- What is going on, tech squad?
Andru Edwards here, Editor-In-Chief of GearLive.com,
and today I wanted to talk to you
about the brand new Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus.
As you guys probably know, I live here in Seattle,
I flew over to New York City in order to attend
Samsung Unpacked 2017.
The Samsung Unpacked event is typically where Samsung
will unveil its new Galaxy S smartphone,
and this year was no different,
with the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus.
Now, Samsung did briefly address
the difficult year that they've had
with the Samsung Galaxy Note 7,
which obviously suffered from an exploding battery twice.
After release, recall, and then re-release,
causing that phone to be recalled again,
twice, in a short period of time.
But, after going over that,
along with talking about their new eight-point process
for making sure that their batteries are safe going forward,
they jumped in to revealing the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus,
with a heavy focus on what they call the Infinity Display.
Now, this Infinity Display is basically
an almost completely bezel-less display.
I think it's about 95% of the front glass is display.
You've got a very thin bezel at the bottom,
and a very thin bezel at the top,
and everything else is display,
and it looks fantastic.
So, I did get to play with the two new phones
after the event was over, pretty briefly,
maybe for about 30 minutes or so, I was able to go hands-on,
and based on that time, I have some very initial impressions
of the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus
that I thought I'd share with you right now.
The stuff that stuck out to me.
First and foremost, that display is pretty ridiculous,
in every good way imaginable.
Now, despite having access to pretty much every flagship
and mid-tier smartphone here in my home,
the phone that I grab when I'm leaving the house,
is my iPhone 7 Plus.
This one has a 5.5-inch display,
it's a nice display, I like IOS,
there's a bunch of apps on IOS
that aren't over on Android that I rely on,
and I do think it's a great phone.
It's a great device, powerful device,
not many complaints, except for the size of this thing.
The bezels are absolutely ridiculous, in my opinion.
But, the bezels on a lot of large smartphones
are pretty ridiculous, and so,
you can't really begrudge Apple for what they've done here.
Or, at least you couldn't up until maybe half a year ago.
Since then, we've been seeing phones,
on the Android side of things,
get smaller and smaller bezels,
but nothing compares to what Samsung did with the Galaxy S8.
Despite the displays being larger,
much larger, than what the iPhone offers,
both models, the S8 and the S8 Plus,
feel much smaller in your hand.
So, in case you're unaware that Samsung Galaxy S8,
the regular version, has a 5.8-inch display.
Again, this iPhone 7 Plus is a 5.5-inch display.
So the display on the Samsung device
is about three-tenths of an inch larger,
yet, it's much smaller than the iPhone 7 Plus.
It's about the size of the regular iPhone 7, in fact.
Now, that totally impressed me.
But, even more impressive, was the fact
that the Galaxy S8 Plus has a 6.2-inch display.
Now, mind you, that's the same display size
as the Nintendo Switch.
But, again, no bezels, curved edges.
That phone is just a tad smaller, once again,
than my 5.5-inch iPhone 7 Plus.
6.2 inches, 5.5 inches.
Samsung is definitely leading the way
in that display technology.
Another thing that stuck out to me about the display,
something I've always despised about Samsung devices,
there's no branding the front of it this time.
I'm totally fine if you want to put your branding
on the back of your phone.
Everybody does that, but Samsung has always put
their ugly Samsung logo on the front of devices as well.
A little pet peeve of mine.
With the S8, that's gone, because, frankly,
there's no room for it.
So, you've got an unbranded Infinity Display up front,
and mirror-like glass on the back.
It's a beautiful smartphone.
Might be the best looking smartphone ever released.
So, you can definitely color me impressed.
Great job Samsung on that.
Next up was the biometric features.
The way that you could unlock the phone.
There's four different ways you can get into
the S8 and S8 Plus.
Of course you've got the pin or the pattern,
which pretty much everyone has.
And the other thing that pretty much everyone has nowadays
is the fingerprint sensor, although Samsung, in my opinion,
put that in the wrong place.
It's right next to the camera,
so when you're going for the fingerprint sensor,
more than likely you're going to be
rubbing up against the camera
and smudging up the camera glass a bunch.
So, if you get the phone
and you want to use the fingerprint sensor,
just be sure to wipe down your camera
whenever you plan on taking photos,
because that's going to be pretty annoying.
But, in my opinion, it's much better
if you just skip the fingerprint sensor entirely.
Samsung brought the Galaxy Note 7's iris scanner
over to the S8, which means that the phone
will take an iris print, basically an eye print,
and use that to authenticate you.
It takes maybe half a second to do, but it's very fast.
But, if it's not fast enough you still,
there's a fourth way that you can get into
the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus,
and that's with the new facial recognition feature.
It uses the front camera along with the iris scanner
to quickly scan your face and let you into your phone,
and it is blazing fast.
So, you basically hold the phone up and turn it on,
and you'll see the lock screen for maybe half a second,
and then you're in at your home screen.
It's almost as fast as Touch ID on the iPhone, in fact.
Super fast, super convenient,
and you don't have to mess with
that weird fingerprint sensor on the back.
Now, I mentioned the camera a moment ago,
one thing you should know is that the camera
is actually a holdover from the Galaxy S7
released last year, and the Galaxy Note 7.
The rear camera on the S8 is the same
as the S7 and Note 7, no change there.
However, it's been praised as being
one of the best smartphone cameras out there,
so, in that sense, you can't really call it a bad camera,
there's just no major improvements upon it.
But, the front camera does see an improvement.
They've added more megapixels,
and they've also added autofocus.
So, usually, when you're trying to take a selfie,
you have your camera out,
and if you want to focus on something
you have to reach out and tap on it,
and it just takes up extra time, and it's wobbly.
So, now, with the Galaxy S8, you just hold it out,
autofocus takes care of the rest,
and you can snap your photo.
It actually works very well.
Then, there was Bixby.
Bixby is Samsung's virtual assistant.
In the same vein as Alexa or Siri or the Google Assistant.
Things like that.
Bixby is Samsung's own version of virtual assistants,
and they are going so hard into Bixby,
that they actually put a dedicated Bixby button
right on the side of the phone.
So, you've got your power button,
you've got your volume rocker,
and you've got a Bixby button right on the left hard side.
Push the Bixby button and that allows you
to get to information that Samsung thinks you'll need.
Ask for information, ask for directions,
and they're even taking it a step further
by saying Bixby should be able to do everything
that you can do by tapping and swiping on your device.
So, one example they gave
was opening up a photo using Bixby,
and then telling Bixby to rotate the photo
into the proper orientation.
Now, I don't know why you couldn't just reach down
to your phone and swipe and pinch it
in order to rotate the photo,
but that was the example they gave.
It's one thing to show
that you don't have to actually do anything,
you can just talk to the phone,
"Bixby open this photo, rotate the photo 90 degrees,"
and you're good.
So, aside from searching through photo galleries,
you can also set reminders,
cast your phone screen to your Wi-Fi connected TV,
and you can also identify physical objects,
and this was actually one of the coolest parts
of the entire demo of the S8 and the S8 Plus.
They opened up the camera app on the phone,
and went into Bixby from there,
and pointed the camera at the Flatiron Building.
It's a New York landmark
that pretty much everyone over there knows.
On the display, it recognized the Flatiron Building,
it identified the Flatiron Building,
and from there it could easily give you walking directions
on how to get to that building.
It could tell you restaurants
that were around that building,
all just by you opening up the camera app, hitting Bixby,
and just pointing the camera at whatever you're looking at.
The more landmarks they get in there,
and the more object recognition they get in there,
the better Bixby is gonna be.
In a demo afterwards,
I actually pointed the Galaxy S8 camera at my DSLR.
Bixby recognized the DSLR, I tapped on shopping,
and it pulled up shopping search results
that would allow me to buy the same camera that I'm using,
just by pointing Bixby at it.
So, Bixby's gonna be a big deal, and quite honestly,
other phone assistants, whether it's Siri,
whether it's Alexa, and the Google Assistant
are gonna have to step it up,
because that is actually really cool.
That's bringing AR and mixed reality to the Galaxy S8.
The last big one I wanted to talk about was DeX.
Now, if you recall, you may not,
because Windows Phone really wasn't a big deal
to anyone who didn't work at Microsoft.
But, the latest Windows Phones,
the last ones that were released
actually enabled you to plug them in and dock them,
and then have their display show up on a larger monitor,
and you could use it almost like a lightweight PC.
That's what DeX is for the Galaxy S8.
It takes the Android interface from the phone,
and turns it into an interface optimized for a monitor.
So, you can dock your Galaxy S8 or S8 Plus,
and use it like a computer terminal.
You can open up your mail reader,
you can send emails, you can attach documents,
you can browse through your file system,
search the web, edit documents, et cetera.
It's very cool, very convenient.
If you just do light web surfing
and document editing and email checking,
it'll probably do you just fine.
DeX is short for Desktop Experience,
and it is actually an accessory.
It almost looks like a little plastic bowl
with a USB-C port sitting in it.
And, by the way, the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus
do now support USB-C.
Now, DeX isn't something that I see myself using
all that much, if ever.
I don't see why I'd want to use my smartphone
as a lightweight laptop.
I have a laptop, so I'm good there.
But, it is something unique that other people
may find intriguing, and I'll never fault a company
for trying to think outside the box
and provide cool and unique experiences,
even if it's not something that I think I'd ever use.
The Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus will release
on April 21st, they are already up for pre-order
on Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint,
and probably some of the smaller carriers as well.
Pricing starts at $750 for the Galaxy S8,
and $850 for the Galaxy S8 Plus.
I'm expecting these devices to be in here
within the next week, and I can start giving you
even better content and even more first looks.
The time I got to spend with it yesterday
was pretty limited,
and it was pretty crowded, and it was pretty loud as well,
so I'm excited to get them in
and give you a much better up-close look at these devices,
but for now, those are my first impressions
of the brand new Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus.
But, I'd love to know what you think as well.
What did you think about my thoughts,
what thoughts do you have about the devices?
Feel free to drop a comment below, and let me know,
and I'll meet you down there for further discussion.
You also get more thoughts by checking out
the Geared Up episode that went up earlier today.
I'll leave a link to that one down below,
we livestreamed the latest episode of Geared Up,
where we talked about the S8 versus the iPhone 7,
versus the LG G6, another great smartphone
that just recently came out.
And, by the way, don't forget to subscribe to Geared Up.
If you want to listen to it in podcast form,
I'll leave a link down in the description below
to the podcast as well.
Thank you so much for watching guys,
be sure to click or tap on my face
when you see it appear here down at the bottom of the video,
that will allow you to subscribe for free,
in order to find out when new videos are released,
right here on the channel.
And, if you want to be one of the first to know
when a video comes out,
be sure to click or tap on the bell icon.
That will give you a notification as soon as videos go live.
Again, thank you so much for watching, guys.
I'm Andru Edwards, I'll catch you in the next video.