All-new design is thumbs-up
Not to be dramatic, but the Galaxy S8 really is a feast for the eyes. It adopts a new dimension -- 18.5:9 (that's almost 2:1 like the LG G6($451.49 at Amazon.com)) -- which means that it's tall and narrow. That makes it easier to use one-handed. Extremely slim bezels mean there's much more screen stuffed into the shape: 83 percent of the phone's face is all yours for tapping and viewing. The S8 is almost the exact same height as the G6, but those curved sides make the S8 feel narrower, slimmer and, in truth, much more vulnerable.
Don't want this to happen? Get a case.
Luke Lancaster/CNET
I was extremely nervous I'd drop it. It almost seems more like a museum piece than a tool I'm going to use every day. I've had a couple close calls so far, but it hasn't smashed to the ground yet. When it inevitably does, because butterfingers, I have a feeling those rounded edges will be easier to crack than a device with straight sides. I can't say for sure, but the bigger problem may be the glass back.
Last year's GS7 shattered when I dropped it (oops), and my colleague Luke Lancaster in Sydney said his S8 slipped and slid out from under him, resulting in a bash. With the Galaxy S8's newer Gorilla Glass 5 topper, time will tell just how often this happens for others, too.
See what happened when we purposely tried to smash it up.
There's no more physical home button, and honestly? I didn't miss it at all. The onscreen control you see on pretty much every other Android phone felt completely natural. In fact, going Home on the S8 was faster than going Home on a lightly used S7. By the way, you can swap the placement of the Back and Recents buttons if you want to.
The S8 is the first standard Galaxy S phone (as in, not an Edge or Edge Plus) to have curved sides and the Edge display. You can use it as a kind of speed dial for your frequent apps and contacts, news headlines and so on, which you can call up from any screen (and tweak the tab location so it's easy for you to grab). You can add a lot of panes in the settings, but I like it best when kept to two -- otherwise you waste time trying to find what you're looking for.
Oh, one more thing about the screen. It's a very high-resolution, 2,960x1,440-pixel display, and that makes text, images and video absolutely pop, even in direct sunlight. You should know, though, that the off-standard dimension means you'll have to either be cool with black bars on the sides of videos you play (called pillarboxing), or you'll need to tap a screen control to crop-to-fit. In some videos, doing so reduced image quality. At other times, it looked just as good.
The S8 falters when you give it the finger(print)
My biggest problem with the phone design is the fingerprint reader, which moved from the home button on the S7's front face to a narrow strip on its backing that looks a lot like a Tic Tac, just left of the camera mount. I have no idea what Samsung was thinking putting it here. Other rear-mounted fingerprint sensors, such as the LG G6 and Google Pixel, are closer to the middle center of the phone's body, well clear of the camera and flash. They're round and easier to completely cover with your fingertip.
That fingerprint reader is mighty close to the camera.
CNET
Muscle memory has somewhat taken over and I've grown more used to the placement. I got a lot of setup errors, and the accuracy is still less "hit" and more "miss," especially when I haven't unlocked the phone for a stretch. And yes, I did often smear the camera with finger grease (yum) on the way to the scanner.
(Interlude: My colleague Patrick Holland tested the effect of fingerprint smudges on a bunch of phones, and noticed that the S8 still takes great pics regardless. We'll see if this holds up over time, or if the protective exterior coating wears out and image quality begins to suffer.)
Back to the fingerprint reader. Wait, you say! You can always use face unlock (which Samsung calls more convenient than it is secure, so no thanks) or the iris scanner, which is deemed secure enough for Samsung Pay. I tried both. The iris scanner takes longer than an accurate fingerprint reader on a rival phone, plus you have to hold it level to your face, and lift your sunglasses if you're outside. It doesn't always work in every lighting situation. But it worked fine with my glasses, even though I registered my peepers with contacts.
Best combination: Fingerprint reader with the iris scanner as backup, plus a PIN or pattern for times when the other two take too long.
One other thing about the fingerprint reader and Samsung Pay. Using both the fingerprint and iris methods to authenticate a payment took longer than on the Galaxy S7 and Note 7 (where the reader's on the home button), which made me feel like a jerk for holding up the line. Having a credit card ready is frankly faster, even though it's way less cool.
Bixby AI assistant still half-baked
Oh, boy. So much. Bixby is the blanket name for a feature that's actually broken into three parts: Voice, Home and Vision. It does not replace Google voice search or Google Assistant, which comes preloaded on the S8 and which you can invoke by long-pressing the home button.
Bixby Voice is most like Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa. So far it's only launched in South Korea, and I've never had a chance to test it. It'll start off by only working with phone settings, such as vocally dimming the screen, turning on Wi-Fi, rotating a picture and so on. It has its own dedicated button beneath the volume rocker, which you will not be able to remap from the settings menu. Boo.
I was able to test the other two Bixby features, though. The more visible of the two, Bixby Home (confusingly called "Hello, Bixby" when you sign in), is like Google Now for other Android phones. There are cards for the weather, upcoming appointments, your step count, headlines and so on. I'm not convinced it adds much value beyond Google Now, which also gives me flight alerts and tells me when my packages are set to arrive. However, you will be able to see Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter cards. You'll be able to turn off Bixby Home, but I'm not sure if it'll be easy to add Google Now (the one with the cards) if you prefer that instead.
Bixby is a three-part app.
Josh Miller/CNET
Finally, Bixby Vision is a camera filter like Google Goggles or Bing Vision on a throwback Nokia Lumia. You can use it to scan words on a business card or package of food and translate it into 52 languages, with varying results. It can identify a book cover, landmark location or a bottle of wine through partner Vivino, a feature that worked for some bottles, not all. Partners such as Pinterest help handle the image search. I'm still looking for a natural reason to use this.
By the way, you'll need a Samsung account to use any Bixby feature, which is one more thing to sign into, or sign up for if you didn't have a Samsung account before.
Bixby is ambitious and brand new and I'm willing to give Samsung some leeway to develop it over the coming months. But from what I've seen so far, it's by no means a reason to buy the Galaxy S8. It rankles that you won't be able to reprogram the Bixby Voice key to launch any app you want -- this is something you can do on, say, the Alcatel Idol 4S -- but at this point I wouldn't boycott the S8 because of it.
No dual camera, and that's (mostly) OK
Standard photos on the Galaxy S8's single 12-megapixel are consistently good. They're crisp, colorful and eminently sharable. Low light shots are relatively bright and detailed (the darker the scene, the more image noise you'll see), and selfies on the 8-megapixel front-facing camera are also terrific. I especially like the new auto-focus feature, which frees you from having to stretch out your arm and tap the screen to focus.
You can double-tap the power button to launch the camera. This is baked into Android Marshmallow and up, but Samsung only implemented it now and it's great.
In addition, there's a pro mode and a heap of editing tools that really let you fine-tune colors, brightness and tone. If the camera recognizes a face, it'll offer up a Portrait editing option, which lets you blur the background to approximate the same kind of bokeh effect you can get from theiPhone 7 Plus($869.00 at Apple)' second camera lens. Result: enthusiastic overblurring that might cut off an arm or wipe out the background if you overdo it.
A word on the single-versus-double camera lens. Apple, LG and Huawei have phones with two lenses on the back. These, respectively, help achieve portraits with that cool, blurred effect I just mentioned, get wide-angle shots or take crisp black-and-white images. By sticking with a camera that's similar to last year's model, the Galaxy S8 can't do any of that as well as competitors. (I have high hopes for the Note 8 doubling down on cameras.)
Videos shoot by default in 1080p HD, but you can uplevel to quad HD (1440p). If you do, you'll lose a few features and effects, including video stabilization. You'll have hyperlapse and slow-mo modes for extra video fun.
Battery life is very good, and still no overheating problems so far
The million-dollar question: Is the Galaxy S8 battery safe? We haven't heard reports of overheating so far. I sure hope Samsung's eight-point safety check will keep the S8 and other future phones from the Note 7's fiery fate.
Wirelessly charging won't be as speedy as wired, but it sure is convenient for top-ups.
Josh Miller/CNET
I will say that my Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus test units, the first ever phones (in some markets) with the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chipset, never felt dangerously hot. The glass-backed phones do get warm when charging and playing demanding games (such as Riptide GP Renegade or Clash of Clans), but so do other phones.
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