Galaxy S8 and S8 plus officially unveiled

[AlTech]

HOLY FUCKING SHIT.

 

EVERYBODY Is so fucking clueless.

 

I'm sorry but this is really killing me.

 

The Note 7 exploded because the battery was substantially too large. Samsung is trying to avoid exploding phones. WTF did you expected them to do? Note 7 2.0?

[suicidalfranco]

On the bright side it has a 6.2" screen, on the down side: no removable battery, glass back, fps next to the camera instead of bellow, small battery, 7.0 at launch and no words on when it will get 7.1, only curved edges option. 

Overall: nay, I'll pass

[Space Reptile]

no physical home button , dont care

[TidaLWaveZ]

5 hours ago, JAKEBAB said:

Apparently people don't know what screen to body ratio is.

 

S8+, S7 Edge, S8

 

Exactly, the " too big" comments are far too plentiful.

 

If the s8 is too big then so is the pixel, the g6, the s7, the v20, the Moto Z, the HTC 10 and the oneplus 3/t.

[TidaLWaveZ]

6 hours ago, TheCMan said:

snip 

There are phones that are about $400 bucks that are actually comparable in speed and specs. 

snip

 

 

 

My argument/opinion is that there are not. I understand everyone has different tastes and wants as far as smartphones go but there's just too much to the s8 that sets it apart from latest flagships, nevertheless a $400 option.

 

The snapdragon 835 is not a small improvement from the 821. The only area where it doesn't greatly improve is single threaded performance which I'll agree is an important factor, but the 835 takes a good leap in multithreaded performance and power consumption. On top of that it offers 20% faster charging than snapdraqon 820/821 and LTE 16 download speeds of 1Gbps while the 820/821 maxed at 600Mbps. On top of all that the S8 is the first and only phone with bluetooth 5.

 

Outside of performance it's got every bell and whistle I can think of and a unique exterior (curved screen and minimal bezel)  that's not available from any other device. I understand saying that "comparable" is kind of a relative to the way the person views/uses smartphones, but from a technical standpoint no $400 phone is comparable.

 

Also, my initial response was really targeting the "There are better options if you are going to spend $700-800" comment, but I multiquoted because that comment was in response to you.

[mynameisjuan]

26 minutes ago, TidaLWaveZ said:

Exactly, the " too big" comments are far too plentiful.

 

If the s8 is too big then so is the pixel, the g6, the s7, the v20, the Moto Z, the HTC 10 and the oneplus 3/t.

It looks like the S8+ is almost the exact same size as my 6P with a much larger screen. 

 

I dont get why people are still complaining about phone sizes when over the past 4 years they have been all in the same size ranges. But yeah, if the S8 is too big so is every other phone. 

[LAwLz]

Looks like it will be an amazing phone, except for the ludacris price.

The design seems alright. It's certainly unique, but I dislike the idea of rounded screens. It's just covering up perfectly usable pixels. Just give me the pixels instead. Also, putting the fingerprint reader next to the camera seems idiotic. 

 

Not sure if I like the taller screen, but I guess Samsung wanted a larger screen. Reminds me about how Brian Klug talked about how it's impractical to go for larger screens because of the width. I guess making it taller but not wider is one way of solving that. It might be too big for me though. I really like the S7's size.

 

The display seems amazing. Love to see that Samsung supports HDR. Now we just need Android O to get released so that Android gets somewhat proper color management...

And no, that high PPI is not a waste. Not only is it fairly easy see a difference for certain things like Japanese writing, but it is also not as high as you might think assuming that Samsung has once again gone for a pen-tile-ish subpixel matrix.

 

Nice to see USB type-C.

 

Not a fan of the volume rocker instead of individual buttons, and that Bixby button will (at least to me) just be in the way. Hopefully you can reassign it to something else though, like maybe camera launch and shutter. That would be nice, but you probably can't.

 

Super excited about the new cameras. Taking 3 shots sounds like a bad idea for low light conditions though. The shutter lag will be crazy.

 

The Exynos 8895 seems amazing too.

Updated Mongoose architecture, but lower clock speed. Hopefully it will have higher performance though.

 

But that GPU... Holy crap. It's a 20 core monster (but some cores might be disabled). If no cores are disabled, then I would not be surprised if we see something like a 50% performance increase over the Exynos 8890 in the Galaxy S6 and the Adreno 530 in the Snapdragon 820.

 

Something I haven't heard a lot of people talk about is the new security subsystem. I really hope Samsung has started taking security as seriously as Apple.

 

 

3 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

HOLY FUCKING SHIT.

 

EVERYBODY Is so fucking clueless.

 

I'm sorry but this is really killing me.

 

The Note 7 exploded because the battery was substantially too large. Samsung is trying to avoid exploding phones. WTF did you expected them to do? Note 7 2.0?

The Note 7 did not explode because the battery was too large... It exploded because of manufacturing defects (two separate ones).

[michaelocarroll007]

20 hours ago, Colonel_Gerdauf said:

I've said this before, I'll say it again:

For an actual cellphone (under 6-inch), 1440P nets you zero visual benefits over 1080P. Want 1440P? Get a tablet then.

 

Also anything with a screen size exceeding 6 inches is classified as a tablet. Using such devices as smartphones is absolutely moronic.

Pretty much true about 1080p vs 1440p only noticible in the smallest of perfect situations. But with theses phones there not 16:9 so when you hear 6 inches its smaller then the screens your thinking of. The wider the screen the smaller it is at the same size. (Further away from a square 1:1 Ratio. Thats why old TVs 32 inches seemed a decent size but now 32 16:9 seem tiny 

[razor767]

They both look like good overall packages, if I can find a good deal for the S8, I will seriously consider upgrading to it.  I'm still going to wait for more new flagships from this year before deciding though. 

[Real_PhillBert]

My contract is up in May, I might replace my S6 with an S8. I'm still unsure of the curved edges though.

[No Nrg]

22 hours ago, AG1233 said:

 

 

Also these phones are the first "mobile HDR" phones according to Samsung.

 

 

LG G6 is coming out two weeks earlier and has Dolby Vision and HDR10 support, so this is just marketing speak. They aren't the first, they'd just like to believe they are.

[dizmo]

With all the leaks any kind of excitement for the actual launch was killed for me, but still, a very nice device. I hope someone does a comparison battery life wise with the different screen resolution sizes, would make for a good read plus show that there's likely not a huge gain to be had by going with a lower resolution panel. Hate the fingerprint sensor placement though, so hopefully they fix that for the Note line.

 

22 hours ago, Colonel_Gerdauf said:

-snip-

Also anything with a screen size exceeding 6 inches is classified as a tablet. Using such devices as smartphones is absolutely moronic.

I don't see it as moronic at all. I'll take as much screen as I can get provided the phones footprint doesn't get too large.

At this size, it's still smaller than the iPhone 7 Plus with its 5.5" screen...

22 hours ago, DnFx91 said:

Holy crap about the 10nm process though, didn't Intel just announce 10nm like literally today ?

I don't believe 10nm with an SoC and 10nm with an Intel processor are the same thing.

22 hours ago, MyName13 said:

Another year, another iPhone and Samsung Galaxy, how much can smartphones advance in just one year?Why does apple demand over 500$ for a phone that has only 1 year long warranty?Why don't they make something for entry and mid level consumers?Why don't they invest into batteries?Why do people even buy a new phone every year?Besides why do they use different soc for the American market?

• Batteries generally aren't produced by the same company that produces the phones. Also, they are constantly researching batteries. It just takes time, and you have to consider costing. Putting a brand new battery tech in something like a phone would skyrocket the price.
• Apple has always targeted the "premium" consumer. They've said so themselves.
• I get a new phone every year because I like having a new toy, and it makes the most sense financially.
• Snapdragon is a better known name in the US, so they use it instead of Exynos.

22 hours ago, Castdeath97 said:

-snip-

 

Contracts, to get newest and greatest, idiots, etc.

I agree with all but idiots. It's smarter for me to buy a new phone every year than to not.

22 hours ago, Castdeath97 said:

Yay for extra work for the GPU and non standard aspect ratios!  I can deal with 16:10 with laptops and 4:3 for tablets since they are browsing devices, but 37 : 18 for a phone...why?

Better holding in the hand. A narrower screen means the phone can be thinner. I'm all for it personally, though it makes me wonder what they'll do with the Note. I don't want to see a 7" screen but a device that's 170mm tall.

22 hours ago, DnFx91 said:

that raises my other question, is the Exynos chip actually manufactured by Samsung ? or is it just a custom ARM chip, apple style ?

ARM is just a design, anyone can manufacture the chips provided they have the fab.

19 hours ago, Soonercoop21 said:

The pixel density on a 1080p phone is already ludicrously high. It's like saying that you should get an 8k monitor right now because you can tell the difference between 4k and 8k. Objectively, 1080p will give you much better performance and battery life at the cost of little pixel density. It's just not practical. Refresh rate is a totally different and the human threshold is not 24 fps. I think the complaints about aspect ratio are legitimate considering that it's just awful from a compatibility standpoint. Browsing in mobile already sucks, do we have to make it worse? 

When reading small text on a larger screen, it's noticeable. Maybe not to you, but it is to me. "Better performance" in what? Gaming? What about those who use their phone as a business tool? With an aspect ratio like this not only is the phone easier to hold, but you get more vertical real estate for the keyboard. Seems like a win to me.

19 hours ago, TheCMan said:

here is what i don't understand. This is the galaxy line. The sizes of the phones are 5.8in and 6.2in. So either really big or really huge. 

This isn't the note series.

1. What happened to the 5.2 in galaxies?

2. Why the HECK would i buy the 5.8 when basically (.4 difference only and both about 6 inches) they are the same size almost and the 6.2  congress with bigger battery. 

 

Personally there's really fantastic devices out there now ag much cheaper prices and at about 5.2in that are just as good but soooooo much cheaper. $200-$400 instead of $700-$800.

1. The physical size of the device is almost the same. I think the market is showing that people will take bigger screens if they get the chance, and with the narrower phone it'll likely seem nicer when you hold it in the hand.

2. The larger of the two is quite a bit taller. Almost to the point I'd consider not getting it. Some people with smaller hands will likely go for the smaller one. Or people who are loyal to Samsung and like smaller phones.

 

There are cheaper devices but they usually fall short in several areas like the camera.

19 hours ago, vetali said:

its really strange they killed off the edge and put a curved display on the vanilla ones. Pretty much means I won't ever buy one. I'll wait for the MKBHD vid but the oneplus still seems more enticing to me if I decide to go android when I upgrade. 

 

Glad to see a headphone jack though. 

I think the new OnePlus is also rumored to have a curved screen...

18 hours ago, Deletist_Jerk said:

Man, I wish S8 was smaller like the size of Pixel (5 inches).

 

S8 and S8+ seems pretty close in size, to the point it takes out the wow factor of S8+. Especially for $100 price difference.  

 

Screen wise yes, physically no.

10 hours ago, huilun02 said:

Basic S8 has 5.8" screen, which is larger than any of their previous Note. Makes sense. Or are they doing away with the Note line entirely? If they are not, how big is the Note 8's screen gonna be?

The Note was more about the stylus. The screen size was definitely a factor, but as we move forward and phones get larger it'll be the S Pen that separates it from the rest, just like their Note like of tablets. That and higher spec than the Galaxy line.

I'm hoping to see a dual camera and repositioned fingerprint sensor with the Note this year.

2 hours ago, TidaLWaveZ said:

Exactly, the " too big" comments are far too plentiful.

 

If the s8 is too big then so is the pixel, the g6, the s7, the v20, the Moto Z, the HTC 10 and the oneplus 3/t.

To be fair, the V20 is hug compared to the rest of the devices you listed.

2 hours ago, TidaLWaveZ said:

-snip-

The snapdragon 835 is not a small improvement from the 821. The only area where it doesn't greatly improve is single threaded performance which I'll agree is an important factor, but the 835 takes a good leap in multithreaded performance and power consumption. On top of that it offers 20% faster charging than snapdraqon 820/821 and LTE 16 download speeds of 1Gbps while the 820/821 maxed at 600Mbps. On top of all that the S8 is the first and only phone with bluetooth 5.

-snip-

Nice to see someone that can look beyond the clock speed to consider if something's truly better. Though I don't think Bluetooth 5 is a huge selling point considering nothing uses it.

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

Looks like it will be an amazing phone, except for the ludacris price.

The design seems alright. It's certainly unique, but I dislike the idea of rounded screens. It's just covering up perfectly usable pixels. Just give me the pixels instead. Also, putting the fingerprint reader next to the camera seems idiotic. 

-snip-

I think the price is pretty much what everyone expected. Yes, it's high, but you're also getting something relatively unique.

Wasn't the rounded screen to help protect against impacts due to it being closer to the edge of the device?

I really hope you can remap the button as well...but sadly I don't see it being a thing.

I didn't watch the reveal, but the three shot thing sounds a lot like HDR...

 

[AG1233]

7 minutes ago, dizmo said:

 and it makes the most sense financially.

Can you tell me your reasoning regarding this,I would be genuinely interested in it .

[Devin92]

one hand operation is gone..... it is already hard to reach to the top of the screen with standard 5.1 display: s7,g5,htc10 etc. now with the new thin bezel design, its impossible. Am I and only one missing one hand operation? when I have one hand occupied, and desperately want to reach out to the top of the screen it drives me crazy.

 

another flaw is the placement of the fps. seriously, why will you put it that high? plus, i always think front facing fps is the best placement, whether you are unlocking it from your pocket or from the phone sitting on a table. does the phone have IRIS scanner? maybe thats a way to ditch fps.

 

i would like to see they make a flat screen one with the same bezeless design but reduce the height. the flat screen should save a lot of internal space so they can put similar/same spec in.

[Doobeedoo]

It's a pretty good phone overall, love the body to screen ratio, more screen real estate. But what I don't like is the 'edge' display in general. I have S6 and I'm happy with it.

Shame how phones can't ship or get updated faster with latest Android update sooner though. 7.0 and not 7.1 but oh well.

As far as camera I though they'll have that Sony sensor for 960fps slow motion shoot, that's just awesome. Also, dual front facing speakers, needs to show up on phones.

[TidaLWaveZ]

35 minutes ago, dizmo said:

snip

Nice to see someone that can look beyond the clock speed to consider if something's truly better. Though I don't think Bluetooth 5 is a huge selling point considering nothing uses it.

snip

Do the devices you're outputting to have to be bluetooth 5 as well to take advantage of the dual broadcasting capability? If not that seems like a nice, usable feature in many scenarios but I agree it's not a huge selling point.

[AG1233]

14 minutes ago, Devin92 said:

 

another flaw is the placement of the fps. seriously, why will you put it that high? plus, i always think front facing fps is the best placement, whether you are unlocking it from your pocket or from the phone sitting on a table. does the phone have IRIS scanner? maybe thats a way to ditch fps.

It does have a iris scanner and a face recognition software.

[Devin92]

14 minutes ago, AG1233 said:

It does have a iris scanner and a face recognition software.

lets hope it will work accurate and fast like fps. doubtful tho. since those involves image processing, which is much more demanding than a fps.

[dizmo]

44 minutes ago, AG1233 said:

Can you tell me your reasoning regarding this,I would be genuinely interested in it .

So I buy a new phone from someone on Craigslist for a bit less than one costs new. Then I sell it a year later for about what I paid for it, and purchase another new device. If I waited 2 years, the device is worth substantially less. This way I spend maybe $75 a year to upgrade to a brand new device. It also lets me try out different form factors until I find out all the features that are must haves for me. For example I now know that I must have a top notch camera (Note5 vs Nexus 5x), but I don't care if the fingerprint reader is on the back or the front.

[AlTech]

18 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Looks like it will be an amazing phone, except for the ludacris price.

The design seems alright. It's certainly unique, but I dislike the idea of rounded screens. It's just covering up perfectly usable pixels. Just give me the pixels instead. Also, putting the fingerprint reader next to the camera seems idiotic. 

 

Not sure if I like the taller screen, but I guess Samsung wanted a larger screen. Reminds me about how Brian Klug talked about how it's impractical to go for larger screens because of the width. I guess making it taller but not wider is one way of solving that. It might be too big for me though. I really like the S7's size.

 

The display seems amazing. Love to see that Samsung supports HDR. Now we just need Android O to get released so that Android gets somewhat proper color management...

And no, that high PPI is not a waste. Not only is it fairly easy see a difference for certain things like Japanese writing, but it is also not as high as you might think assuming that Samsung has once again gone for a pen-tile-ish subpixel matrix.

 

Nice to see USB type-C.

 

Not a fan of the volume rocker instead of individual buttons, and that Bixby button will (at least to me) just be in the way. Hopefully you can reassign it to something else though, like maybe camera launch and shutter. That would be nice, but you probably can't.

 

Super excited about the new cameras. Taking 3 shots sounds like a bad idea for low light conditions though. The shutter lag will be crazy.

 

The Exynos 8895 seems amazing too.

Updated Mongoose architecture, but lower clock speed. Hopefully it will have higher performance though.

 

But that GPU... Holy crap. It's a 20 core monster (but some cores might be disabled). If no cores are disabled, then I would not be surprised if we see something like a 50% performance increase over the Exynos 8890 in the Galaxy S6 and the Adreno 530 in the Snapdragon 820.

Based on what I could gather, there are 2 variants of the Exynos chip.

 

One has all 20 GPU cores enabled and the other has 18 enabled.

 

I have no idea which variant is for which phone (S8 or S8 Plus).

18 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Something I haven't heard a lot of people talk about is the new security subsystem. I really hope Samsung has started taking security as seriously as Apple.

 

 

The Note 7 did not explode because the battery was too large... It exploded because of manufacturing defects (two separate ones).

One issue was that the battery was so large that some cathodes and anodes bent. This caused explosion but no fire.

[AlTech]

18 hours ago, LAwLz said:

ludacris price.

*ludicrous

 

And yes, I whole heartedly agree with regard to the price tag.

[Nowak]

16 hours ago, Devin92 said:

one hand operation is gone..... it is already hard to reach to the top of the screen with standard 5.1 display: s7,g5,htc10 etc. now with the new thin bezel design, its impossible. Am I and only one missing one hand operation? when I have one hand occupied, and desperately want to reach out to the top of the screen it drives me crazy.

One-handed use hasn't been a huge complaint with the LG G6, which has a 5.7" display. A lot of reviewers say it's much more comfortable to hold than every other phone with a 5.7" display one-handed, due to the narrow bezels. Probably not gonna be an issue with the Galaxy S8 too.

[Vanderburg]

Preordered my S8 on day 1. Yay.

[TidaLWaveZ]

3 hours ago, Vanderburg said:

Preordered my S8 on day 1. Yay.

Preordered mine on minute 1, I better get it with the first shipment!

[Devin92]

6 hours ago, Daring said:

One-handed use hasn't been a huge complaint with the LG G6, which has a 5.7" display. A lot of reviewers say it's much more comfortable to hold than every other phone with a 5.7" display one-handed, due to the narrow bezels. Probably not gonna be an issue with the Galaxy S8 too.

I am not complaining against other 5.7 inch phones. its already a known fact you cant operate a 5.7 inch phone with one hand prior g6.  without changing physical size tat much, ofc its gonna be better than other 5.7 inches. but with s7 and g5, its already pretty much the limit of one hand operation for most of the users, and now, the same dimension with a taller screen will make it impossible to reach the top of the screen without adjusting your holding position.