Gadgetory

pocket now's galaxy sa coverage is brought to you by D brain before we jump into the review a minor oversight the LG G six actually represented the first full year of real camera reviews from one generation of phones to the next a little milestone that I thought was kind of important because this means with the galaxy s 8 we have a similar review of the s7 that you all can reference to see how these two might compare the main talking point for the Galaxy S 8 has been this new screen aspect ratio and very little has been mentioned about camera improvements which has led some in our audience worried that there might not be any improvements to this camera we've shot a ton of footage to check out so buckle up folks we have a lot of ground to cover and I'm going to move pretty quick to spoil some of the conclusion right up front the Galaxy s8 is definitely an exercise in evolution not revolution a lot of the specks on paper will feel exceedingly similar to last year's phones same sensor size same aperture same number of megapixels same photo and video modes we shouldn't be surprised if output feels similar to the s7 but we want to see if this newer image sensor and more powerful processor deliver any improvements over its predecessor jumping right in with some daylight shots Samsung has a reputation for heavy saturation and sharpening and the s8 is no exception this looks lush on cooler colors darker greens blues and earth tones but it can squash detail in warmer colors like this yellow flower the sensor is more than capable of retaining petal detail but the JPEG processing Clips some of that texture and even this lighter green consists a little bit in afternoon light there's a lot of eye candy here and photos will largely Auto process in a pleasing way but we still have some concerns with things like blue skies grain and blue gradients is a bit busier than we'd like to see but this color processing feels heavy-handed this is where I say most cameras have issues with Reds but what concerns me with the s8 was some of the inconsistency in processing red from the same position shooting in succession we end up with noticeably different warmth again the raw file for these Bougainville blossoms is spot-on left to its own devices like most phones the s8 tends to overexpose but happily performance here is far better than most of its competition where I and feel like I need to dial back significantly more I only needed a few minor adjustments on the si in the brightest of conditions and spot metering in manual mode actually landed just a bit darker than I would have wanted well done there Samsung moving over to white balance the SI plays with warm light in a very satisfying way complementing the saturation there's a pleasing glow to daylight shot it might not be the most accurate to your subject not true white but it does a better job of retaining the feel of the lighting objects in shade likewise avoid the problem of sliding to cool where some phones can make a shot like this feel icy or cold night shots also err on the side of exposing for the lighting more than the subject this white gate lit by really ugly yellow security lamps in general this is my preferred method of white balances I usually want to capture the feel of a moment more than I want some notion of true scientific white looking at dynamic range the SI captures a fantastic amount of info when saving RAW files purposely over exposing a shot by two stops and walking it back in Lightroom I couldn't quite recover all the detail in this wall but looking at what info was still retained I have no issues with this performance from a phone a larger sensor big pixels in a wide aperture when this phone is pushed bright it goes bright but there's still plenty of safety net here for folks capturing RAW images a very quick look at lens performance and there are subtle improvements over the s7 I'm seeing a bit less lens flaring and night shots but a wide field of view paired with the fastest aperture on a phone makes for some hazy elements most noticeable in macro shots and speaking of macro this is another use case which hasn't changed much from the s7 working near the phone's minimum focusing distance we get the prettiest natural bouquet we've seen from a phone but this also makes macro shots a bit trickier to pull off you have a razor-thin playing a focus to work with we've also noticed in video that the phone doesn't seem to focus quite as close as it can for still shots consistently we had to scoot back a little from where we had landed focus for a photo now in a world of dual sensor cameras the zoom function on the s8 isn't going to impress anyone it's a very normal crop zoom that will blur out detail at the farthest end any video is just a blown-up image with lots of pixels totally normal performance for a single camera sensor phone Apple II autofocus speed and accuracy are still on point it was a genius move to use dual pixel technology on the s Evan and we still benefit from it here it's not any faster than its predecessor but it really didn't need to be looking at high dynamic range Samsung already layers on quite a bit of image processing so HDR shots tend to only show a subtle difference from normal Auto processing photos if anything most end up looking like they've just been given a slight brightness bump which is disappointing I was hoping for more of the highlight and low-light balancing we might see from a phone like the pixel sadly that's not the case here happily panorama performance remains top-tier excellent exposure some subtle wobbles in these power lines but still this is one of the only phones capable of correctly piecing together all of the elements of a busy scene like this this is fantastic image stitching and processing now you should all know by now that I hate reviewing selfie cameras but Samsung might just have one of the best performers around autofocus is definitely appreciated we get great detail and bright light solid performance and shade one of the more natural odo modes for those people who like to look like disturbing uncanny valley mannequins and it's still one of the only selfie shooters available that will produce quad HD video this might be one of the best vlogging solutions available on the market moving to some nice shots this Hardware continues to guarantee that galaxies are low-light champs wide aperture solid stabilization for the most part night shots are pretty easy to pull off our only concern here is the heavy-handed noise reduction a little grain or texture really isn't a bad thing especially for retaining detail and clarity the s8 is not destructive but sometimes photos are softer than I want them to be this processing can start to resemble a beauty filter when shooting people in medium to low light this is a terrific capture for a phone I'm taking the shot blind handheld from the rear camera sensor and you can see this had a long shutter for the car streaking behind me but I really wished I had captured this in manual mode for the raw image I just looked a bit too plasticky here at night we can also see some of the downsides to shooting an auto where the camera decides for you how long to expose trying to be subtle in taking a street candid it's really difficult to predict how long the phone will hold the shutter open and I ended up with a blurry shot coming back a few minutes later so I didn't look like such a creeper and using the manual mode it was much easier to lock in a crisp exposure even with indoor lighting say you're trying to photograph kids Auto mode will often make a choice to expose for the environment at the expense of a faster shutter speed taking a look at video the essay captures a high quality 50 megabit per second UHD but still with a 10 minute limit on files a limit we don't see on phones like the LG G 6 or current kua ways most everything we see in still photos will hold true for video in terms of color processing and exposure vivid sharp saturated ie pleasing content a bit hazy at the macro end but well warm for outdoor afternoon samples in Southern California one main difference from stills might be the blockier pixelation in blue skies as the image compression tries to figure out what info is important but that's not terribly uncommon to see this kind of tearing on most phones night video is often significantly brighter than it needs to be though and the phone obviously can't process moving images with noise reduction filters as well as it can for still photos where the phone nailed the creepy tunnel and creepy gate photos the video feels washed out and noisier than it should be what's new for Samsung is the ability to shoot UHD video with both software and hardware stabilization one of the only Android phones capable of such a feat I shot almost all of the samples using this mode enabled now I'm still not the biggest fan of this hybrid stabilization as the lens still distorts the scene as the software crops out movement even though the frame is more fluid and less bouncy you can still see how objects in the frame retain that jello we look it'll be up to the individual if they prefer that over the more normal wobble we see and only using hardware stabilization when trying to hold still this combo does help smooth things out over just using lens stabilization the concern I have with this feature though it seems to tax the phone a lot more and the software processing does not like lateral panning iPhones and pixels can get twitchy but this is terrible stuttering from a phone which is set to be one of the most powerful on the market even when you're not panning expect more dropped frames with this setting enabled we've had some windy days in LA while reviewing this phone which has made microphone tests a bit more challenging but on the whole Samsung remains an upper tier performer here solid audio capture good dynamic range and nice stereo separation slowing things down for just a second the s8 produces some of the better 240 frames per second 720p slow-motion we've seen a small improvement over the s7 this is what the video will look like using Samsung's built-in editing tools not too shabby but we were disappointed to see that there's no 1080p option and nor is there any kind of fancy burst mode like what we might see on Sony phones soon Samsung definitely has room for improvement on this fun feature lastly we wanted to take a look at the app layout and as requested by our news editor Jules a little discussion on that app performance at first I still feel we're wasting a lot of space in this camera app the new taller screen doesn't seem to bring any benefit to photography and unlike LG Samsung has done nothing to embrace this extra real estate a perfect example is the manual mode which still encroaches on your viewfinder to adjust settings instead of a mode button Samsung seems to have been inspired by Huawei in migrating to gestures sliding from left to right brings up your mode options sliding from right to left is where your filters live this works really well and keeps your viewfinder open when making quick changes in those modes but I'd still really like to see the main settings menu adopt this layered effect consistently my biggest gripe with samsung menus they completely remove you from your composition window and at night blind you with a bright white background the changes Samsung focused on are completely unnecessary and do little to improve the camera experience pinch-to-zoom works terrifically well but Samsung has complicated the shutter button to add a rocker style zoom in software this alone has caused me to miss more shots than any other change this phone isn't the easiest to hold in your fingertips but now if you don't nail a perpendicular press of the shutter button if you hit at an angle or slide even just a little the phone will think you're trying to zoom also annoying for us folks who like manual modes Samsung has been inspired by LG in providing a gesture to flip from the rear to the front camera works great in auto mode but if you're quickly trying to adjust manual settings I often found myself making eye contact with myself it's a tough call expecting people to deliver that kind of user interface accuracy when they're focusing on trying to take a photo another LG inspiration this one more positive for the s8 is the addition of focus peaking the s Evan had a pop-up zoom feature but from a composition standpoint locking focus like this is a lot easier to do in the moment this is a terrific addition other than those mentioned changes Samsung seems more focused on fun things supernate I can slap on some animated skins like I can and snapchat I'll never use this ever again and bixby vision is also something I'm not likely to fire up very often I just don't search for things like this with a clumsy facsimile of Google image search delivering similar but usually unrelated images and I just don't care to shop through my camera interface at all even if it could give me options which it often couldn't lastly we should talk about speed and processing the s8 follows the s7 and being one of the snappier performers we've handled yet this phone doesn't feel quite as consistent as its predecessor like LG we won't remember the 100 times the phone performed quickly as expected but that one time you really want to capture a shot in the camera lags that'll stick out like a sore thumb I had more of those moments with the SI then I remember having with the s7 but that might just be me romanticizing last year's phone when shooting video I regularly encountered a delay between starting the video and being able to focus often a longer delay than I would find on an air quotes slow shooter like the g6 or how we criticize the V 20 the s8 was also routinely one of the slowest phones at saving a video preventing me from shooting again as quickly as we might from Huawei or an LG g6 and also it bears repeating neither LG nor Huawei have 10-minute limits on their video it's early days still for the s8 so I'm hoping to see some of these performance issues ironed out in future updates but for all this extra horsepower in the new Qualcomm 835 chipset I'm not seeing any real advantage in speed for Samsung this year so let's wrap this up where's that leave us with the camera on the galaxy s 8 now I'm going to need y'all to take a nice deep breath I can already see the SM H comments about how I'm being too nitpicky or how I'm a Samsung hater with the hater-aide I need everyone to repeat after me there is no such thing as an objectively best camera we can only try and illustrate the pros and cons for you folks so you can make the best purchasing decision you can I never try to score or rank because this tech evolves quickly over time even over the life of one particular phone instead I like to look at phone cameras as a spectrum on one end of that spectrum we have phones that excel at being Auto shooters or feature nifty crowd-pleasing HDR processing and maybe those phones don't satisfy the manual shooters or the pro photographers at the other end of the spectrum we have phones that deliver incredible control to the consumer but often those phones might not always have the best auto modes or fun features my experiences with Samsung in general and the s8 specifically land it as one of the better examples of a healthy Venn diagram overlap between these two philosophies that's not always the most exciting territory to be in if we're only looking at the extremes a pixel will probably win for people who only want to push a shutter button with no additional input or control and a v20 will crush it for those folks mounting their phones on tripods to dial in exactly the composition that they want but few phones will cover as broad a range of consumers with very good to excellent performance in a majority of shooting scenarios as the Galaxy sa it's a top-tier all-rounder even if it's rarely the master of a specific feature did you know that a moves can dive underwater down to nearly 20 feet in search of food we'd like to thank our sponsor D brand for reminding us that if you're going to die for food near a moose make sure it's at least 21 feet deep this bizarre ad and all of our Samsung Galaxy sa coverage is brought to you by D brand check them out in the link below as always thanks so much for watching these camera reviews need your support this is a substantial amount of work to do this deep of an examination and sharing is greatly appreciated if we're going to continue producing these reviews in the future for pocket now I'm Juan Carlos bag now author of take better photos smartphone photography for noobs you can find me on Twitter and Instagram at some gadget guy and I will catch you all on the next review you