Samsung Galaxy S8 - User Review and First Impressions

I pre-ordered the Galaxy S8 a few weeks ago and received the phone last Friday. Yesterday I finally sat down and set up the phone. I'm really impressed by how much easier it has gotten over the years to set up a new phone. Remember when you used to have to sit there and manually input all your contacts from your old phone into your new one? Uggh... Well as long as you have your phone synced to a gmail account, it's a relatively painless process these days. The Galaxy S2 was my first smartphone and I have owned the S4, the S6 and now the S8. This isn't meant to be a technical review, there are plenty of those out there by far more qualified people. I'm aiming for a more user oriented review in this post and to provide feedback from the perspective of a long time Galaxy user.

I was able to go from activation to full set up in about 30 minutes. The carrier I use is Verizon, so your mileage may vary depending on who you have your service with. In my case I simply had to power off my S6 and then use the prompts on my new S8 after I powered it on. Once I got through the activation it was the usual gmail sign in and then the app downloads. One thing I noticed was the S8 got faster download speeds on my home wifi network. I used speedtest to check my speed and I used to average about 110 Mbps on my S6 and the S8 was getting 135Mbps. My LAN max speed on my desktop is about 160Mbps as a point of reference.

The S8 has the rounded screen edge, which effectively makes both S8 models an "edge" screen type. I have not had a phone with a screen bezel like this before and it is taking some time to get used to. The S8 has numerous settings to help you change the sensitivity and feel as you get used to the boundaries of the infinity screen. I'll say that I am slowly adjusting. I play Pokemon Go and have found that this bezel can cause issues sometimes. I have not played with any of the settings, but I imagine they might help with some of the inadvertent touches that I am getting from time to time.

The screen resolution is incredible. It is Samsung's dual SuperAMOLED display at a resolution of 2960 x 1440 pixels. Out of the box it is set to 1080p so you need to go into the settings to get the highest resolution. The screen size is 5.8 inches, but it is longer than the S6 and S7 phones. I found it odd looking as I pulled it out of the box. The screen has an unusual aspect ratio of 18.5:9 which you notice right away. The infinity display brings all graphics and images to the edge of the screen which gives it about the same viewing width as my S6. You can choose to reduce your width in settings or in various apps if you want to.

This longer screen size allows for at least two more rows of app shortcuts on my home screen. This is great for me as I'm not a fan of using multiple screens. The graphics are amazing and the colors are vibrant. It is certainly a big step up from my S6. Another very noticeable difference from my S6 is the thickness of the phone. It has a very sleek feel to it. Reminding me more and more of an Iphone, although it is very light. It doesn't feel cheap, but it it is definitely a light feel in your hand.

The phone specs are very high end:
Processor Speed, Type
MSM 8998 Octa Core 2.35Ghz (Quad Core) + 1.9Ghz (Quad)

Internal Memory 64 GB
RAM 4GB
External Memory/microSD™ Capacity
MicroSD up to 256GB

Camera resolution (Front)
8 MP AF
Camera resolution (Rear)
Dual Pixel 12.0 MP

Wi-Fi
802.11 a/b/g/n/ac 2.4G+5GHz, VHT80 MU-MIMO,1024-QAM
Bluetooth
Bluetooth v5.0 (LE up to 2 Mbps)

Photo from S8 of my office building:

I'm throwing some of the key specs out there, just to show you how powerful this phone is. It is very noticeable when you are using apps or playing games.(4GB of RAM seems to make a noticeable difference) I've had no lag and it almost feels like a desktop as I can be downloading and installing updates while using other apps or watching videos or playing games. I have the mobile hotspot service and this also seems to be faster. The phone is enabled for the 4g LTE advanced network and I am supposed to have coverage with the new network in my area. The hotspot was producing about 35 Mbps download and 5 Mbps upload(tested with speedtest on my Ipad).

It has the newest bluetooth spec as well. I did an NFC beam from my S6 with about 2GB of photos to the S8 and it took about 7 minutes. The S8 uses USB Type C cables. So far the charging does seem faster than the micro SD and I don't think these will wear out the connector as quickly as the micro SD(I had to return my S6 after one year doe to the microSD connector going bad.) I haven't tested data transfer on my desktop yet, but USB C connected to a USB 3.0 port should be much faster than microSD.

So far, battery life is looking pretty good. I've had the phone on for 7 hours today at full resolution and brightness with normal background apps running like Gmail, Evernote, Slack. I've done some texting, google searches and played a little bit of Pokemon Go and I'm at 85%.

Some Cons:

I am still getting used to the edge screen. I'm getting a fair amount of inadvertent clicks and touches when texting or playing games. I'll have to dig into the settings to see if I can adjust for this.

Bonus feature: When you are in hibernation you can choose to show the time, date and battery power. Very cool!

You get a free Samsung Gear VR and controller with the pre order. So I'll be sure to write about that once I get a chance to try it out.

Thank You for reading and I hope this is somewhat useful to you!

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Adding my VIVA link because I think everyone should check this out. It's an excellent concept.
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