Gadgetory

pocket now's galaxy si coverage is brought to you by B brain just when I thought I was done with big phones Samsung drags me back in from my first time holding it to the first day playing with it to now this design continues to impress it's a hardware aesthetic which remains visually appealing and these symmetrical curved sides playfully confuse your fingertips into thinking this phone is thinner than it really is you've all heard me say this before that this is a stunning look which should be admired under museum lighting but I still can't shake my personal feelings on glass back devices beautiful to look at but not my favorite to hold and while I would prefer to use my phone's naked the phone's naked not me naked the SI plus sort of mandates a caesura skin it's an age-old debate in our comments case or no case and the SI plus doesn't help at all and moving the needle on those opposing viewpoints for such a large phone it fits in the hand terrifically well and this is the easiest time my stumpy thumb has had with lateral swipes on a phablet but sliding the phone up to unlock then down for navigation controls then up for a notification shade then holding the phone like a camera this thing always feels like it's balanced on the least amount of fingertip surface I can comfortably utilize I just can't shake a small concern about drop performance Gorilla Glass 5 has proven to be a durable performer but these edges provide more surface area to wreck your day with a fairly common life style issue like dropping your phone that ip68 water resistance is always appreciated though Samsung was ahead of the curve there and it's still kind of amazing to see open ports on a phone which handily survives being completely submerged the tech on board is well documented by this point it's about as cutting-edge a collection of specs as we should expect for 2017 disappointing only the RAM junkies in our audience North American owners will see the Qualcomm 835 while the rest of the world will receive the Exynos processor we were hoping to see more parity this year but from early benchmarking Exynos continues to deliver a consistent bump in performance even for that disparity the 835 at least catches Qualcomm up to the horsepower we've been enjoying for a while now in the fall a mate 9 and p10 a small hardware gripe the galaxy's home button has a vibration sensor to mimic the tactile response of hardware but it doesn't pulse consistently sometimes I press longer expecting that haptic feel and launched my Google assistance instead one area I wish Samsung had been a bit more inspired by the response on the iPhone 7 the fingerprint sensor home button is gone of course moving that biometric security feature clumsily to the rear of the phone using the SI plus for a week now I still smudge my camera on the regular but my early teething pains and unlocking have mostly been ironed out mostly hilarious that Samsung has a camera pop-up warning you not to smudge your lens not that they couldn't have helped us out there with a better sensor location and I do need to deliver a small retraction from my first impressions video that I was disappointed and not having a notification shade gesture on the sensor which of course that is included it's still not as convenient is what I got used to on my mate 9 but I'm happy to have this organ amah consideration the counter-argument to this fingerprint sensor is to train the iris scanners on the front face so you don't have to smudge your camera the performance is incredibly fast unlocked in all but backlit conditions but it's a much more deliberate action I'd prefer the phone be unlocked before I hold it up to my face and so pairing over Bluetooth with my car and a SmartWatch for smart unlock has pretty much eliminated when I might use that iris scanner speaking of bringing the phone up to your face that brings us to this new AMOLED display a 6.2 inch wqhd plus LMNOP 18 point 5 by 9 aspect ratio monster which just slightly bests the 5.9 inch mate 9 for overall area and makes a mockery of the forehead and chin bezels on an iphone plus if you've got HDR content to stream do it because this screen will handle it beautifully a small concern though on the galaxy s7 switching the display to basic mode used to deliver one of the most color accurate screens on any phone we tested the s8 color processing is downright ruddy by comparison and users should probably stay in some kind of adaptive mode until Samsung can push a software fix another small concern the phone pops out of the box using a lower than native resolution ostensibly for better performance of power management which we'll talk about later in this review there's nothing wrong with this in theory but I would have preferred some kind of disclosure or an option to change this during the initial setup why pay for all these pixels if users aren't aware that they're not going to use them all moving over to software the spirit of TouchWiz lives on in that nearly every aspect of this phone has been touched skinned or tweaked some of these changes are comically unnecessary like sliding up to get the app drawer then laterally to get app pages is that a huge deal nope you'll get used to it but why change directions like that at all it's just different for the sake of being different a menus settings UI elements they all have that special Samsung twist to them though switching to a dark theme I still couldn't find a way to change the notification shade someone please drop me a comment if you know how the screen gets plenty dim for night use I'm still not a fan of that bright white notification slide for all this customizing Samsung still hasn't quite answered the question of why we need this taller screen more area is great but what do we really get for it games and videos will likely be cut off at the corners the camera app is a sea of wasted space and we're reaching farther for corner mounted UI elements the area is improved you will see more content in your browser and Samy does feature some of the best split-screen multitasking available easily shifting the size of apps on your display but it's not so much better than an LG g6 that we would call that a purchasing recommendation Samsung's answer for productivity is one we've seen since the s6 days the edge screen panel now slightly more evolved for customizing at a glance content and shortcuts and using a ton of other phones I keep forgetting it's there but people using the s8 as a permanent daily driver will probably better enjoy quick access to these shortcuts Game Center also returns as a handy way to capture gameplay but with recent improvements to YouTube gaming and Google Play games we probably recommend the Google apps over Samsung's cost Ellucian I should probably stream some future fight when I get a chance at least from here I can customize performance and screen options unfortunately we can't comment much on Vic speed it's not done yet we have to ding Samsung here the same way we dinged HTC for the you ultras missing AI this is such an important feature that there's a dedicated button for it but it wasn't ready for launch so our review remains incomplete if using Bixby vision is any early indication we're not entirely impressed with Samsung's digital assistant strategy as it stands I've already disabled the Bixby homepage which just lags the phone in one of the most important areas for smooth performance just like Flipboard for previous generations of galaxies last for software I was a bit disappointed to see the s8 ships with Android 7.0 as more phones are arriving with 7.1 sitting on an e team T s7 which is still stuck on marshmallow this hasn't given me a lot of hope that Samsung can leverage carrier relationships for more timely update we'll just have to be ok with devices skinned this heavily lagging behind leaner builds of Android a closer look at performance and it's good it's about par for a Samsung phone sure this is bleeding edge hardware but Samsung has a lot running on this device even using an unlocked phone without carrier bloat the general UI and app performance is snappy but phones with less powerful hardware and less customization often feel comparable or even a touch quicker now this hardware is overkill for the communications basics and firing up a poorly optimized for Android game like Marvel's future fight this is the smoothest we've seen it run on Qualcomm hardware but getting into busy gameplay moments we think Huawei still has the edge a quick note on this game specifically we use it because it's poorly optimized it's a test of brute force performance a better optimized games will obviously run a lot smoother LCE connections around town were generally excellent on 18t regularly best in the LGG 6 using androids built-in reception gage that was also mirrored and faster download speeds running some speed tests Wi-Fi performance though was nearly identical when testing from the edges of my condo if anything I saw a slight bump to the g6 but one so minor it could easily be within the margin of error for this app we've already produced our real camera review for the s8 and it's the most in-depth examination of photo and video performance available on the Internet we'd highly recommend watching that if you're curious about what this 12 megapixel camera can really do especially the conclusion to that video but as a brief summation here if you don't like the Samsung aesthetic of popping saturation and sharpening the s8 won't do much to change your mind otherwise we've got a terrific all-rounder with excellent auto focus performance though it only stands as a minor improvement over the s7 which came before it like the g6 one of my favorite improvements has little to do with the actual output of the camera but more the fact that this camera module is now completely flush with the rear housing an impressive feat which another manufacturer will hopefully learn from likewise we also have a real audio review available and a separate review of the included earbuds which are not made by a kg but prominently feature the branding which Samsung acquired in their acquisition of harman happily this whole system represents a noticeable step up in speaker and headphone quality over the s7 and we've got those reviews linked below this video for folks who want to take a deeper dive one thing we didn't cover in depth oh Samsung's EQ tweaking is a convenient way to tailor fit playback for those folks who are into that kind of thing it's really easy to use so if you're not quite impressed with audio out of the box this should help you dial in the color you prefer now our usual pairing of battery tests the s8 plus pulled very normal numbers for draining and recharging this was a fairly conservative year for Samsung in terms of battery tech and caution was probably the right play the si+ had very few issues lasting a day with moderate to heavy use light users should easily able to hyper mild two days out of this battery and while it's not the fastest phone we've ever recharged a short stint on a charger should give you a healthy top off when you need it still we wanted to take a closer look at the display resolution and how that might affect run time pushing our video streaming tests to 1 hour for each resolution we really only saw significant gains when dropping resolution down to 720p the difference between 1080 and 1440 was nearly identical anecdotally we also didn't see much performance difference so we're not quite sure why this was such a priority for Samsung to deliver resolution reduced out of the box and why there was no disclosure so let's wrap this up where's that leave us with the Galaxy s8 plus well folks we're looking at what is sure to be one of the best selling phones of 2017 I may will be tackling a separate review of the smaller essay but in early sale data it looks like the plus has a slight lead probably a combination of the thinner width and the people who were left in the lurch by the note sevens absence this is a stunning example of design but it leaves us with a few philosophical questions what does this screen deliver that can't be done on a smaller display sure we all hate bezels I guess but isn't this kind of worse in a way and including more powerful hardware is awesome but right now all manufacturers and not just Samsung would benefit greatly from better software optimization the experiments we've been playing with from Huawei oneplus and the pixel point to the true lifestyle improvements we should expect from better hardware software synergy one of the concerning elements of this phone it feels like there's a lot of untapped potential here and as a general rule I tend to avoid making technology purchasing recommendations based on potential but instead based on what that gadget can do at the exact moment you buy it because sometimes the potential is realized and that feels like getting a bonus for your cash but when potential is left unfulfilled that often feels like a financial loss are you really getting your money's worth it's a precious question to ask as phones start climbing north of $800 the Galaxy s8 certainly delivers a spec sheet arguing for that price tag no question there's a lot packed into this gadget but only you and your wallet can determine if you're really going to get the full return on this investment hey folks if you're looking to protect the glass on your Galaxy s8 give it a little bit more grip or prevent all of those gnarly fingerprint smudges you should just wash your hand head on over to D brand or they've got a whole collection of really awesome skins for you to customize the look and feel of your Galaxy smartphone there's a link for their wares down below this video and we thank the brand for supporting production on this channel as always thanks so much for watching be sure to subscribe to this channel for our full Galaxy s8 coverage including camera and audio reviews and hi maids full review of the smaller s8 which in our behind-the-scenes conversations should stand as a nice counterpoint to my experiences with the s8 plus and help us out with some sharing on your favorite social networks for PocketNow i'm juan carlos bag now some gadget guy on twitter and instagram and i will catch you all on the next review