After months of countless leaks and rumors, it was starting to feel like this day might never actually come. Believe it or not, however, it’s finally here: Samsung’s new Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ are finally official. No more specs leaks, no more renders, no more spy shots on Weibo, no more dummy models being compared to rival smartphones, and no more guessing. Samsung on Wednesday finally took the wraps off of its next-generation Galaxy S flagship phones.
We spent some time with the new Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ earlier this week, and there’s really only one thing you have to know: You don’t know anything about these phones. You’ve seen all the leaks and you’ve read all the rumors, but nothing you’ll ever see on a computer screen or a smartphone display can properly convey just how stunning Samsung’s new flagship phones truly are.
We’ve obviously got plenty of Galaxy S8 coverage lined up for you today, but in this post I’m going to focus on one thing in particular: Samsung’s design.
First, let’s quickly run through the specs. Aside from the displays (5.8-inch QHD+ Super AMOLED vs. 6.2-inch QHD+ Super AMOLED), the batteries (3,000 mAh vs. 3,500 mAh), and the overall size, the new Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ are identical. Both phones are powered by the new 10nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chipset in the US, while the global models pack Samsung’s own Exynos 8895 SoC. Both phones also pack 4GB of RAM, 64GB of internal storage, microSDXC support, a 12-megapixel rear camera, an 8-megapixel front-facing camera, IP68 water- and dust-resistance, and Android Nougat.
Both phones also share what is unquestionably the most stunning smartphone design of all time.
Samsung’s new Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ are an evolution of the design we’ve seen on other recent Samsung phones like the Galaxy S7 edge and the ill-fated Galaxy Note 7. The similarities are obvious, but the S8 and S8+ look and feel brand new in the hand. Samsung removed the oblong home button on the face of the phones and reworked the phone’s guts, which allowed the company to design two smartphones with displays that occupy a staggering 83% of the phones’ faces.
The look is incredible. While it will still be quite some time before any company launches the all-screen smartphone we’ve all been waiting for, Samsung’s Galaxy S8 is as close as any mass-market device has come. Because the narrow bezels that remain are a deep, glossy black that matches the display itself, distractions seem to fade away and content takes center stage more so than on any other phone.
Like the S7 edge and Note 7, the sides of the phone are curved on both the front of the phone and on the back. As a result, the Galaxy S8 feels impossibly thin. I was really looking forward to using a phone with a nice big 5.8-inch screen crammed into a handset that is barely bigger than the iPhone 7, but I might actually prefer the larger Galaxy S8+ to the smaller model. It’s unbelievably comfortable in your hand thanks to the curved edges. Even though the phone is about the same size as the iPhone 7 Plus, it feels much smaller.
Of note, there is a new virtual home button that appears on the bottom of the display where the old physical home button used to be, and Samsung has included its own take on Apple’s 3D Touch haptic feedback that offers localized vibration feedback when you press the button. For those wondering, it’s not even in the same league as Apple’s solution. It does the trick in that you feel some feedback when you tap the home button, but it’s nothing like Apple’s Taptic engine.
When you press the virtual home button on the iPhone 7, it feels like you’re clicking a real button. When you press the virtual home button on the Galaxy S8, it feels like the phone is vibrating.
From left to right, the photo above shows the Galaxy S8, LG G6, iPhone 7 Plus and Galaxy S8+. Here’s another shot without the iPhone in the image:
As you can see, the Galaxy S8 and LG G6 are about the same size, though the Samsung phone is far more comfortable in the hand thanks to LG’s peculiar design snafu that I wrote about recently. Both phones feel like the future, though. Smartphone design had become stagnant in the past few years, but this new leap toward all-screen phones brings some much-needed freshness to the market.
There’s plenty more to cover, of course, and we have much more Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ coverage lined up for you today. We’ll dive into the phones’ software and performance much more in that coverage, but there are a few things I wanted to touch on briefly in this post.
First, Samsung’s new Desktop Experience is flat-out awesome. Either phone can be connected to Samsung’s new DeX dock to instantly power an Android desktop experience alongside a connected monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Several of Samsung’s apps like the browser and email app have been optimized for the new Desktop Experience, though every first- and third-party app on the phone can be used in desktop mode.
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