8 things to know before buying the Galaxy S8/S8+

We’ve gotten used to the product cycle of Samsung’s Galaxy flagship and all its great features that come as standard like fast wireless charging, IP68 water-resistance, high resolution AMOLED display and great low-light camera.

With the announcement of the Galaxy S8 and S8+, there are additional features that you need to know before deciding into getting one later this month.

1. Really Big Screen.

Samsung has broken the stereotype of a big-screen smartphone. The Galaxy S8 is now at 5.8 inches while the Galaxy S8+ is bigger at 6.2 inches. These are much bigger screen sizes that used to be in the territory of phablets yet managed to fit in the same body as their predecessors, the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge.

The Galaxy S8/S8+ maintained a slim profile and manageable footprint for one-handed use. The bigger screen real estate meant that the physical home button need to be removed along with the Samsung logo up front just to shave off more bezels.

2. New Powerful Processor.

The Galaxy S8/S8+ comes with the latest Samsung Exynos 8895 chip that features a custom-made processor developed by Samsung itself. Samsung claims better CPU and graphics performance compared to the Exynos 8890 found in the Galaxy S7 while offering optimal power consumption.

3. Better Selfie Camera.

While the main camera remains to be the same 12-megapixel shooter, the front-facing camera has been upgraded from 5MP to 8MP with a high f/1.7 aperture for better low-light performance.

Those who are active on Instagram or Snapchat will also love the new sticker features added into the camera app.

4. Iris Scanner.

First introduced in the Galaxy Note 7, the Iris scanner offers better security on top of the usual fingerprint scanner. To add to that, Samsung also included a Facial Recognition feature to very quickly unlock your phone the very moment you pick it up.

5. Bixby.

Bixby is Samsung’s new Virtual Assistant and replaces S Voice in accepting voice commands from its user. Samsung is very serious with Bixby that it even included a dedicated physical button for it on the Galaxy S8 and S8+. For now, it’s still a beta feature but Samsung hopes that the more people use and interact with it, the more it becomes intelligent and useful.

6. DeX.

The DeX Dock is an additional accessory that allows the Galaxy S8 to act as the main processing unit in a desktop-like environment. The S8 sits on the dock which is then connected to an external display or monitor via the HDMI port. Since the S8 has Bluetooth 5.0, it can also pair with a wireless mouse and keyboard at the same time.

The setup now works like a desktop workstation with a few third-party apps like Adobe and Microsoft Word that will work in the desktop UI.

The concept of a phone that can act as a desktop computer isn’t new. Microsoft has offered this feature as Continuum and is already available in some Windows 10 phones. Nevertheless, the concept is brilliant and could really take off as more devices support this feature.

7. Bluetooth 5.0.

The Galaxy S8 and S8+ are the first smartphones available in the market to carry the latest Bluetooth 5.0 technology. Bluetooth five supports simultaneous connections to other wireless devices, which means you can connect to two Bluetooth speakers at the same time or pair a wireless mouse and keyboard for setting up with DeX.

Bluetooth 5.0 has twice the speed and four times the range offered by Bluetooth 4.2 (theoretically up to 240 meters).

8. Price And Release Date.

The Samsung Galaxy S8 (64GB variant) has a suggested retail price of P39,990 while the Galaxy S8+ will start at P45,990.

Color options are initially just Midnight Black and Maple Gold but Orchid Gray will come at a later date. Pre-orders will start on April 17 to 29 and the release is scheduled on May 5.