Gadgetory

this is a big screen on a not very big phone and this is an even bigger screen on that much bigger phone its Galaxy s8 so the Samsung Galaxy s8 comes in two sizes five point eight inches and the SI plus which is a 6.2 inch screen what's new here is that they're super tall because they got rid of the bezels on the top and the bottom of the phone and now the sides are still curved like they are on like the galaxy s7 edge that's just the default way that these phones come now Samsung's not calling it an infinity display and I don't know the curve is fine I'm not picking up a lot of extra little tabs it looks really sharp and it's got you know HDR color if you care about that sort of thing what's interesting is they both have the same resolution which is 29 60 by 1440 but you know Samsung makes great screens and these look great really the thing that hits you hardest when you look at the hardware on this phone is that the whole thing just looks and feels really great the seams are even harder to find than they are on the s7 edge the glass just sort of melts into the sides and they don't have a camera bump on the back this honestly it feels like some of the best phone Hardware I've ever used it's way better than say the iPhone 7 so getting rid of those bezels on the top and the bottom means they had to make some changes so you'll notice there's no home button here in the front it's not on the back either what there is is like a virtual home button Samsung has added some haptic feedback it's kind of like force touch on the iPhone but it's only right here at the very bottom and so even if you don't see a software home button you can still press hard on that area of the screen and that is going to take you home if you want to unlock the phone you actually have three different ways you can do it now all four you can do your password or your pattern as usual but there's a fingerprint sensor on the back it is located right next to the camera which is a little bit hard to reach and not great if you're left-handed and it also means you're probably going to end up putting your finger on the camera sometimes which could cause some smudges so make sure you wipe it off or you take a picture there's also iris scanning which we saw on the note 7 RI P which is very secure and then there's now face scanning I don't think it's quite as secure as the iris scanning or the fingerprint sensor but my god is it past like look at how fast this thing unlocks you blink and you miss it you don't have to wait for it to scan your face at all it just works they're a little bit narrower than the galaxy s7 and the s7 edge and they're just a little bit thicker but not so much that you really notice it what it means is that they can fit in a 3000 milliamp battery on the s8 at a 3500 won on the SI plus it's not exactly pushing the limit in terms of battery capacity but I have to imagine that Samsung isn't really interested in pushing the limited battery capacity right now after what happened with the note 7 they also do all the stuff that you normally expect from a Samsung phone it's got ip68 waterproofing there's four gigs of ram there's 64 gigs of on-board storage and yes there's expandable storage here and yes there is a standard 3.5 millimeter headphone jack one thing that Samsung didn't change is the camera on the back it's still 12 megapixel sensor although Samsung says it has improved the image processing software we really like these cameras on the s7 I imagine they're going to be just as good probably a little bit better here on the s8 one thing that is new is the front-facing camera it's now 8 megapixels and it has autofocus which is pretty cool when you're in the camera you're going to start to see one of the big big things that's new in the s8 it's called Bixby and it's Samsung's intelligent agent so let me just show you how it works in the camera to start when you've got the camera app open you can hit this button and then it'll go into Bixby mode and it's going to auto detect whatever it sees on the screen so if I pointed out some flowers it's going to recognize that they're flowers and show me pictures of more flowers or maybe let me go buy some flowers or Here I am pointing it at a watch and although it wasn't able to figure out exactly what model of watch it was it actually like figured out it was a watch and showed me a bunch of pictures of other watches or let me go to Amazon to buy a watch that looks like it which is really impressive but beyond like a are stuff in the camera what Bixby is really for is to sort of make it easier to use Samsung's own software their goal is to have anything that you would do by touching the phone you can do by speaking to the phone and so with any compatible app it's of course starting on samsung and the way that you triggered is by holding down a side button which is actually a really bold move they've got a whole extra button here and if Bixby turns out to not be that great they've basically wasted part of the hardware of the phone on this thing so we're gonna have to see but unfortunately we weren't able to try Bixby yet it is still you know coming out when the phone comes out they didn't have it here at the demo station so pre-orders for the s8 and the si+ begin on march 30th and it goes on sale on April 21st in the US it's going to be available in three colors black gray and silver and I can't tell you the pricing yet because that's always up to the carrier so you're just going to have to go see what Verizon or AT&T or t-mobile or Sprint erna charger for much much much more on everything samsung announced today you should check us out we are the verge