The combination of what materials for the case of the samsung galaxy s8. Samsung Galaxy S8 review: the main flagship on Android. Samsung Galaxy S8 camera review

The best big The Android smartphone you can buy.

Verdict

Large screen, acceptable phone size;
The best mobile camera on the market;
Smooth software and smooth performance;

The most expensive phone on the market;
Strange position of the fingerprint scanner;
Hello Bixby! Bixby? Hey?!

The Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus is "the next big thing", Samsung's favorite slogan in a very literal sense. Its screen dimensions might seem ridiculous to some users, along with advanced features and an equally oversized price tag.

Ask how big a smartphone is? You're looking at the 6.2-inch display, which makes it the best Android smartphone among big handsets without a doubt - if you can handle its size. The "smaller" 5.8-inch will work for you if you can't.

Remarkably, the elegantly curved screen has been dramatically extended by half an inch, from the 5.7-inch diagonal of last year's Galaxy S7 Edge to the 6.2-inch screen of the S8 Plus, almost without changing the physical size. The screen has become slightly taller, thanks to the removal of an unnecessary panel and the physical "Home" button, the familiar oval shape.

Your big new phone taunts those drops of water!

Plus, having the new Android means you'll want to use the most advanced VR-ready smartphone available. Not to mention the best camera and best display on the market.

This is a glimpse into the future, and ironically in Samsung versus Apple, the iPhone 8 has to wait almost six months from now. As a result, in 2017 Samsung continues to be a trendsetter in the smartphone market.

Obviously, the Galaxy S8 Plus isn't the perfect smartphone for everyone, and there are several reasons for that, besides being too big for people with small hands. The lack of a physical home button will become unacceptable for some Samsung fans and their muscle memory.

Our reaction to trying to find a fingerprint scanner.

Ironically, for such a futuristic smartphone, the fingerprint scanner on the back of the S8 Plus is stuck in the past. Accessing it outside the center of the smartphone is impractical and new function Samsung's face recognition doesn't work very well. At the same time, the well-publicized voice assistant Bixby is not a practical solution at this stage.

In addition to investing a lot of money in the Galaxy S8 Plus, you also have to invest a little trust after the fires. Galaxy Note 7 due to battery failure. Samsung's big flagship requires a leap of faith from you.

SamsungGalaxyS8Plus: Price and release date

SamsungGalaxyS8Plus by installments - 2500 rubles per month;
PriceSamsung Galaxy S8 Plus - 60,000 rubles;
Sales startSamsungGalaxyS8Plus in Russia - April 28;
Pre-order bonuses and early delivery;

You won't find any discounts or great deals on the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus at launch, as it's an incredibly expensive phone for its specs and features. You can find some pre-order bonuses, though.

In Russia, Svyaznoy offers an installment plan without overpayments for 24 months, at a cost of 2500 rubles per month. The pre-order is already open, and the retail sale of the smartphone will appear on April 28 in Russia and throughout Europe.

Our readers in the US will have to wait until May 9 for retail sales of unlocked Galaxy S8 Plus smartphones for $ 824.99. Best Buy and other retailers are pledging to launch on May 9th. Previously, the smartphone was only available by pre-order.

Design

« DisplayInfinity "maximizes the area of a virtually decorative screen;
Its dimensions remain reasonable for a large smartphone;
Water and dust resistant ratedIP68;

The design of the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus is exactly what we've wanted for years - almost. We asked big screen but on a phone that remains small enough for simple hand manipulation.

Its 6.2-inch display doesn't add much to the physical dimensions of the phone.

Samsung has come to this balance with a bezel and a bezel cut on the front. The company is making the left and right edges of the screen even smaller with a gently curved screen, but now Samsung is practically obliterating the top and bottom bezels.

This is a very neat trick. You get an entire smartphone screen - or what Samsung calls "Display Infinity" - thereby getting more screen real estate without noticeably increasing the size of the device.

It measures 159.5 x 73.4 x 8.1mm and weighs 173 grams. That's more than the Galaxy S7 Edge and even the Note 7, but not much. For example, the iPhone 7 Plus, with its smaller 5.5-inch screen, is just a millimeter shorter and actually wider and heavier than the S8 Plus.

In fact, the smartphone is about the same size asS7Edge (medium) andiPhone 7Plus (right).

Getting to the top corners of the screen requires two hands or skillful one-handed juggling with a $ 60,000 phone. Switching to smartphone won't show up ordinary users 4.7-inch or 5.1-inch devices.

The entire design of the Galaxy S8 Plus seems to be meant to highlight the star of the show, the 6.2-inch screen. The smartphone comes in muted Midnight Black, Orchid Gray, and Arctic Silver colors. There are also Maple Gold and Coral Blue, but they won't be available everywhere.

The same goes for the sophisticated design of the main camera and the SAMSUNG logo that adorns the top of the screen and looks at you every second that you are not using your smartphone. The logo is now on the back, which makes the whole design a little cleaner.

Samsung has gotten rid of the ugly rear camera bump by including a flat lens with a tiny lip for protection. We approve of this solution - the protective lip of the camera can save the optics if you drop your smartphone. We have already seen what happens with unprotected lenses, the camera Google pixel XL, for example, is easily covered with cobweb, it is worth chipping a piece of glass on the back, which makes the main camera of the smartphone useless.

Again you are protected from the manifestations of weather conditions. The Samsung smartphone offers an IP68 rating for water and dust resistance. It can survive a submersion of 1.5 meters under water for a period of 30 minutes. You can probably drown it deeper, but we don't recommend trying your luck and guarantee.

The bottom edge of the phone offers something new, something old and something ancient: Samsung is finally moving to fully reversible USB-C for charging and data transfer, replacing the irreversible MicroUSB port. Now you can connect your smartphone to charging even in the dark.

Samsung continues to use the old-fashioned 3.5mm headphone jack, debunking early rumors that new smartphone ditch it in favor of USB-C audio. The company also includes high-end AKG branded headphones for the best sounding flagship.

The mono speaker at the bottom is becoming antiquity, and we are disappointed with this decision. You can easily accidentally cover the speaker grill while watching YouTube videos in landscape orientation. In fact, when Apple offers iPhone 7 sound, the problem becomes apparent.

About painful: Fingerprint scanner

The fingerprint scanner is awkwardly located at the back;
A scanner next to the camera lens that you will get dirty;
Face recognition is inaccurate, the iris scanner is not so bad;

The biggest change for old Samsung users is the Home button. Gone is the oval-shaped physical button, along with the Recents and Back buttons, which were capacitive. Samsung has finally switched to on-screen keys, including the pressure-sensitive home button.

Of course, the buttons on the screen are of great importance not only for users of Samsung smartphones. They have been used by LG, Google and Motorola over the years, to name a few. On the other hand, you can now swap the Back and Recents buttons if you like. You will get used to the fact that they disappear and appear while watching a movie that takes up the entire screen.

However, Samsung fans - and everyone else, in fact - stumbled upon the oddly located fingerprint scanner. It's now on the back of the smartphone, and off-center as you might think, it's located on the side of the camera lens. It is difficult to get to the scanner, often you will poke your finger into the camera lens instead of the sensor. Instead of the scanner, the prints will remain on the lens, and you will be surprised: "Why is my photos so blurry?"

The biggest mistake Samsung has made is positioning the scanner to the right of the camera lens, meaning that most right-handers who hold their smartphone in their non-dominant left hand (to perform other actions, such as opening a door, for example) will have problems unlocking the smartphone.

Samsung doesn't seem to be short on other ways to unlock your phone: passwords, PINs, patterns, an iris scanner, and face recognition. Sounds promising, doesn't it?

Face recognition is turned on by default, you will see it on the initial setup screen, and while the technology can work, it does not recognize a face half the time, requiring you to use a fallback authorization scheme. Half attempts and fail, an incredibly problematic metric. Don't worry about your smartphone being hacked, even you won't be able to access it.

Don't worry about someone hacking into your phone - even you have a hard time getting access to it.

We found that the iris scanner is borrowed from the Note 7, but is more accurate and may someday replace the traditional fingerprint scanner. It does not work with glasses, you will also have to raise the smartphone to the same level with your eyes, you will also have to manually switch to this unlocking method. Scanning is fast enough, the function works in the dark, there are funny animated masks that appear on the preview screen (you see how your smartphone sees you, recognizing your eyes).

And all of this becomes a problem when even incredibly cheap Android smartphones debut with fingerprint sensors that work correctly about 100% of the time. There is no simple explanation for the hard-to-reach fingerprint scanner, but the advertised Samsung method. FaceUnlock doesn't even work in the dark.

The situation is likely to improve with or. The company is reportedly close to embedding a fingerprint scanner in the bezel instead of the Home button, but backed down at the last minute. Now, however, it is this very issue that is keeping the Galaxy S8 Plus from the 10-point rating.

Covers and guarantees

Official and third-party cases are recommended for a phone of this size;
Samsung Premium Care is a decent extended warranty plan;

Considering the huge size and fragile glass design, the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus needs protection, which comes in two forms, the first, as usual, is the protective case for the Samsung Galaxy S8.

Of course, even the best cases for the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus increase the size, and rob the smartphone of some of its most unique design features - this year you have an alternative.

This year, Samsung is offering its flagships the Premium Care program, which has a single flat rate per month, which allows you to replace a broken smartphone once a year for 13,000 rubles. It is expected that other insurance companies will be able to offer a similar guarantee plan.

We prefer a lightweight case, but it's nice to see the variety of solutions at the time of the phone's release. This is a big smartphone that deserves some protection.

Display

6.2-inch screen withHDR format 18.5: 9;
The best smartphone screen even ifHDR is not yet available;
AMOLED display limitedQuadHD, default 1080p;

The Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus offers the world's best mobile display for several reasons, among which we don't even consider the large number of extra pixels.

It is the new 18.5: 9 format that is responsible for the elongated smartphone screen, which offers you more working area. You will be able to see two or three posts on the social network, instead of scrolling through them one at a time.

This is all thanks to an impressive 88% Infinity screen to body ratio. The Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge offered a high screen-to-body ratio (76%) in our opinion, while the iPhone 7 Plus only had 68%.

Reading, of course, becomes easier, and split-screen multitasking is not so constrained, but thanks to the difference from the traditional 16: 9 aspect ratio, the smartphone almost completely eliminates black bars when playing video. Movies look especially cool thanks to the black edges on the front of the S8, regardless of color.

Samsung is also bringing back some familiar options that you might have seen with the first HD smartphones. For example, you can use the Smart Cropping mode, which fills the entire extra-wide screen of the phone (some of the content is cropped at the top and bottom), or you can remove the black bars to fit the screen.

Switching between Smart Crop and Fit to Screen modes is tedious - apps don't remember our preferences, and we don't always remember them. Nothing is perfect, but there is no doubt when it comes to immersive video on this gorgeous 6.2-inch screen. It will be interesting to see how Samsung and LG will position the extended format in the future, as they own the 4K TV market.

Samsung is pushing HDR on mobile again, offering fidelity, brightness and contrast enhancements like it did with the Galaxy Note 7 and Galaxy Tab S3. This option has won the premium Mobile HDR shortcut on the S8 and S8 Plus. Here's a (literally) invisible problem: No HDR video content from mobile streaming providers, only 4K TVs.

The Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus is equipped with an HDR display with an eye for the future. However, the smartphone doesn't offer 4K resolution in the palm of your hand. It is still limited to Quad HD resolution as it was last year and, frankly, we are fine with that. We even agree with unfair Full HD (1080p) in order to save battery. Quad HD is best for VR when the smartphone screen is five centimeters from your face, but even at 2K you can make out individual pixels.

We're hoping Samsung, purely for VR, will offer 4K with the new Galaxy Note 8 or Galaxy S9 later this year / early next. For everyday use, Full HD actually looks good, most people won't notice the difference. You could even tell them it's 4K, it's easy to believe.

Samsung's curved Super AMOLED display makes it seem like app tiles and menus are piled off the sides of the screen as you scroll through your home screens. It's a very neat and eye-catching effect that is sure to grab attention, and the soft curvature of the panel promises to be comfortable to use - we're less likely to accidentally open Edge panels compared to the S7 Edge. So if this was your problem with past devices, consider it solved.

The Always-on Display function left a good impression. The screen constantly displays the time and date, battery life, and tiny notification icons (which you can double-tap to open right after unlocking your phone). There is also a setting for displaying world time, calendar and thumbnail. That's right, you can set wallpaper for the lock screen, home screen and now the Always-On Display.

Interface and applications

Stop hatingTouchWiz. The interface got better and changed the name;
The interface looks cleaner, has got new gestures for working with shortcuts and menus;
The default keyboard can useEmoji.

The Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus is as powerful as any flagship. He debuted with the best characteristics and the most attractive interface among competitors.

You can stop hating Samsung's user interface with TouchWiz right now, although it's not TouchWiz anymore. Samsung has renamed it "Samsung Experience" and it works great.

The interface is based on the Android 7.0 Nougat operating system, it becomes more reliable, is able to scale everything to provide a clean and optimal look. It logically selects the menu settings and gives useful tips when you can't find what you want. Search is everywhere now.

New this year is the ability to swipe up or down anywhere on the home screen to bring up the built-in search box and app drawer. This handy action replaces the virtual app drawer button on the home screen as you no longer need it. And we love the fact that you can use home screens just like iOS 10.

You can now access apps faster and require less movement. You can now long press on an app tile to open its advanced options, like right button mouse on a computer or 3D Touch mechanics on an iPhone. From here, you can uninstall or select multiple apps, making it easy to move the shortcuts you want to another screen on your phone. Remember when you had to do it one shortcut at a time? Little touches make Samsung's interface stand out.

Samsung notification bar and customizable tray quick settings easy to read thanks to the correct blue and white color scheme (remember the neon green color scheme three years ago?). iOS 10 still performs better with messaging, we also skip Apple's smart keyboard app with a bunch of emojis, but otherwise Samsung offers everything we need, including a filter. of blue color which is better than Google Pixel and Google Pixel XL.

Google's Android 7.0 Nougat update also means that notifications are now grouped together, and while split-screen multitasking is new to other phones, Samsung has been using the feature for several iterations. Android O promises a notification icon on top of individual app tiles, but Samsung has already implemented this feature in its interface. Suddenly, Samsung and vanilla Android are no different.

AssistantBixby

BixbyVoice doesn't work yet, butGoogleAssistant on board;
Home, Reminders andVision is pre-loaded, but of little use;
Physical buttonBixby only gets in the way of adjusting the volume;

This is where new items come in handy. Samsung's promising smart assistant, Bixby, is the counterpart of Apple's Siri and Google's Assistant, a current replacement for S Voice.

But instead of offering us artificial intelligence, it's just artificial. Bixby is not yet a voice assistant, the function is promised in the United States until the end of spring, and in Russia until the end of the year. Bixby Voice is the foundation of virtual Samsung assistant For now, we're left with features like Bixby Home, Bixby Reminders, and Bixby Vision.

Bixby Home is the left-most screen, taking over Google Now's contextual presentation of local weather, schedules, and activities. It also pulls in news that you might read, but it's less compelling than the graphical Flipboard that took its place before.

Lemon. This is how we would describe Bixby right now.

Bixby Vision can identify an object with a camera and offer similar images from Pinterest, or it can direct you to a store where you can buy an item ... something like this we've seen before. This can be useful for getting information about a bottle of good wine, but it is extremely difficult to find a useful use of this function in everyday life.

Much more confusing is the dedicated Bixby button located right below the volume rocker on the left side of the smartphone. Press twice and it instantly takes you to the Bixby Home screen.

The button constantly gets confused when you want to turn down the volume of the smartphone, and also interferes with taking screenshots (long-time Samsung users will be annoyed because you could take a screenshot earlier by holding the Home and Power buttons - now it's the Power and Volume Down buttons). The Bixby button gets in the way.

Plus, Google Assistant has been loaded into the phone from the start, meaning Samsung will (eventually) get a rival assistant on the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus. Launching Google Assistant is easy. It is activated with a long press on the Home button - no need to reinvent Bixby button, Samsung.

Features and performance

Best chipset we've tested, even with 4GB of RAM
Performance headroom for the next generationSamsungGearVR;
64GB internal storage and card slotMicroSD;
Two-pair audio streamingBluetooth headphones;

The Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus is the fastest and most powerful smartphone we've tested. It is equipped with 6GB of RAM in most countries, but this is a surplus.

He's got enough performance. With 4GB of RAM paired with either the fast Qualcomm 835 (US) and the fastest Samsung Exynos 8895 (Russia), the chipset outperformed all benchmarks.

It is these small 10nm chipsets that make the flagship smartphone more powerful and also consume less power than last year's 14nm chips. Samsung's Exynos chips have always been a little more powerful, but Qualcom's Snapdragon chips promise high performance to their users.

The Geekbench test results for the Exynos chipset showed a multi-core score of 6630, while the Qualcomm chipset averaged 6,000 points. More importantly, we didn't crash under any kind of stress, including Bixby animations.

This is great news for anyone looking to step into the future of mobile VR with a new headset, or simply avoid a performance hit over the next 2-3 years. The Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus have highly capable chipsets to support next-gen VR gaming, so you can count on the new flagship as your gaming station.

Both chipsets are equipped with Gigabit LTE and Gigabit Wi-Fi modems, making your smartphone faster at home and on the go. Right now, you can take advantage of Bluetooth Dual Audio, which outputs audio to two pairs of Bluetooth headphones at the same time.

Samsung charges a high price tag for new flagships, but it offers the best value for money when it comes to internal storage. There is only one option: 64GB versus 32GB for the initial S7 Edge. You won't have to choose between 32GB, 64GB and 128GB models this year.

What if you want more space? Thankfully, the microSD card slot is back, offering expandable storage (up to 256GB). Apple iPhone The 7 Plus and Google Pixel XL do not support microSD cards, so this is a welcome addition.

Camera

12-megapixel camera, the best among mobile cameras;
Improved photography in low light conditions;
Optical image stabilization (OIS) is better than last year;
The camera application allows you to shoot faster;
Camera launch shortcut has been moved to a less convenient position;

If you are looking for the best camera on your smartphone, you should buy the Galaxy S8 or Galaxy S8 Plus right now. Samsung's competitors are tightening their belts and preparing for a difficult period.

On the surface, it seems that nothing has changed with the Galaxy S7 Edge: the main camera is equipped with a 12MP sensor with Dual Pixel autofocus, fast f / 1.7 aperture and enlarged pixels.

Everything is identical to the camera of last year's flagships, isn't it? Not really. And while the sensor size is the same, the new chip and advanced technologies offer best photo in poor lighting conditions, thanks to the processing of the picture in several frames.

Multi-Frame imaging works in a similar way with the Google Pixel and its HDR +. Samsung's phone chooses the best of three photos and uses the other two to reduce blur. It's like burst shooting, but it all works behind the scenes.

Side by side, Galaxy photos The S8 Plus is better than similar shots of the Galaxy S7 Edge in good and poor lighting. New flagship showed less chromatic aberration and graininess in the dark; that doesn't mean we didn't see blur in the dim light of the bar when people move their hands in the middle of the shot, but the post-processing is top-notch for a smartphone.

The front camera of the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus has received even more updates, as reflected in the spec sheet and overall performance of the device.

There is a slight difference in selfies. The S8 Plus stands up to brighter tones and captures the sparkle of the eyes. Everything looks better, unnecessarily using Beauty modes.

The Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus also includes wacky new effects for photos and real-time videos, a kind of mask for overlaying frames. Move over, Facebook. This is Samsung's attempt to clone Snapchat.

The Galaxy S8 Plus's camera performs well indoors in low light conditions - better than the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge or any other Android smartphone. It still has a long way to go before comparing it to DSLRs, mirrorless cameras or compact cameras with a 1-inch sensor, but the development is noticeable.

All your selfies are sharper thanks to the sensor upgrade from last year's 5MP to 8MP this year with automatic focus and face detection. You will love that sparkle in the eyes that the camera is able to capture, compensating for any detail in the foreground.

You also benefit from the robust and logical software that debuted on the Galaxy Note 7 and later on the S7 and S7 Edge with Android update Nougat.

You can zoom in and out of a photo with one finger by sliding the shutter button left or right. The pinch zoom can still be used, but with such a large phone, one-finger control is more useful.

Swiping to the left brings up a menu of filters, stickers, and new masks - hilarious but pointless in essence. This is nothing more than stealing a Snapchat idea.

Swiping to the right opens all shooting modes: Auto, PRO (manual), Panorama, Selective focus, Slow-Motion, Hyperlapse (single frame), Food (Food) and Virtual Shot.

You can download several other modes from the Samsung store Galaxy Apps including Sports Shot, Animated GIF and Dual Camera (mode, photo with front camera overlay). What we liked the most during the review, you can add any of these modes, like Hyperlapse, on main screen as a shortcut. Nobody has come this far, Samsung offers top-notch software cameras.

The video is another example of where the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus doesn't advertise new features beyond 4K resolution, but in actual testing, the quality has improved. Videos are noticeably brighter than the Galaxy S7 Edge, and optical image stabilization is smoother.

Using a regular tripod to compare side-by-side smartphones while walking along the beach, we found the S8 Plus stabilization much better, the effect resembles stabilization tripods, while the S7 Edge shoots as if you were jumping on a trampoline while walking, (we do not did!).

Even with all the additional actions - from processing a photo in several frames to improved optical stabilization- Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus shutter speed hasn't gotten any worse. The problem becomes a quick launch shortcut that has moved from double click the now defunct physical Home button to the side power button. You can miss important point until you retrain your muscle memory, you'll also need to find a case that doesn't get in the way of pressing the side button.

Battery life

3500mAh battery capacity, safe route afterNote 7;
More than a day of battery life thanks to advanced battery saving;
Just 1 hour and 11 minutes to fully charge;
Fast and wireless charging thanks toUSB-C;

Here's a trick from Samsung: the Galaxy S8 Plus is big enough to hold a monstrous battery, but after the Note 7's exploding batteries, the manufacturer is being shy.

Instead, we have a 3,500mAh battery - exactly the same size as the Note 7, in fact the battery is 100mA less than the Galaxy S7 Edge. All this looks very conservative against the background of the recent ASUS ZenFone Max with 5000mAh battery.

Don't let these numbers deceive you. The Galaxy S8 Plus is a highly energy efficient phone that offers a day and a half of battery life. We had no battery problems in the middle of the day, even after active photography or video.

This is partly due to the smaller and less power-hungry 10nm chipsets, and partly to switching to Full HD by default, which looks almost as good as the maximum Quad HD resolution. These two metrics make the difference.

We ran a 90-minute video in Full HD resolution on the phone with 100% charge, and upon completion of playback, the phone lost 11% in Quad HD resolution, leaving us with 89% charge. We switch the screen to Full HD, scroll through the video again and lose only 8%, keeping 92% of the charge.

Samsung is also providing the S8 Plus with software tools to optimize its battery, which means the smartphone uses power more slowly when the battery goes below 15%. And the software really clings to the numbers, calculating the exact time before the power outage (and while the numbers were never exactly right, it's helpful to have a rough estimate).

Galaxy S8 Plus retains strengths including fast charging and wireless charging. The simplified USB-C connectivity means wireless charging offers only marginal convenience, but it's a good thing to see.

Summing up

This is Samsung's latest sci-fi smartphone, and its newest trick is maximizing screen real estate by reducing bezels. This allows for a monstrous 6.2-inch curved display to fit into an affordable phone that's virtually indistinguishable from last year's Galaxy S7 Edge.

That's not all that is impressive. It offers the best display, chipset, and camera in a phone to date. In other words, it has the best design, large headroom and extremely quality camera... It's water and dust resistant, so you don't have to wait for the Galaxy S8 Active, it offers 64GB of internal storage and a microSD card slot for more storage. All this is yours if you are willing to pay big money.

The battery life is decent (but does not blow up tests), the phone will be able to showcase the next generation of mobile VR games, and its software will rival vanilla Android. Besides Bixby, Samsung has done a tremendous amount of work on its software. Remember the awful TouchWiz interface? If he was your problem, you should give your new phone a try.

Everything looks and feels futuristic, apart from the illogically located fingerprint scanner and the missing Bixby voice features. Face recognition doesn't work well enough to be used regularly, the iris scanner is better, but it's not perfect either. Problems with unlocking such an expensive phone prevent the Galaxy S8 Plus from becoming flawless.

You can't find a great smartphone better than this. With a few gripes aside, the 6.2-inch display and big performance gains with efficiency easily deserve a recommendation for anyone willing to invest that kind of money in a phone.

Who is it for?

This is the smartphone for you if you have big hands, an equally large wallet, and you are really worried about becoming a user. While the 5.8-inch Galaxy S8 is just as good and slightly cheaper, the Plus version offers the largest possible 6.2-inch screen size and extra battery life. If you are moving from 4.7 and 5-inch screens, stick to the smaller size.

Is it worth buying?

If you want a smartphone with the most big screen and image quality, the Galaxy S8 Plus deserves its money. In addition to the screen, you get great bonuses, including the best camera on the market and the latest chipset.

The Galaxy S8 Plus is the Android smartphone you'll want if you like big and tall tubes. It is equipped with a massive 6.2-inch screen, which practically does not increase the physical size of the phone from its predecessor. Samsung's gimmick is removing the physical Home button and its surrounding bezel, and while that means the annoying rear-facing fingerprint scanner, amazing display, great camera, and slick software should make you forget that flaw and Bixby's voice assistant won't. star of the show overnight.

Perfectly!

After the controversial Galaxy S5, Samsung realized that design was important, and on March 1, 2015, the Galaxy S6 was unveiled in Barcelona, a device that took the company to the next level. A year later, we went to Barcelona again to see the evolution and the new Galaxy S7. It felt like Samsung was groping for its own style. But the real revolution came in March this year when the company unveiled the new Galaxy S8. In this review, we'll just talk about the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus!

Design

Even the most die-hard Apple fans and those who have never held Android smartphones in their hands suddenly started talking about the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus. Well, really, look at this design - it's great. The quality, the materials, the way it all comes together is just very, very good. It feels like Samsung has groped its own unique and unique style.

There are ergonomic blunders in the form of a poorly located fingerprint scanner, but a person is such a creature that beautiful toy he will forgive any sins. A little surprising is the lack of symmetry at the bottom end, where the Type-C connector, mini-jack and speaker slots each live in their own plane, but you only think about this when you are reminded. But from all other sides, the S8 is good. Spectacular Gorilla Glass 5 glass body and endless display, as Samsung calls it. Despite the fact that the body of the smartphone is made of glass, in the hand, especially the small S8, it feels like a kind of metal bar. V good sense... Tactilely, the device is no less good than visually. It is very pleasant to hold it in your hands due to its unusual dimensions.

Display

The screen is the main asset of a smartphone. Narrow, elongated and very large even in the small S8. In the Galaxy S7, the screen size was 5.1 inches, but here it is 5.8! Moreover, the dimensions of both devices are comparable to each other. The display takes up 84% of the front area of the Galaxy S8. The device is almost frameless and causes the WOW effect. The display is really good, the picture seems to be alive. It is very bright, everything is perfectly readable even on the sunniest day. True, the colors are oversaturated, but this is a standard situation for Super AMOLED and can be easily corrected in the settings. The aspect ratio of the screen is 18.5: 9. This is almost 2 to 1. What does it give us? Additional line for icons in the menu, more area for content, which is convenient in applications and social networks. In the settings, you can choose how many icons will fit in width and height, what the icons themselves will be, the color scheme, adjust the on-screen buttons and the intensity of the response of the Home button. In general, there are a lot of settings for the display and interface.

It will not be difficult to fit the device for yourself. Also in the settings you can select full screen mode for applications, which will allow you to stretch programs to the full length of the screen. You can stretch videos in the same way, for example on YouTube. True stretching the video to full screen is accompanied by cropping from the top and bottom. Of course it looks impressive, but it's better to look in normal mode. The display resolution is 2960 by 1440 pixels, but the default is Full HD +, that is, 2220 by 1080 pixels. This resolution should consume less energy, while the difference in the picture is practically invisible. QHD + resolution comes in handy when used with a VR headset for maximum picture quality. If the smartphone itself knew when to lower or increase the resolution it would be much easier.

Autonomy

On Full HD +, the device really lives a little longer, which makes it the most optimal. By the way, the difference with the larger Galaxy S8 + is in the screen size and battery volume. The S8 has a 3000 mAh battery, the S8 + has a 3500 mAh battery. For such large displays, the battery capacity is more than modest, but smartphones provide a day of full use under normal load. If the S8 is not heavily loaded, then it can be enough for a day and a half. To put it unequivocally, the smartphone provides a day of confident work. 4-4.5 hours of screen life for the Galaxy S8 is quite a standard mode. The S8 + will last a little longer due to the size of the battery. Smartphones support fast charging. They charge up to 100% in an hour and a half. Of course, there is also wireless charging and also fast, but the charger itself must be purchased separately.

Camera

Many expected the Galaxy S8 to have dual camera, but Samsung disappointed everyone and left last year's module practically unchanged. Samsung did not grind out new features and just slightly modified the software. Therefore, the S8 has the same 12 megapixel module with f / 1.7 aperture. It's still one of the best cameras out there, and most of the S8's rivals in terms of photography outperform in almost every respect. The picture is saturated, high-aperture optics allows you to take pictures even in the dark, and they good quality... In terms of camera, the Galaxy S8 can only be compared with the Google Pixel. And the fact that there are no two lenses may upset someone, but the camera is wonderful.

There is support for Dual Pixel technology, which allows you to quickly focus on the subject. For art lovers, there are manual adjustments and even focus peaking, which highlights the area of focus. Interestingly, what appeared in the Galaxy S8 new technology multiframe. The system takes three shots and then stitches them into one, picking up different parts of the photos. This is the guarantee of detailed and clear shots that the Samsung Galaxy S8 takes. The Google Pixel has something similar with its HDR +.

Video capabilities are quite standard: 4K recording at 30 frames per second and Full HD at 60 frames. There is optical stabilization, hyperlapse and slowmo. When shooting video with optical stabilization, "jelly" is observed, that is, the picture begins to float. This is a problem with many devices, this is how compensation works. In general, the video is of very good quality, but it is advisable not to shake your hands too much while shooting. The front camera is also worth mentioning. It is here 8 megapixels, with autofocus and f / 1.7 aperture. The front-facing shots are excellent, there are a bunch of stickers, filters and masks in the spirit of MSQRD. Predictably, the Galaxy S8 is one of the best smartphones on the market in terms of photographic capabilities.

Interface

I was pleasantly surprised by the inner shell, which is now called - Clean UI. She looks fresh, stylish, appropriate. For a couple of years, the Samsung launcher has evolved a lot and today it looks very relevant. It has its own style and at the same time the interface is not overloaded, as it happened before. There is more air, and now there is no desire to install a third-party launcher first of all. Order and harmony reign in the settings. Everything is hidden point by point, logical and understandable. You can change in the interface, if not everything, then a lot. Do you want a separate application menu and a button to call it? Please! Or the menu can be invoked by swiping up or down. And you can make it so that all the icons in general are on the desktops and the need for the application menu will simply disappear. In general, real freedom of choice.

At the bottom of the screen, there are touch buttons that can be swapped as you like. The Galaxy S8 ditches the physical Home button. She was replaced by a sensory one and she acquired a vibration response. Moreover, it is customizable, you can choose with what force the recoil will occur. Something similar to the Taptic Engine. You can exit any application by simply tapping at the bottom of the display, even if you don't see the buttons. It's comfortable. The home button is clearly felt and you will never miss.

The S8 has only three physical keys: the power button on the right side, the volume rocker on the left and under it the call button for the Bixby smart assistant. Not the best location. Therefore, at the beginning of use, you constantly find yourself on this button and not on the volume. The smart assistant Bixby itself is a promising thing, according to Samsung, but so far there is nothing interesting here. And the feature with a smart camera that helps to recognize objects and even immediately order them on the Internet does not work very well. Rather, it practically does not work.

Security

I would also like to tell you about the unlocking methods. As you already understood from numerous reviews, using the fingerprint scanner is inconvenient even on the small S8, there is no need to talk about the big S8 +. It is best to use iris unlock. It works quickly and correctly, and in order not to make unnecessary movements, you need to enable “unlock when the screen is turned on” in the Iris Scanner settings, or enable “Unlock with the Home button” in the display settings in the navigation panel. The iris scanner is a safe solution that works very well in this smartphone. Iris unlock works even in dark rooms and in pitch darkness. Perhaps the only scenario in which he refuses to work normally is the bright sun. But interestingly, it even works through sunglasses! In general, this is a cool technology and, apparently, the future belongs to it.

Specifications

Samsung stopped chasing a banal set of the most top-end hardware, and rightly so. The company began to pay much more attention to overall harmony. So that everything combined gives positive emotions. But technically, the S8 is still one of the most powerful smartphones on the market. Any games, including WoT Blitz, go to maximum settings no problem. The smartphone even has a Game Launcher application that allows you to control performance by choosing high or vice versa, economy mode so as not to waste energy. Galaxy S8 can be safely called a gaming one, and given its screen, it's a pleasure to play. The complete specifications are as follows:

The Exynos 8895 processor is an eight-core chip with Mali-G71 graphics.
For a number of other markets, the Snapdragon 835 chip and Adreno 540 graphics are available.
4GB LPDDR4 RAM.
64GB onboard UFS 2.1 storage.

Samsung abandoned various versions and left on sale only a 64 GB model, plus a slot for a memory card.

Protection and sound

Of course, the Galaxy S8 is IP68 water and dust resistant. You can wash your smartphone under the tap or dive into the pool with it. The smartphone has a good package, where you can find headphones from AKG. Not the cheapest, mind you. At the same time, the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus itself sounds worthy. There is software settings to adjust the sound to your own preferences. There are ready-made presets and the ability to manually adjust the equalizer, the effect of warm tube sound and surround sound. Here, as in the case with tablet Tab S3, Samsung takes advantage of the recently purchased group of campaigns Harman kardon, which included AKG.

Outcome

The Samsung Galaxy S8 sets a new trend and a bar so high that other manufacturers will have to work hard to avoid negative comparisons. It is clear that the Galaxy S8 is not the cheapest smartphone. But it is beautiful and I would like to acknowledge the work that the company has done. The S8 has some minor flaws, but the overall feel of the device is such that you just don't notice the unpleasant little things. Can you recommend the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus and its smaller version for purchase? Definitely - yes! Almost everyone who sees the S8 for the first time and holds it in their hands notes how much the style has changed and that the smartphone makes you want to buy it. Owners especially often say this phrase. Well, we are waiting for a retaliatory move from Apple. And we will praise Samsung for an excellent smartphone.

Video review Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus

All the differences between the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus, which we noted during our tests, lie in the size of the displays and batteries - otherwise the top-notch equipment is identical. As a result, the Plus version seems to us ideal for those video enthusiasts who will never be satisfied with the size of the displays, and do not want to carry the tablet with them everywhere. Since the S8 Plus during our battery testing performed better than the "regular" version, which costs 5,000 rubles less, it was placed a little higher in the corresponding rating, thus becoming a starting point for everyone who is looking for the best technology and not afraid of high prices.

Advantages

giant, superb display
compact frameless design
excellent workmanship
very good battery life
wonderful camera

disadvantages

often requires two hands to operate
fingerprint scanner on the back
the voice assistant does not yet understand Russian

Price-quality ratio
Fine
Place in the overall rating
7 of 48

Value for money: 85
Performance (20%): 87.9
Equipment (20%): 91.7
Battery (20%): 88.2
Display (20%): 95
Camera (20%): 87.6

Editorial grade

User rating

You have already rated

Extreme display

On the Galaxy S8 Plus Samsung Compared to an already giant display, it uses an even larger screen and pleases multimedia fans with a huge diagonal, which is now 6.2 inches instead of 5.8 inches and is really impressive.

The fact that the S8 Plus is still comfortable enough to use as a smartphone and continues to differ in form factor from a tablet, Samsung owes to the power of engineering: the S8 Plus has a display bezel that is almost invisible to the eye, and a curved screen area with rounded edges and a ratio sides 18.5: 9 and resolution QuadHD + (2960x1440 pixels) equal to almost the entire surface of the front side.

But the "normal" S8 already differs in such a futuristic appearance. Outwardly, these two models differ from each other only in their size. Those who prefer to operate their smartphone using only one hand are likely to experience some inconvenience with the S8 Plus. That Samsung has managed to position the screen so large area with this size of the case, it is really impressive.

The image quality of the S8 Plus is just as excellent as the S8. The screen, with its 474 cd / m2 (manually set maximum brightness), shines so brightly that even in direct sunlight, all content is visible perfectly, and the contrast and color reproduction are first-class. In the settings menu, you can choose between natural and vivid colors, if desired. However, whoever looks at the S8 Plus screen from a certain angle may notice a slightly bluish tint against a white background - an effect that occurs on many AMOLED displays.

Galaxy S8 Plus is very large - but bezel-less display makes great use of the bezel

Top-notch 12-megapixel camera

To keep this Goliath from running out of steam, Samsung gave it a 3,500mAh battery. That's 100 mAh less than the smaller one offers - and despite this, the S8 Plus beats its predecessor with a clear advantage in the endurance test. In the end, the battery-optimized standard mode, in which the resolution is reduced to 2220 x 1080 pixels, allows the smartphone to last 11 hours and 17 minutes. This is the top league in our ranking. For comparison: S7 fizzled out after 8 hours 43 minutes, S7 Edge - after 9 hours 14 minutes. If you "unscrew" the resolution in the settings to a maximum of 2960x1440 pixels, then the S8 Plus will be able to work all 10 hours and 58 minutes.

Since the difference in image quality is difficult to see or not at all noticeable, Samsung's calculation is correct, and in our opinion, there is nothing that would speak against using this approach. For VR display — content, on the other hand, the device needs the highest possible resolution.

In terms of camera capabilities on paper, Samsung has changed almost nothing and offers, as in last year's top model, a resolution of 12 megapixels and an aperture of F1.7. Thanks to Dual Pixel technology, the S8 Plus shoots extremely quickly. The photos taken during testing look first-class and are slightly better than those of the Galaxy S7 (Edge) - especially in low light, much more detail is discernible in the pictures. The color saturation and picture clarity are slightly better than the S7, the noise level is reduced. Thus, it turns out that the manufacturer has rationally optimized the already good camera of its predecessor.

Detailed discussion of all innovations, including digital Bixby assistant, hidden Home button, and port USB Type-C, you can find in an almost identical, only slightly smaller "standard" Galaxy S8.

Galaxy S8 Plus is different excellent quality photos

Release date and cost

Today everyone can buy the Galaxy S8 Plus for 60,000 rubles. S8 costs 55,000 rubles. From April 28, Samsung will begin shipping smartphones in three colors - Black Diamond, Mystical Amethyst and Yellow Topaz. Those who have already pre-ordered will receive the device one week early.

Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus test results

Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus specifications and test results

Price-quality ratio	85
OS when testing	Android 8.0
The weight	173 BC
Height x width	160 x 75 mm;
Thickness	8.4 mm;
Screen: diagonal	6.2 inch
Screen: size in mm	70 x 142 mm;
Screen: type	OLED
Screen: Resolution	1.440 x 2.960 pixels
Screen: Dot Density	528 ppi
Screen: max. brightness	690.9 cd / m²
Screen: checkerboard contrast in a dark room	165:1
Download speed: PDF 5MB WLAN	18.7 s
Download speed: chip.de test chart over WLAN	13.0 s
CPU	Samsung Exynos 9 Octa 8895
CPU frequency	2.300 MHz
Number of CPU cores	4+4
RAM size	4 GB
Battery: capacity	3.500 mAh
Battery: surfing time	9:45 h: min
Battery: charging time	1:57 h: min
Fast charging function	Yes
Battery: discharge time / charge time	5,0
Wireless charging function	Yes
WLAN	802.11 n, ac
VoLTE	Yes
LTE: frequencies	800, 1.800, 2.600 MHz
LTE: speed	up to 1.000 Mbps
Camera: Resolution	12.2 megapixels
Camera: measured resolution	1.528 line pairs
Camera: expert assessment of image quality	very good
Camera: Noise VN1	1.7 VN1
Camera: Optical Image Stabilizer	Yes
Camera: autofocus	Yes
Video resolution	3.840 x 2.160 pixels
Front camera: resolution	8.0 megapixels
LED indicator	multicolor
SIM card type	Nano-SIM
Dual SIM	-
Dust and moisture proof (IP certified)	IP68
Biometric unlock	fingerprint sensor, iris scanner, face recognition
User available memory	64 GB
Free memory	50.8 GB
Memory card slot	Yes
USB connector	Type-C-USB 3.1
Bluetooth	5
NFC	Yes
Headphone out	jack 3.5mm
SAR	0.26 W / kg
Firmware version during testing	G955FXXU3RGB
Test date	2017-04-10

Design, dimensions, weight

The novelty has a premium look. Curved screen, minimal frames. This design looks fresh. Of course, the outlines of last year's flagship are recognizable, but this huge display, which occupies almost the entire front panel, and the absence of physical buttons on the front side make the design fundamentally different.

The freshness of the new design lies in the fact that the model looks transparent, weightless, because it is mainly frames that give weight.

The Korean company uses the slogan for this model: "Smartphone without borders". This ambiguity of the slogan really defines this device well.

A phone like this will stand out a lot. Looks expensive, stylish. Not to be confused with cheaper models.

S8 dimensions (in mm): 148.9 x 68.1 x 8.

S8 + dimensions (in mm): 159.5 x 73.4 x 8.1.

If we compare the dimensions with the previous generation of flagships, then the new items have become noticeably higher, but the width has changed slightly. As for the smaller versions, the 2016 flagship was even slightly wider.

S7 dimensions (in mm): 142.4 x 69.6 x 7.9.

S7 Edge dimensions (in mm): 150.9 x 72.6 x 7.7.

Comparisons with other smartphones

Photo of sevens:

And then there are eights:

The weight of the 2017 flagship, or more precisely, its weight, is 155 g and 173 g, respectively.

A little more comparisons?

From left to right and by height: S8 +, S7 edge, S8, S6 edge.

And here is the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus vs. Apple iPhone 7 Plus:

Agree, Samsung looks more elegant than iPhone.

The fingerprint scanner

Since there was no space left on the front panel due to the huge screen, the fingerprint scanner was moved to the rear panel. Now you need to unlock the phone not with your thumb, but with your index finger.

This is more a minus than a plus. Probably, it will be less convenient and when groping for the scanner, the camera lens that is nearby may get dirty.

Although this is not the only way to unlock. The smartphone knows its owner by sight.

This means that eye authentication (iris scanner) can be paired with face recognition algorithms.

Water resistant

The smartphone has protection against water according to IP68 standard... As well as last year's flagship. But there was no defense in the six. In the top five, protection was according to the lower IP67 standard.

For comparison, the iPhone 7 has an IP67 rating.

Which color should you choose?

Samsung Galaxy S8 has 5 color options:

Black (Black Diamond)
Gold (Yellow Topaz)
Silver (Arctic Silver)
Lilac or lilac (Mystical Amethyst)
Blue or light blue (Coral Blue)

All colors are beautiful. How to choose?

If you do not have an explicit preference, then the logic of choice may be as follows. It is necessary to take a color that is not found in previous flagships, so that no one will certainly confuse what kind of thing you have.

Both S7 and S6 are black. Gold is also there and there. There is a silver color in the seven. There is blue in the six.

So the winner is “Mystical Amethyst” or lilac color, or you can also call it lilac.

Oh, Mystical Amethyst - you are unique.

And in general, this color is fresh. He's not boring yet. Agree that black, being a classic color, is too hackneyed.

On the other hand, the appearance of the eighth series is difficult to confuse with anything else, so you can safely take any color.

Screen

As mentioned at the beginning, now both flagship models will have a curved screen on the sides. The screens differ only in size. The S8 measures 5.8 "while the S8 Plus measures 6.2".

It is worth recalling that the previous pair of flagships had display sizes of 5.1 inches and 5.5 inches. It turns out that the usual eight has a display larger than the "age" seven.

The displays of both eights were named “ Infinity Display". "Infinity" translates as "infinity", "infinity". And “Display” does not know how it is translated.

Apparently, the word "Infinity" kind of hints at the fact that the screen is almost limitless and takes up almost the entire front surface area. It even goes to the side faces, i.e. unlimited. Samsung in its flagship is trying to combine a large screen and not too large a body. The front panel area is used very efficiently. Even the fingerprint scanner is now on the back. Previously, it was built into the center button (Home key).

Still in use AMOLED display, or rather Super AMOLED, but the subpixel structure has changed - the Diamond Pentile has disappeared. Now the number of subpixels per pixel has increased from 2 to 3.

The flagship of 2017 became the first smartphone supporting the standard Mobile HDR Premium(Supports 10-bit video, 0.005 to 540 nits dynamic range and 90% DCI / P3 color space coverage).

QHD + resolution (2960 x 1440 pixels). Let me remind you that the subpixel resolution has grown by one and a half times. Therefore, it will be incorrect to compare the resolution with the previous flagships by only one pixel.

The aspect ratio is 18.5: 9.

This means that the screen has become more elongated.

To save energy, you can programmatically set the resolution to FHD + (2220 × 1080 pixels) or even HD + (1480 × 720 pixels).

Since the matrix is used AMOLED, there is a function " Always on display», Which allows you to constantly display basic information on the screen: time, date, missed calls, etc.

Amoled works in such a way that the display of black color does not require energy, i.e. these pixels are off. This means that a minimum of energy is spent on the constant display of basic information, since almost the entire screen is off.

A regular display, if it displays at least one pixel, it will work completely, respectively, the battery will be mercilessly eaten.

Scratch resistant glass is used - Corning Gorilla Glass 5.

Camera

Both the rear and front cameras have aperture f / 1.7 which is a very cool indicator. This is one of the key advantages of the camera.

The main camera is 12 megapixels with Dual Pixel technology.

Dual Pixel Is an active phase detection autofocus technology. Each physical pixel of the smartphone camera matrix is equipped with a separate sensor for focusing. This means that the camera has 12 million phase-type sensors for focusing. This allows for near instant focusing.

The more the camera's aperture is open (the lower the number after "f", ie at f / 1.7 the aperture is open more than at f / 2.0), the less depth of field (depth of field) is, given all conditions being equal. This is reflected in the ability to get a blurred background (bokeh), which makes the subject stand out.

Also, the physical size of the photomatrix affects the bokeh.

This effect is easy to get on a professional SLR camera and is often impossible on a soap dish.

Of course, you shouldn't count on the bokeh of the full-size matrix from the smartphone camera, but at least something the flagship can already show.

So, the smaller the DOF, the more relevant a good autofocus becomes. Since for a large depth of field autofocus is not needed at all. For example, some Nokia models at one time used the EDoF (Extended Depth of Field) technology, i.e. the focus of the camera was fixed at the hyperfocal distance, plus there was also software processing to further expand the depth of field. As a result, the entire field was sharp except for a few tens of centimeters from the camera. So there might have been some problems with macro photography, but everything after that was sharp. Consequently, autofocus was not needed - the price of the device decreased, the size decreased, and the shooting speed increased.

With a small depth of field, the camera needs to tune in to the subject. And if the autofocus misses, then the sharpness may not be what was needed at all, but what is needed may turn out to be blurry. If the camera does not even miss, it will take time to aim, which can lead to the fact that the right moment will be missed.

Dual Pixel with 12 million focus sensors makes this very focusing almost instant.

The physical size of the main photomatrix is 1 / 2.55 ". The indicator is not very good, that is, the matrix is rather small. Namely, the physical size of the matrix is key, and not the number of megapixels.

The photopixel size is 1.4 microns.

There is optical stabilization.

There is a flash, which is more correctly called a backlight, since it is based on LED lighting and cannot provide as much light as, for example, a xenon flash.

Everything sounds impressive enough, but only this was already in the flagship of last year. Therefore, the camera is nothing new.

The video camera can record in 4K resolution.

There is program function object recognition.

The front camera has a resolution of 8 megapixels. Matrix size 1 / 3.6 ". Pixel size - 1.22 microns.

CPU

Both Snapdragon and Exynos have 8 cores, where some 4 cores are more powerful, and the other 4 are more economical. This is done in order to make the operation of the device more economical for simple tasks.

"Russian" Exynos 9 Octa 8895 have a clock frequency of 2.3 GHz for powerful cores and 1.7 GHz for economical cores. There is an integrated ARM Mali-G71 GPU.

The Snapdragon 835 has an Adreno 540 integrated GPU.

The processors (both Snapdragon 835 and Exynos 9 Octa 8895) are manufactured using a 10nm manufacturing process.

The CPU speed has increased by 11% compared to the previous generation flagship. And the graphics accelerator will accelerate by 23%.

RAM

The RAM in the new generation will be the same 4 GB. It is noteworthy that the Chinese Galaxy S8 will receive 6 GB of RAM.

Persistent memory

Built-in memory 64 and 128 GB.

Plus there is the ability to use a microSD card up to 256 GB.

DeX docking station

You may remember Microsoft Display Dock. This is a docking station for smartphones Microsoft Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL. It was necessary to connect the smartphone to the docking station, and the docking station to the monitor, keyboard and mouse. Operating Windows system 10 Mobile had Continuum mode to turn a smartphone into a desktop PC. Well, as if into your desktop PC. Because of this, the "sort of" model suffered a fiasco. The idea is good, but you can't get a full-fledged Windows from such manipulations.

Microsoft promoted this feature as the main one. Samsung, a year and a half after Microsoft, also makes a similar docking station, calling it DeX (desktop extension). True, here it does not stick out as the main advantage, but goes like one of the chips.

The Koreans have a more interesting system - they don't have as many wires as the Americans. If you do not need to stick anything anywhere, then the function can really be convenient. You need to use a large screen and a mouse with a keyboard for some task - put your smartphone in a special docking station and you're done. There is no need to wait for the operating system to load, because the entire system is in the phone, and it is always on. And work can be either at the desk with a large monitor, or lying on the couch with a smartphone. And all this change will happen almost instantly, when you do not need to do any synchronization and you do not need to use the cloud to store data, because in any way of work, everything happens on one device.

In my opinion, when advertising DeX, it is necessary to press not on the fact that the smartphone will replace the PC (as they tried to do at Microsoft), but on the fact that almost a PC can be made from a smartphone very quickly. It is the speed of transformation that is most interesting here.

With DeX, you don't need to process video, work with 3D or make masterpieces in Photoshop. This is a device for fast and not very complex operations, the need for which appeared instantly, but which are inconvenient to perform on a smartphone.

Bixby

Siri can be considered a distant ancestor of Bixby. Siri (Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface) is Apple's cloud-based personal assistant and Q&A system introduced to the iPhone. Siri was originally a third-party app from Siri Inc that could be installed via the App Store. Apple soon realized the value of such a program and bought Siri Inc. Siri is now an integral part of iOS.

After a giant like Apple took over Siri, attention to the program increased dramatically. Analogs began to appear on both iOS and Android. Here Bixby is just an analogue of Siri, but it is possible that an analogue is superior to the original.

Bixby is an electronic assistant that lives on your phone. It even has its own physical button. He knows and understands a lot, but as he communicates with the owner, he also learns to help even more effectively.

Already now, Bixby can, for example, having seen a building through a smartphone camera, say what kind of building it is, what it is, when it was built, etc. Or, having seen something, find it on sale.

It is difficult to say how adequate this animal is.

As a joke, you can fantasize that when Bixby sees something in the camera, it will not only find it on sale, but also buy it, because Bixby has Samsung Pay.

Samsung Pay

Since September 2016, Samsung Pay has become available in Russia.

Samsung Pay is mobile payment service... It works wherever you can make a purchase with a regular bank card, contactless technology or magnetic stripe.

Samsung Pei uses only NFC (which many have), but also its own MST (Magnetic Secure Transmission) technology. This allows you to pay for purchases at almost any terminal that accepts bank cards.

Smartphones that support MST technology can generate a magnetic field similar to the magnetic stripe of a bank card. Often sellers themselves do not know that this is possible in their store. You can surprise them.

Batteries in the models will have a capacity of 3000 mAh for a regular eight and 3500 mAh for a plus one. This means that the capacity has not increased in comparison with the previous generation, and even decreased by 100 mAh for the older model.

The sizes of the displays have become larger, the subpixel resolution has increased by one and a half times, the processor has become more powerful ... It seems that the battery life in Samsung Galaxy S8, and especially in Galaxy S8 +, will be less than in last year's flagships.

There is a fast charging function. To connect charger the Type-C interface is used.

There is also wireless charging.

Data transmission interfaces

Following the iPhone, the flagship from Samsung appeared USB-C interface, but the 3.5mm jack remains (iPhone 7 no longer has it). This means that you can use standard headphones without using adapters, but there are also opportunities provided by the new interface. USB Type-C 3.1.

There are NFC and MST.

Bluetooth 5.0 LE.

Wi-Fi (802.11a / b / g / n / ac), MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output).

Equipment

Smartphone.
Wired headset Earphones tuned by AKG.
Replaceable ear tips.
USB Type-C cable.
Mains charger.
USB adapter (USB Type-C to USB Type A).
MicroUSB adapter (USB Type-C to MicroUSB).
Stud for removing the SIM card.
Quick Start Guide & Leaflet Smart Switch.

Of particular note are the AKG headphones.

Summary

The main and most noticeable change in the new product is how much space the screen began to take up. He began to take up more space than ever. At the same time, the dimensions of the phone did not become much larger - only the height (length) increased.

The increase in subpixel resolution without a microscope will not be noticed by anyone, so this change is not so significant. If we take the usual model (not Plus), then the appearance of a curved screen will also be significant.

The next significant change follows from the previous one - this is the transfer of the fingerprint scanner from the front to the back, which in itself is rather a minus.

More productive hardware, but this does not seem to be a very significant innovation.

You might find the Bixby assistant helpful. Apparently, Samsung is making a significant bet on this.

The smartphone, due to how much space the screen takes, plus due to the fact that the screen is rounded, immediately shows others that this is exactly the flagship and precisely the flagship of 2017. Those who like to show off expensive things will like it. After all, some flagships can be confused with simpler models, but in this case it will be difficult to do this.

If the screen area to the size of the phone is not such a significant indicator for you, then it makes sense to buy the seventh generation, not the eighth. By the way, the price for the seven after the appearance of the eight should be lower.

It can be assumed that the model without the Plus prefix will become more fashionable. The trick is that Samsung with curved screens were more direct counterparts - S6 Edge, S6 Edge +, S7 Edge, Note Edge. And now you can have such a curved screen both on the bigger phone and on the smaller one.

If you want a not too big device and at the same time want to have stylish and expensive rounded edges of the screen, then you have to fork out for the "regular" Samsung Galaxy S8.

Long, bezel-less, with great camera and highest performance

Samsung has recently officially presented its long-awaited flagship smartphones Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 +. Despite major setbacks in the recent past, Samsung's flagship devices not only continue to be the main competitor Apple iPhones but they are also some of the most technically advanced Android smartphones. Compared to the previous (seventh) generation, a lot has changed here, from the design in general to the arrangement of individual elements in particular, not to mention the improved hardware and updated software stuffing. Not all changes are for the better, but there are so many of them that we can say that Samsung has decided to start from scratch. It is worth noting that, to the delight of many, the difference between the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 + models is only in size, almost everything else is the same. There are no various modifications with a variable amount of built-in memory or RAM, different performance, the presence or absence of certain elements. The user does not need to bother with the choice, it is enough just to decide on the preferred dimensions of the device. The technical characteristics of both models are almost identical, with their listing we will begin this review, choosing the Galaxy S8 + model as a sample.

Key Features Samsung Galaxy S8 + (Model SM-G955F)

SoC Samsung Exynos 8895 Octa, 8 cores: [email protected], 3 GHz (Exynos M1) + [email protected], 7 GHz (ARM Cortex-A53)
(another modification of the smartphone is based on SoC Qualcomm Snapdragon 835)
GPU Mali-G71
Operating system Android 7.0
6,2 ″ Super AMOLED touchscreen display, 2960 × 1440, 529 ppi
Random access memory (RAM) 4 GB, inner memory 64 GB
Nano-SIM support (2 pcs.)
MicroSD support up to 256GB
GSM / GPRS / EDGE networks (850/900/1800/1900 MHz)
WCDMA / HSPA + networks (850/900/1900/2100 MHz)
FDD LTE Band 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 28, 32, 66 networks
TD LTE Band 38-41 networks
Wi-Fi 802.11a / b / g / n / ac (2.4 and 5 GHz) MIMO
Bluetooth 5.0 LE
GPS, A-GPS, Glonass, BDS
USB Type-C, USB OTG
Main camera 12 MP (f / 1.7), autofocus, 4K video
Front camera 8 MP (f / 1.7), autofocus
Waterproof IP68
Proximity sensor, lighting, heart rate, magnetic field, accelerometer, gyroscope, barometer
Iris scanner, fingerprint scanner
3500 mAh battery, fast charging
Wireless charger(WPC, PMA)
Dimensions 160 x 73 x 8.1 mm
Weight 173 g

Contents of delivery

Samsung Galaxy S8 + received a stylishly designed matte black cardboard box with a laconic design. The lid cannot be removed completely, it leans back like a casket. Contents are neatly packaged in separate cells.

The set, in the best traditions of Samsung, turned out to be extensive. The smartphone comes with a connecting USB cable Type-C, network adapter with a variable output current and voltage of 5/9 V 1.67 / 2 A, an unusual-shaped key for removing cards, a Micro-USB - USB Type-C adapter, a second USB - USB Type-C adapter.

The company also included high-quality wired double-driver AKG stereo headphones with a set of interchangeable in-ear pads.

Appearance and usability

The design of the Samsung Galaxy S8 / S8 + turned out to be unusual and attractive. The streamlined body is completely made of metal and glass, there is no plastic here. A metal frame rounded on all sides, symmetrically tapering at the sides and expanding at the top and bottom ends, connects the two glass panels - the front and the back. The cover is Gorilla Glass 5, the glasses have noticeable curvatures on the sides. The bezel in the front plane of the screen is completely hidden behind the bend of the glass, so here we can talk about a truly bezel-less version.

The case of the Samsung Galaxy S8 + is absolutely symmetrical, the back side is also completely covered with Gorilla Glass 5 with curved edges. The edges of the glasses are rounded so strongly that they almost seamlessly (not counting the frames) merge into one another, creating a finished shape without a single sharp corner and straight edge. For this form, Samsung marketers have dubbed their new brainchild “smartphone without borders”.

Samsung Galaxy S8 + looks very attractive. And although such a design may seem too "licked" and "pampered", but such are the modern realities, the absolute majority of users liked it.

Due to the unusual aspect ratio of the display (not 16: 9, but 18.5: 9), the case turned out to be very elongated in height. At the same time, the absence of a frame on the sides of the screen in the front plane made it possible to make the body so narrow that it is quite comfortable to hold it in the hand even with a screen diagonal of 6.2 inches. True, the device is quite slippery due to its glass panels, smooth frame and streamlined shape.

The curved edges of the front glass work in conjunction with the associated software in the same way as in previous models of the Galaxy Edge series. A full array of elements can be found above the screen, including an LED event indicator and even an iris scanner.

The scanner works tolerably, but the very process of setting the blocking and constant recognition is quite tedious, because this system works only under certain light conditions and at a certain distance from the eyes. It is much easier and faster to use the fingerprint scanner, although its location here causes some bewilderment.

There are no more control buttons under the screen, only on the screen itself. This is not typical for Samsung, its Galaxy smartphones always had a hardware key on the front (in the latest models - with an inscribed fingerprint sensor). Now its place was taken by a virtual button on the screen, but it is also not quite ordinary. In order for the static button, which is constantly highlighted in the Always On Display mode, not to cause pixel burnout, it was made movable. Thus, at first glance, the central button on the screen, which is static at first glance, is actually constantly shifting imperceptibly in different directions.

The fingerprint scanner has been moved to the back. At the same time, it is strongly displaced from the center to the right, so that it is inconvenient for a left-hander to reach with his finger. In addition, the tactile platform of the fingerprint sensor does not differ from the neighboring elements, it is difficult to feel it blindly, you need to get used to it. In general, this is, perhaps, the most unusual and inconvenient variant of the location of this element from all of us previously encountered, Samsung has again been too clever with a fingerprint sensor.

Next to the scanner you can find a camera module with a flash, as well as the usual for smartphones Samsung sensor heart rate. None of the elements stick out beyond the surface, so the smartphone is stable on the table, does not sway when you touch the screen. The flash is as bright as possible.

There are no complaints about the operation of the fingerprint scanner itself, it works quickly, clearly and accurately. But, as already mentioned, reaching for him, holding the smartphone in his left hand, is very inconvenient.

The slot for installing cards is located on the upper end. The cover of the removable slide, on which the cards are stacked, has a rubberized gasket, since the Samsung Galaxy S8 +, like the LG G6, complies with the IP68 protection category, that is, the case is completely protected from dust and can be immersed in water to a depth of 1.5 m for 30 minutes. However, the developers did not go further: the design here is not designed for harsh operating conditions, like the LG G6, so the hero of the review does not have a certification of the military standard.

It uses a standard hybrid slot that accepts either two Nano-SIM cards or one SIM and one microSD card. The slide is made of flexible plastic, the device itself reports on the need to tightly close the connector cover to protect it from water.

The volume control button has been moved to the left side edge, here it is adjacent to a separate key for calling the Bixby smart assistant, with which you can work with available services and applications through touch screen, voice or text commands... The power key remained on the right side edge. The buttons are not very large, but the handling is quite comfortable, the keys are easily felt blindly.

All other interface elements are located at the bottom. A USB Type-C connector is installed here, which supports the connection of external devices in USB mode OTG, the main speaker is brought out here, as well as a 3.5 mm headphone jack and a spoken microphone hole. Surprisingly, the developers could not install any of the elements exactly, each of them turned out to be offset relative to the longitudinal axis of the end, which spoils the impression a little.

After examining the structure of the Galaxy S8 + case, let's compare it with the previous model Galaxy S7 Edge. With the naked eye, you can see that the width of these smartphones is almost identical.

However, the Galaxy S8 + is equipped with a more elongated display with a custom aspect ratio, which allowed for more surface area under the screen. As a result, the 6.2-inch Galaxy S8 + sits in the palm of your hand just as comfortably as the 5.5-inch Galaxy S7 Edge.

In addition, the sides of the body of the review hero have become less slippery due to the increased width of the metal frame: the curved edges of the screen on the Galaxy S8 + have been reduced, the frame is now exactly in the middle between the front and rear panels. So, in general, the changes went to the novelty only for the benefit.

Samsung Galaxy S8 + is presented on the Russian market in three colors: black ("Black Diamond"), gray ("Mystical Amethyst") and gold ("Yellow Topaz").

Screen

Samsung Galaxy S8 + features a Super AMOLED display with protective glass Corning Gorilla Glass 5 with highly rounded edges. The physical dimensions of the screen are approximately 70 × 142 mm with a diagonal of 6.2 inches, that is, the aspect ratio is 18.5: 9. The screen resolution is 2960 × 1440, the dot density is about 529 ppi. The corners of the screen, like the LG G6, are rounded, there are no side frames as such in the front plane of the screen, the upper and lower segments surrounding the screen are only about 8.5 mm high.

The brightness of the display can be manually adjusted or set to automatic settings based on the operation of the ambient light sensor. HDR10 mode supported. The AnTuTu test diagnoses support for 10 simultaneous multitouch touches. There is a vision protection mode (preventing eye fatigue). In the Always-on mode, the off screen displays information about the current time and date, as well as about missed events.

In the screen settings section, you can choose the resolution and applications that should be used in full screen proportions. It seems that the developers first made a screen with an unusual aspect ratio, just so that it was "not like everyone else's", and then they added various "crutches" to the software so that the programs would work normally with such a screen.

A detailed examination using measuring instruments was carried out by the editor of the "Monitors" and "Projectors and TV" sections Alexey Kudryavtsev... Here is his expert opinion on the screen of the test sample.

The front surface of the screen is made in the form of a glass plate with a mirror-smooth surface, resistant to scratches. Judging by the reflection of objects, the anti-glare properties of the screen are better than that of the Google Nexus 7 (2013) (hereinafter simply Nexus 7). For clarity, here is a photo in which a white surface is reflected in the turned off screens (on the left - Nexus 7, on the right - Samsung Galaxy S8 +, then they can be distinguished by their size):

The screen of the Samsung Galaxy S8 + is slightly darker (the brightness in the photos is 107 versus 115 for the Nexus 7) and does not have a pronounced shade. The doubling of reflected objects in the Samsung Galaxy S8 + screen is very weak, which indicates that there is no air gap between the layers of the screen. Due to the smaller number of boundaries (such as glass / air) with very different refractive indices, screens without an air gap look better in conditions of intense ambient light, but their repair in the case of cracked outer glass is much more expensive, since the entire screen has to be changed. The outer surface of the Samsung Galaxy S8 + screen has a special oleophobic (grease-repellent) coating (effective, better than that of the Nexus 7), so fingerprints are much easier to remove and appear at a slower rate than in the case of regular glass.

When displaying a white field in full screen and when manual control brightness, its maximum value was 370 cd / m² under normal conditions and rises to 580 cd / m² in very bright light. You also need to take into account the fact that in this case the smaller the white area on the screen, the lighter it is, that is, the actual maximum brightness of the white areas will almost always be higher than the specified value. For example, when displaying a white field on half of the screen and black on the other half, for the above conditions, we obtained values of 460 cd / m² and 725 cd / m². As a result, readability in the daytime in the sun should be at a good level. The minimum value is 1.6 cd / m². The reduced brightness level allows you to use the device without any problems even in complete darkness. Automatic brightness control works according to the light sensor (it is located to the left of the front speaker slot). The operation of this function depends on the position of the brightness adjustment slider, with which the user can try to set the desired brightness level in the current conditions. If the brightness slider is set to maximum in an office environment, then in complete darkness the auto brightness function reduces the brightness to 6.4 cd / m² (a bit dark), in an office lit with artificial light (about 550 lux) sets it to 340 cd / m² (excessively bright) , in a very bright environment (equivalent to a bright day outdoors, but no direct sunlight - 20,000 lux or slightly more) increases to 545 cd / m² (sufficient). If, in complete darkness and in office conditions, set the brightness a little higher and lower, then the screen brightness for the three conditions mentioned above is as follows: 13, 180, 545 cd / m² (ideal combination). It turns out that the automatic brightness control function works adequately and to some extent allows the user to customize his work for individual requirements. At any brightness level, there is significant modulation with a frequency of about 60 or 240 Hz. The figure below shows the dependence of brightness (vertical axis) on time (horizontal axis) for several values of brightness adjustment:

It can be seen that at the maximum brightness and close to it, the modulation amplitude is not very large, as a result, there is no visible flicker. However, when the brightness decreases, modulation appears with a large relative amplitude, its presence can already be seen in the test for the presence of a stroboscopic effect or simply with rapid eye movement. Depending on individual sensitivity, such flickering can cause increased fatigue.

This screen uses a Super AMOLED matrix - an active matrix on organic light-emitting diodes. A full color image is created with subpixels of three colors - red (R), green (G) and blue (B), but there are twice as many green subpixels, which can be referred to as RGBG. This is confirmed by a fragment of a micrograph:

For comparison, you can see the gallery of photomicrographs of screens used in mobile technology.

In the fragment above, you can count 4 green subpixels, 2 red (4 halves) and 2 blue (1 whole and 4 quarters), while repeating these fragments, you can lay out the entire screen without gaps and overlaps. For such matrices, Samsung has introduced the name PenTile RGBG. The manufacturer considers the screen resolution for green subpixels, for the other two it will be two times lower. The location and shape of the subpixels in this variant is close to the case of the screen of the Samsung Galaxy S4 and some other newer ones. Samsung devices(and not only) with AMOLED screens. This version of PenTile RGBG is better than the old one with red squares, blue rectangles and green subpixel stripes. Nevertheless, some uneven contrast borders and other artifacts are still present. However, due to the very high resolution, they only have a minimal effect on image quality.

The screen has excellent viewing angles. True, when deviated even at small angles, the white color alternately acquires a light blue-green and pinkish tint, but the black color remains simply black at any angle. It is so black that the contrast setting is not applicable in this case. For comparison, here are the photos on which the screens of the Samsung Galaxy S8 + (profile Basic) and the second comparison participant displayed the same images, while the brightness of the screens was initially set to about 200 cd / m2, and the color balance on the camera was forcibly switched to 6500 K.

White box:

Note the good uniformity of brightness and color tone of the white field (except for a slight darkening and a change in hue towards the curved edges).

And the test picture (profile Basic):

The color rendition is good, the colors are moderately saturated, the color balance of the screens is slightly different. Recall that the photograph can not serve as a reliable source of information about the quality of color reproduction and is provided for a conditional visual illustration only. In particular, the pronounced reddish tint of white and gray fields present in the photographs of the Samsung Galaxy S8 + screen is visually absent when viewed from a perpendicular view, which is confirmed by hardware tests using a spectrophotometer. The reason is that the spectral sensitivity of the camera sensor does not exactly match this characteristic of human vision. Note that in this case the picture occupies in height (with this screen orientation) the entire area available for displaying the image and goes over the curved edges of the screen, which leads to darkening and color distortion. Also, in the light, these areas almost always glare, which further interferes when viewing images displayed in full screen. And even the picture of films with an aspect ratio of 16: 9 goes into the folds, which greatly interferes with watching a movie.

The photo above was taken after selecting a profile Basic in the screen settings, there are four of them:

Profile Adaptive display differs in some kind of automatic adjustment of the color rendition to the type of displayed image and the surrounding conditions:

Saturation and color contrast are greatly increased, looks terrible. What happens when you select the two remaining profiles is shown below.

AMOLED movie:

Saturation and color contrast are also increased, but not as much.

Photo AMOLED:

Saturation is slightly lower, but color contrast is slightly higher than in the case AMOLED movie.

Now at an angle of approximately 45 degrees to the plane and to the side of the screen (profile Basic).

White box:

The brightness at an angle on both screens has noticeably decreased (to avoid strong darkening, the shutter speed is increased compared to previous photos), but in the case of Samsung, the drop in brightness is much less pronounced. As a result, with formally the same brightness screen samsung The Galaxy S8 + looks much brighter visually (compared to LCD screens), as the screen of a mobile device often has to be viewed from at least a slight angle.

And the test picture:

It can be seen that the colors have not changed much on both screens and the brightness in Samsung smartphone at an angle noticeably higher. The switching of the state of the matrix elements is performed almost instantly, but at the turn-on front there may be a step with a width of about 17 ms (which corresponds to a screen refresh rate of 60 Hz). For example, this is how the dependence of brightness on time looks like when switching from black to white and vice versa:

In some conditions, the presence of such a step can lead to plumes trailing behind moving objects. However, dynamic scenes in films on OLED screens are distinguished by high definition and even some "jerky" movements.

The gamma curve plotted using 32 points with equal intervals in terms of the numerical value of the shade of gray showed that there was no significant blockage either in the highlights or in the shadows. Indicator approximating power function is equal to 2.09, which is slightly less than the standard value of 2.2, while the real gamma curve deviates little from the power dependence:

Recall that in the case of OLED screens, the brightness of image fragments dynamically changes in accordance with the nature of the displayed image - it decreases for generally light images. As a result, the obtained dependence of brightness on the hue (gamma curve), most likely, does not correspond a little to the gamma curve of a static image, since the measurements were carried out with sequential output of shades of gray on almost the entire screen.

Color gamut in case of profile Adaptive display very wide:

In profile AMOLED movie coverage is a bit narrower:

When choosing a profile Photo AMOLED the coverage is compressed to the borders of Adobe RGB:

When choosing a profile Basic coverage is compressed to sRGB borders:

Without correction, the spectra of the components are very well separated:

In case of a profile Basic with maximum correction, the color components are already noticeably mixed with each other:

Note that normal sRGB-optimized images appear unnaturally saturated on screens with wide color gamut without proper color correction. Hence the recommendation - in most cases, watching movies, photos and everything natural is better when choosing a profile. Basic, and only if the photo was taken on the Adobe RGB setting, it makes sense to switch the profile to Photo AMOLED... Profile AMOLED movie despite the name, the least suitable for watching movies and anything else.

The grayscale balance is good. The color temperature is close to 6500 K, while this parameter does not change very much in a significant part of the gray scale, which improves the visual perception of the color balance. The deviation from the blackbody spectrum (ΔE) for most of the gray scale remains below 10 units, which is considered a good indicator for a consumer device:

(In most cases, the darkest areas of the gray scale can be ignored, since the color balance there does not really matter, and the error in measuring color characteristics at low brightness is large.)

For some reason, only when choosing a profile Adaptive display it becomes possible to adjust the color balance with three adjustments of the intensity of the primary colors, but due to the too wide color gamut, it is in this profile that it makes no sense to correct the balance.

Let's summarize. The screen has a very high maximum brightness and has excellent anti-reflective properties, so the device can be used outdoors without any problems, even on a sunny summer day. In complete darkness, the brightness can be lowered to a comfortable value. It is permissible to use the mode with automatic brightness adjustment, which works adequately. The advantages of the screen include an effective oleophobic coating, as well as close to sRGB color gamut and good color balance. At the same time, let's recall the general advantages of OLED screens: true black color (if nothing is reflected in the screen), noticeably less than that of LCDs, the drop in image brightness when viewed from an angle. The disadvantages include modulation of the screen brightness. Users who are particularly sensitive to flicker may experience increased fatigue due to this. However, the overall quality of the screen is very high. Separately, we note that from the point of view of image quality, curled edges only harm, since this design find introduces very noticeable color tone distortions and reduces brightness at the edges of the picture, and in ambient light conditions leads to inevitable glare at least along one long side of the screen.

Camera

The front 8-megapixel camera does not receive its own flash, but it has a fast f / 1.7 lens and even supports intelligent autofocus with face detection. As a front flash, you can use the "fill" bright illumination of the screen directly at the moment of shooting. Naturally, there is a mode for retouching selfie photos. The front camera shoots well for its level, there are no particular complaints about detail and sharpness, but it's hard to say that this camera is somehow better than its counterparts from Huawei, for example. Not bad, but nothing more.

The main camera uses a 12-megapixel sensor with a pixel size of 1.4 microns, as well as a fast f / 1.7 aperture lens, OIS and Dual Pixel technology, which is designed to provide fast enough autofocusing to capture even the sharpest movements in low light conditions. There is a very bright LED flash.

The camera shoots in automatic or manual mode. In the mode manual settings you can adjust the shutter speed (from 1/24000 to 10 s), sensitivity (up to ISO 800), white balance and exposure compensation. There is the possibility of retouching images, support for HDR auto and a selective focus mode to change the depth of field on the finished image. The camera is also connected to the intelligent assistant Bixby, which must recognize objects of shooting, find places and translate texts from the screen.

Using the Camera2 API, you can transfer camera control to third-party applications. It is also possible to save images in RAW.

The camera can shoot video in 4K resolution (3840 × 2160), but only at 30 fps, and 60 fps is available only in Full HD (1920 × 1080). There is also a shooting mode at an intermediate resolution of 2560 × 1440, also at 30 fps. There's an optical image stabilization feature that really makes handheld shooting on the go extremely smooth. In any of the resolutions, the camera copes very well with video shooting: sharpness, color rendition and detail are normal, there is enough brightness, artifacts and slowdowns are out of the question. There are no complaints about sound recording either: the sensitivity of the microphones is high, the sound is clear, loud, the noise reduction system adequately copes with the wind noise.

Movie # 1 (87 MB, 3840 × [email protected] fps, H.264, AAC)
Movie # 2 (33 MB, 2560 × [email protected] fps, H.264, AAC)
Movie # 3 (28 MB, 1920 × [email protected] fps, H.264, AAC)

	Good sharpness along the frame field.
	Quite good detail in the distant shots.
	For indoor shooting, the detail is excellent.
	The camera handles fine and complex details well.
	Good detail when shooting at dusk.
	The text has been worked out perfectly.
	The camera copes well with macro photography.
	Good sharpness in the field of the frame and in plans.
	With the removal of the plan, the sharpness falls off slowly and smoothly.

We also tested the camera on a laboratory bench using our method.

Jpeg	RAW

Illumination ≈3200 lux.

Illumination ≈1400 lux.

Illumination ≈130 lux.

Illumination ≈130 lux, flash.

Lighting<1 люкс, вспышка.

Samsung continues to improve the quality of its cameras. The megapixel race, fortunately, has been forgotten, and now the manufacturer pays more attention to detail. Even in difficult scenes, the camera does not forget about small details, so the images look good even in low light. Soapiness is gradually fading away, which means that the algorithms of the program have improved. The program has practically ceased to "eat" the details, and sharping is almost invisible. Of course, if you look closely, you can find both, but this is nit-picking.

A laboratory test confirms that the camera has remained virtually unchanged from the previous generation. However, there are differences, they just lie in the little things that are difficult to reflect on the stand. For those who like to tinker with photo processing, the manufacturer has made a very good RAW, which in some situations really allows you to get a result better than an intra-camera JPEG.

In general, the camera turned out to be quite flagship and will perfectly cope with many different scenes.

Telephone part and communications

The communication capabilities of the Samsung Galaxy S8 + include support for the advanced LTE Cat.16 technology, all three LTE FDD frequency bands of interest to us (Band 3, 7, 20) are supported, and there is also support for four TDD LTE bands (Band 38-41). Supports two Wi-Fi bands (2.4 and 5 GHz), there is Bluetooth 5.0 LE, you can organize a wireless access point via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth channels. The developers claim that thanks to the support of Wi-Fi 1204-QAM and LTE Cat.16 standards, the download speed compared to the previous flagships of the Samsung Galaxy S7 / S7 edge is increased by 20% both over Wi-Fi and over the mobile Internet. The device behaves confidently in the city limits of the Moscow region, the quality of signal reception raises no objections, the device demonstrates high speeds in the usual testing places, quickly restores the connection after a break.

The device has an NFC module, but it does not support electronic travel cards. The USB Type-C connector supports connecting external devices in USB OTG mode, the corresponding adapter is included in the accessory kit. The data transfer speed between a computer and a smartphone via a cable connected in the case of a PC to the USB 3.1 Type-C ports is about 26 MB / s.

The navigation module works with GPS (with A-GPS), with the domestic Glonass and with the Chinese Beidou. The first satellites during a cold start are detected within the first seconds, the positioning clarity is maximum. There is a built-in magnetic compass.

The phone application supports Smart Dial, that is, when dialing a phone number, a search is immediately carried out by the first letters in contacts. In the conversational dynamics, the voice of a familiar interlocutor is well recognizable, there is no extraneous noise, the sound is natural, clear, the volume reserve is sufficient. The power of the vibrating alert is much higher than the average level; its intensity can be changed manually.

Software and multimedia

As a software platform, the Samsung Galaxy S8 + uses Android OS version 7.0 Nougat with its own proprietary shell. There is a convenient opportunity to quickly transfer all data from an old smartphone to a new Samsung Galaxy S8 or S8 + using the OTG adapter that is included in the package.

First of all, it should be noted that the enlarged display with a changed aspect ratio and high resolution provides more space for any information, text or graphics, so a lot of attention has been paid to the dual-window mode. Not every application here can be made to work in a small window; for this, each has a corresponding icon displayed in the menu of the last opened programs. That is, you first need to start and minimize the application in order to understand whether it has the ability to work in two-window mode, and then find the second one. Not a very simple and intuitive option, but you can get used to it. In addition, these windows can be resized. There is also the possibility of reducing the entire working area of the screen for ease of control with one hand. It cannot be said that this functionality is convenient in practice, since all elements on the screen become too small, especially the buttons of the virtual keyboard, but there is such a possibility.

Due to the non-standard aspect ratio of the screen, the video in the player is displayed with black bars on the sides, but using scaling, the image can be stretched to the very edges of the screen. Some games report possible display issues, but overall we have not encountered any unsolvable issues.

Another feature of the Samsung Galaxy S8 + screen is the ability to use its curved sides, available for interaction with fingers due to the lack of frames. There is nothing new here: as before, you can display an illuminated virtual strip on the side of the screen, when you press it, a menu is opened that is responsible for quick contacts and instant access to the most used applications. Also here it becomes possible to select and save any part of the screen with further text recognition.

But of course, the main feature of the software of the new Korean smartphones was the emergence of Samsung's voice assistant - Bixby, which is a direct competitor to both Siri and Google Assistant, which, by the way, remained in place. As conceived by the developers, Bixby will be able not only to answer questions by collecting information on the Web, but also to identify a product using a camera and search for it on Amazon, translate texts in real time, and recognize landmarks. But the functions that will allow you to fully control the smartphone through voice commands are not yet available and will appear later.

As already mentioned, the smartphone's camera is paired with the Bixby smart assistant, which is supposed to recognize subjects, find places and translate texts from the screen. True, in practice, for the Russian realities, all this is still difficult for him. Even if the main language of the device is Russian, the program will persistently offer to translate from any other language, but not from Russian. The assistant also does not know everything yet. At the same time, there were no problems with the translation from English into Russian.

There are very few additional programs, and those that exist are represented mainly by a set of Microsoft applications. Of particular note is Game Launcher, a handy game aggregator that automatically collects all installed game applications in one place, and also provides additional functions related to this. For example, it is possible to start recording the gameplay from the screen right during the game, with its further broadcast on the network. You can also use Game Launcher to improve system performance when launching selected games to enhance your gaming experience.

For listening to music, only a regular Google Play Music player is provided, supplemented by a powerful set of manual settings and equalizer presets, as well as Adapt sound technology for headphones. The set with the smartphone comes with two-driver AKG headphones with a very good sound quality for their level. But if everything is fine with the sound in the headphones, then the main speaker of the smartphone is not so impressive. It produces a rather monotonous and flat sound, without noticeable depth and saturation, although there are no complaints about the purity and volume reserve.

Performance

The hardware platform of the Samsung Galaxy S8 + is built on the Samsung Exynos 8895 Octa SoC with 8 cores in two clusters: 4 Exynos M1 cores up to 2.3 GHz and 4 ARM Cortex-A53 cores up to 1.7 GHz. This SoC is made using the latest 10nm process technology. Responsible for graphics processing is the Mali-G71 video accelerator with support for the Vulkan graphics API. The amount of RAM is 4 GB, and the internal memory is 64 GB, of which about 1.6 GB of RAM and 52.5 GB of ROM are initially free.

It should be noted that traditionally for Samsung Galaxy devices can be based on different SoCs: in this case, it is Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 or Exynos 8895. As always, the question of supply of this or that modification will depend on the region. The smartphone we received for tests ran on the Samsung Exynos 8895 platform.

According to the results of all SoC tests, without exception, Samsung Exynos 8895 showed the maximum results, it is the most powerful mobile platform at the moment of all we tested. Accordingly, the Samsung Galaxy S8 + is one of the most powerful smartphones available today and has a significant headroom for future updates. The smartphone confidently copes with any tasks in real scenarios, and thanks to the powerful video accelerator, it behaves perfectly even in the most demanding games. These videos of the gameplay in Modern Combat 5 and in Mortal Kombat X were recorded by the built-in means of the smartphone itself using the Game Launcher application.

Benchmarking AnTuTu and GeekBench:

All the results obtained by us when testing the smartphone in the latest versions of popular benchmarks, we have summarized for convenience in tables. Several other devices from various segments are usually added to the table, also tested on similar latest versions of benchmarks (this is done only for a visual assessment of the obtained dry numbers). Unfortunately, within the framework of one comparison, it is impossible to present the results from different versions of benchmarks, so many worthy and relevant models remain "behind the scenes" - due to the fact that they once passed the "obstacle course" on previous versions of test programs.

Testing the graphics subsystem in game tests 3DMark, GFXBenchmark and Bonsai Benchmark:

When testing in 3DMark for the most productive smartphones, it is now possible to run the application in Unlimited mode, where the rendering resolution is fixed at 720p and VSync is disabled (which can cause the speed to rise above 60 fps).

	Samsung Galaxy S8 + (Samsung Exynos 8895 Octa)	Lg g6 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 821)	Asus Zenfone 3 Deluxe (Qualcomm Snapdragon 820)	Honor 8 Pro (HiSilicon Kirin 960)	Meizu Pro 6 Plus (Samsung Exynos 8890 Octa)
3DMark Ice Storm Sling Shot ES 3.1 (more is better)	2628	2409	2676	1417	1869
GFXBenchmark Manhattan ES 3.1 (Onscreen, fps)	19	12	31	18	13
GFXBenchmark Manhattan ES 3.1 (1080p Offscreen, fps)	36	24	32	21	24
GFXBenchmark T-Rex (Onscreen, fps)	57	38	59	46	52
GFXBenchmark T-Rex (1080p Offscreen, fps)	103	61	92	57	71

Browser cross-platform tests:

As for benchmarks for evaluating the speed of the javascript engine, you should always make allowances for the fact that the results in them significantly depend on the browser in which they are launched, so that the comparison can be truly correct only on the same OS and browsers, and this possibility is available when testing not always. In the case of Android OS, we always try to use Google Chrome.

Video playback

To test the "omnivorous" video playback (including support for various codecs, containers and special features, such as subtitles), we used the most common formats that make up the bulk of the content available on the Web. Note that it is important for mobile devices to have support for hardware video decoding at the chip level, since it is often impossible to process modern versions using processor cores alone. Also, do not expect a mobile device to decode everything, since the leadership in flexibility belongs to the PC, and no one is going to challenge it. All results are tabulated.

Surprisingly, according to the test results, there was a rare case when the standard player does not reproduce AC3 sound, and the third-party MX Player successfully copes with all test files without exception.

Further video playback testing was done by Alexey Kudryavtsev.

We could not theoretically test the possible support for adapters for outputting images to an external device due to the lack of an adapter option that connects to the USB Type-C port, so we had to limit ourselves to testing the output of video files on the screen of the device itself. To do this, we used a set of test files with an arrow and a rectangle moving one division per frame (see "Testing methods for video playback and display devices. Version 1 (for mobile devices)" Red marks indicate possible problems related to the playback of the corresponding files.

According to the criterion for outputting frames, the quality of video files playback on the screen of the device itself is very good, since frames (or groups of frames) can be displayed with more or less uniform intervals of intervals and without frame drops. When playing video files with a resolution of 1920 by 1080 (1080p) on a smartphone screen, the image of the video file itself is displayed exactly along the narrow border of the screen, going into the bends. The clarity of the picture is high, but not perfect, since there is no escape from interpolation to the screen resolution. However, for the sake of experiment, you can switch to one-to-one pixel mode, there will be no interpolation, but the PenTile features will appear - the vertical world through the pixel will be in a grid, and the horizontal one will be slightly greenish. The latter is true for the test world; the described artifacts are absent in real frames. The brightness range displayed on the screen actually corresponds to the standard range of 16-235: in the shadows, only a couple of shades merge with black, but in the highlights all gradations of shades are displayed. Note that in the darkest shades of the grayscale, color tone variation is noticeable.

Battery life

The non-removable battery installed in the Samsung Galaxy S8 + has a capacity of 3500 mAh (in the regular Galaxy S8 this value is 3000 mAh). The new device of Koreans demonstrates very decent results of autonomy, this level is clearly above average, although far from records. In real scenarios of use with a normal average statistical operating mode, the hero of the review is quite capable of holding out without recharging for a whole day, but one cannot do without a daily night charge.

	Samsung Galaxy S8 + (Samsung Exynos 8895 Octa)	Lg g6 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 821)	Asus Zenfone 3 Deluxe (Qualcomm Snapdragon 820)	Honor 8 Pro (HiSilicon Kirin 960)	Meizu Pro 6 Plus (Samsung Exynos 8890 Octa)
Mozilla kraken (ms, less is better)	2535	2494	2931	3139	13047
Google octane 2 (more is better)	9905	10036	9287	10155	3116
SunSpider (ms, less is better)

Testing has traditionally been conducted at typical power consumption levels without using power saving features. In the settings of the Samsung Galaxy S8 +, you can find operating modes from high-performance to economy, the choice of which will affect a lot, right down to the brightness and even the screen resolution.

Continuous reading in the Moon + Reader program (with a standard, light theme) at the minimum comfortable brightness level (the brightness was set to 100 cd / m2) with auto scrolling lasted 21.5 hours until the battery was fully discharged, and with continuous high quality video viewing (720p ) with the same brightness level via a home Wi-Fi network, the device operates up to 14.5 hours. In 3D games mode, the smartphone can work for more than 5 hours.

The smartphone should support fast charging, but we were not able to test this, since at the time of writing this review, the test device did not come with an AC adapter. However, from a conventional charger (5 V 2 A) the device charges quite quickly, within about an hour and a half with a current of 1.75 A at a voltage of 5 V. Wireless charging is also supported (WPC and PMA).

Outcome

The prices for the Russian market are as follows: On April 28, the Galaxy S8 and S8 + smartphones went on sale in Russia at a suggested retail price of 54,990 and 59,990, respectively. It is not entirely clear why the difference in the cost of devices of the same functionality with a slight difference only in the size of the display and the battery is as much as 5 thousand. Be that as it may, in the case of the Samsung Galaxy S8 + for 60 thousand, the manufacturer offers one of the best smartphones in many respects, including camera quality, hardware platform performance and very advanced communication capabilities, in an attractive and very unusual case, as well as with a lot of additional functions, many of which, however, were available in previous models of the series.

At the same time, it cannot be said that the smartphone has become some kind of breakthrough, a new word in the creation of mobile devices and is completely devoid of disadvantages. A single main camera, although it is one of the best on the market, still looks rather strange against the background of the general movement towards increasing the number of modules. Also, one cannot praise the sound of the main speaker: in terms of sound, the device is clearly inferior to the flagship smartphones Apple and Huawei. The decision to move the fingerprint scanner to the back, and even to such an unfortunate location, was also very dubious. Well, one cannot but recall the recent problems with the ignition of the batteries of Samsung mobile devices, against the background of which users can now be wary of paying a very high price, which the manufacturer asked for their mobile novelties, right away. And nevertheless, the interest in the flagship devices of the Korean company has not weakened, it can be seen. Even those who were not going to shell out 60 thousand rubles for a smartphone are now eagerly discussing its capabilities on the Internet. However, something in the testing process remained undisclosed for us as well, since we did not have the final commercial sample in our hands. Most likely, we are still waiting, at least, a meeting with the brought to mind Bixby assistant, as well as with camera firmware updates, which may well expand its already remarkable capabilities.

In conclusion, we suggest watching our video review of the Samsung Galaxy S8 + smartphone:

We also suggest watching our video review comparing smartphones Samsung Galaxy S8 + and Galaxy S7 Edge: