Samsung Galaxy S8 (₦170,000) PRICE & SPEC REVIEW

The Samsung Galaxy S8 is viewed to be one of the best smartphones of 2017 with its competitors being the Apple I Phone X and its larger screen alternative the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus . Heres a rundown of the most notable specs of the Samsung Galaxy S8

Samsung Galaxy S8: Full phone specifications
Processor 2.3GHz octacore Samsung Exynos 8895 / Qualcomm Snapdragon 835
RAM 4GB
Screen size 5.8in
Screen resolution 1,440 x 2,560
Screen type AMOLED
Front camera 8MP
Rear camera 12MP Flash LED
Storage (free) 64GB with Memory card slot (supplied)microSD
Wi-Fi 802.11ac
Bluetooth 5.0
NFC Yes
Wireless data 4G (Gigabit)
Dimensions 68.1 x 148.9 x 8mm

The Samsung Galaxy S8 represented the pinnacle of smartphone technology in 2017, and it's now available for only  ₦170,000

The S8 is beautiful, fast, has an insanely good camera, a fantastic display and a tonne of extra features – some good, some bad. In short, all the ingredients in place for this to be the best smartphone ever made.

However, its fingerprint sensor is located in a less-than-ideal position, and the battery isn't as good as its predecessor, which make the phone frustrating.

The Samsung Galaxy S8 is a 5.8 inch flagship smartphone, which has a stunning design, blistering Snapdragon 835 processor, an incredible display with an 18.5:9 aspect ratio and an impressive camera that combined make it the best Android phone to date.

It is, however, let down by its battery life, which is a tad lower than its predecessor, the Galaxy S7. Still, if you're looking for the best Android phone on the market, the Samsung Galaxy S8 is the one to get.

Is it worth it? If you want the very best smartphone on the market, then yes. It has waterproofing and a camera that's very good. It's better looking than most of its competitors, such as the Google Pixel 2 XL, has a microSD card slot so you can expand the storage, and there's more storage as standard as well. It's better than the LG G6 and the iPhone 7, too, in almost every respect.

Even then you might say the price is tad high, and I hear you on that front. However, the Samsung is not alone in raising UK prices to this level, as you can see by the prices of its rivals. In fact, it's part of a general trend that has going on for some time now. You might not like it, but this the reality right now

Design
There will be no Samsung Galaxy S8 Edge this year. Why? Because the Samsung Galaxy S8 is the device the S8 Edge would have been. Samsung’s new flagship is a phone with curved edges, and there’s no alternative.

The result is the best-looking phone on the market. Samsung has created an 18.5:9 “Infinity Display” that looks like no device you’ve ever seen before – well, none since the LG G6, anyway. The front of the phone is 100% glass, with the slimmest of bezels nestled above and below, resulting in an impressively high screen to body ratio of 84% (the Samsung Galaxy S7’s screen-to-body ratio was 72%).

This is a phone that feels great in your hand. It’s slim, smooth and light. However, it's also slightly over-engineered. It’s a tall phone, which causes some problems during use. Hold the phone in your hand as if you want to unlock it using the rear fingerprint sensor and you’ll struggle to reach the home button without readjusting your grip. Grasp the device so you can reach the home button, however, and icons at the top of the screen become unreachable.

There is, at least, a 3.5mm headphone jack here, which is refreshing to see in the light of many rivals removing it. To take advantage of this, Samsung is also including a rather nice pair of AKG earphones in the box. These are certainly a cut above the no-brand earphones normally included with your average smartphone, delivering music with a clean, balanced sound that's very pleasing to the ear.

They're comfortable, don't leak sound unduly at high volumes and, depending on how much you care about sound quality, could be all the headphones you need. Although it's a small thing it's good to see such attention to detail from Samsung.  

The screen on the S8 looks great, as you’d expect of a Samsung Super AMOLED unit. Colours are bright and vivid, and it’s readable in all conditions. In normal use in the browser, I recorded an impressive peak brightness of 569cd/m2 on a fully white screen with auto-brightness enabled, and 415cd/m2 with auto brightness disengaged; sRGB coverage is an impressive 99.9%; and contrast, since it’s an AMOLED panel, is perfect.

Perhaps more significant is that it’s the only mobile phone screen currently that’s been certified by the UHD Alliance to the Mobile HDR Premium standard. That means, like a high-end TV, it’s capable of playing back HDR (high dynamic range) video content, meaning brighter highlights – up to 1,000cd/m2, according to DisplayMate – for an ultra-realistic image.

As already mentioned, the screen is curved along both long edges on the Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy S8+ phones this year and this brings into play similar screen functions to previous Samsung Edge phones. Swipe a finger in from the right and you can access shortcuts to your favourite apps and contacts, plus various other Edge screen apps, including a compass and news feed. 

More significant is how the curved edges result in a wider display on a thinner phone. Edge apps are gimmicky; a display without bezel is genuine innovation.

Samsung Galaxy S8 review: Camera

Scroll up and look at those specs again. Notice anything unusual about this year’s camera? Yep, it’s exactly the same as the S7 – at least the specifications are. In an odd move, Samsung has stuck to the same 12-megapixel rear snapper complete with f/1.7 aperture, dual-pixel phase-detect autofocus and optical image stabilisation. The ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ mantra rings true here.

There's one teensy difference that sets it slightly ahead of its predecessor, though. Chipset improvements have seen an interesting new feature brought to light, in the form of multi-shot image processing. Every time you press the shutter button, the camera captures three frames, merging them together to form the sharpest image possible.

In terms of quality, there is a difference. In good light outdoors, noise handling sees as a slight improvement, there's a tiny bit of extra contrast at the pixel level resulting in crisper-looking shots, and a refinement in colour reproduction. You have to look pretty hard to see the differences, though.
The Samsung Galaxy S8's shot is on the left here, and shows better control over noise and better detail capture than the S7's on the right (click through to view full screen)

The triple-frame capture makes more of a difference in low-light photography, where there's significantly less smearing and far more contrast and detail than with the S7's camera. It still isn’t as good as the results we've seen from the Google Pixel, but you definitely won’t be disappointed by the results.

In low light, the S8's triple-capture technique dredges up more detail while keeping a lid on ugly image noise. However, there's still plenty of softening and smearing due to noise reduction (click through to view full screen)

Samsung Galaxy S8 review: Security

There are six secure ways to unlock the S8:

Fingerprint
Facial recognition (new)
Iris scanner
Pattern
PIN
Smart Lock (unlocks at trusted locations)