Hey guys, this is Austin!
and today I am here in New York City
for the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S8.
The first thing that jumps out to me
is the display
So, samsung already had a curved edge
on the S6 as well as the S7
But here with the S8 they have really paired down the top and bottom of the bezels.
On the bottom instead of having standard physical keys with a fingerprint censor instead you now have android softkeys.
Now, that is not exactly anything new
most Android phones have already been doing this for quite a while,
but what is kind of interesting is that the home button actually has some tactic feedback
so, when you press it you actually feel the phone vibrate
a little bit like force touch
Up top everything has been crammed into
the tiny bezels
so not only do you have an upgraded front facing camera
but you also have
all of the sensors up here
including the new iris scanner
now, this is originally launched with the Galaxy Note 7 and
we all know how well that went
but it is a nice additional feature to be able to use not only iris scanning, but as well as facial recognition to be able to unlock your phone.
It's not going to be as secure as something like a password or fingerprint, but it is an option.
With the smaller bezels though, comes a very weirdly shaped screen
So the resolution is 2960 by 1440, and what that means is the screen is very very tall.
Much more so than a traditional smartphone
So in most apps it's not a big deal.
For example, when you're watching a Youtube video.
All you'll see is just a few black bars on the left and right
But I think some apps are still going to need to be updated to support this sort of weird screen resolution
And we've seen the same issue with the LG G6
But when you're holding it in the hand it does give you extra screen real estate
The screens are the big difference between the S8 and the S8+
So the standard model has a 5.8 inch display where the plus bumps that up to 6.2
Now these are huge displays but because they have such small bezels the phones themselves are not that bad
So for example while the S8 is a little bit bigger than
Something like an iPhone 7 the plus
is almost the exact same size as the iPhone 7 plus
It's a little bit taller, not quite so wide
Considering you're getting a much larger display, it actually looks pretty good
The screens themselves look great and you have some cool features like HDR support
but the real star of the show here is absolutely how big of a screen they were able to fit in such a small phone
Take a look around the rest of the Galaxy S8 and you'll see it kind of looks a lot like the S7
So one of the big changes is that the fingerprint sensor has been moved to the back of the phone
Now this is not exactly a bad idea
I especially like phones like the Pixel which put it right in the middle
but because the S8 put it right beside the camera, it's a little bit awkward to get to
It's not exactly a big deal
but expect a lot of fingerprints on your camera
Speaking of cameras, the Galaxy S8 has the exact same one from the S7
Now it's not a huge disappointment, as the S7 had one of the best cameras when it came out last year
But that was last year, and this year there are phones like the iPhone and Pixel which absolutely compete with it
To be fair, Samsung does have some interesting things going on with software this year
So, for example, it's constantly taking multiple shots and sort of merging them to create a better shot like the Pixel does
But the fact remains that this is not going to be a huge camera upgrade
And we just got kicked out because we were filming past when the event was over
But no big deal because there is more to talk about with the Galaxy S8
One of the big announcements was Bixby
Now this is a virtual assistant, very similar to something like Siri or Cortana or especially Google Assistant
What it'll do is the standard voice stuff for searching
It has a list of cards for all the different activities you have throughout the day
What's a little bit more interesting is that it has a dedicated Bixby button
which will pull up all of that stuff, but you can also use the camera to scan things
Of course, like the infamous, hugely popular Amazon Fire Phone
you can use this to scan products and buy them in real-time
Because, you know, that worked out really well last time
Also, I'm kind of salty that they kicked us out
Something a little bit more interesting is Dex
Now this is similar to the Windows Phone Continuum feature
in that if you drop the Galaxy S8 on a dock and connect a mouse, keyboard and monitor
it turns into a computer
Sort of
This is essentially running Android apps in a windowed desktop
So you can think of it as sort of a weird hybrid I guess
I mean sure, it's going to be nice to edit a PowerPoint on a display with a mouse and keyboard versus on your phone
but I'm curious to see how many apps are actually really going to take advantage of a bigger screen or actually going to be useful there
Powering the Galaxy S8 is either a Snapdragon 835 or Samsung Exynos Octacore Processor
Now, what's interesting about these is that they're both based on the brand new tandanameter process
Samsung loved talking about this on stage
Essentially what it means is that the chips are going to be smaller
and either provide more performance, which they do by like 10 to 20 percent
but more importantly they are going to help save battery and that's important
After the disaster that was the Note7
with it's exploding batteries
Samsung definitely was a little bit concerned in this year
So the S8 has a 3,000mAh battery and the Plus has a 3,500
Now that's about what you would find on the S7 but the difference is that the new phones have much larger displays
So yes, that processor should be more power efficient, but those displays are definitely going to suck up a lot of juice
So we'll see how battery life actually stacks off
Thankfully we have a lot of the good features from the Galaxy S7
So there is still water resistance with iP68 certification
So if you want to go swimming with your Galaxy S8, you can
It also still has both a USB-C as well as a headphone jack
which is awesome because you know
why wouldn't you not have that on a smartphone in 2017
The Galaxy S8 will be available for preorder starting tomorrow and will be on sale on April 21st in the U.S.
So I'm curious, what do you guys think about the Galaxy S8
For me, I think it would be nice if it had a better camera and some less gimmicky features
but that design really does go a long way
and then be sure to let me what you guys think in the comments below
Anyway guys, thank you so much for watching and I'll catch you in the next one