, and in full general, I saw somewhat better battery life with the S8+ than with the G6, though much of that is due to the larger battery. Annotation that battery life is notably shorter when using the higher resolution screen setting, where the phone got shut to running out of power at the end of the twenty-four hours. On the normal setting, I had better results, but I still establish I wanted to accuse the device every night, which is pretty much what I'm seeing with every Android phone.

Similar virtually electric current phones, the S8+ supports USB-C, with fast charging. Information technology also offers a wireless charging option, where you place the phone on a charging pad, using the Qi or PMA standards.

Information technology'south ane of the first phones to support Gigabit LTE, and while that isn't available where I've been testing, I ordinarily had very strong, fast connections with the S8+.

To me, the biggest problem with the S8+ is the placement of the fingerprint sensor. It's on the back of the phone next to the camera, only because both are flush to the dorsum, it's difficult to tell them apart past feel, and I've often smudged the photographic camera as a result. You practise have multiple options for unlocking the S8+ aside from the fingerprint reader, including face recognition and iris detection, however. Face up recognition isn't considered as secure as the others, and in practice, I institute it frequently took a while for it to work. Iris recognition is much more secure, but bad-mannered to utilise. The fingerprint sensor was typically the easiest choice, but I didn't find information technology as reliable or fast as the sensor on final year's S7. Again, I similar having these options, merely it still seems like an area that could use some improvement. In practise, it seemed to take a flake longer to unlock the S8+ compared with competing phones.

Modest quibbles aside, the Galaxy S8+ is the well-nigh capable Android phone on the market, with the fastest processor and best display, a terrific photographic camera, and a dandy payments system. Other than the size, it's pretty much identical to the regular S8. Just dissimilar another PCMag.com writers, I similar phones with big displays, and it's astonishing to see a half dozen.2-inch display in a phone this easy to hold.

Here's PCMag's full review.

Michael J. Miller is principal information officer at Ziff Brothers Investments, a private investment house. Miller, who was editor-in-chief of PC Magazine from 1991 to 2005, authors this web log for PCMag.com to share his thoughts on PC-related products. No investment advice is offered in this web log. All duties are disclaimed. Miller works separately for a private investment firm which may at whatever fourth dimension invest in companies whose products are discussed in this web log, and no disclosure of securities transactions will be made.