Mobile

Samsung Galaxy S8/S8+ long-term review: 1 year later

March 13, 2018

It has been about a year since the Galaxy S8 and S8+ were released, and it is by far one of the best Android smartphones that came out in 2017. Ever since the phones hit the shelves, I have been using the S8+ as my daily driver. Today, I want to share with you my long-term review of the Galaxy S8+. So, if you are looking to purchase a new phone but don’t want to spend close to a $1,000 for the new Galaxy S9+, I will tell you why the S8+ is still an excellent phone in 2018.

So let’s talk about the design.

The Galaxy S8+ has a premium design, made of an aluminum frame with gorilla glass five on the front and back which makes it feel slick and smooth when holding it in your hands. Now, this also comes with some disadvantages, the phone is very slippery, so it is easy to drop it by accident. Also, even though the back is stated to be made of Gorilla glass 5, it scratches easy. I have had the S8+ in a case since day one, and I still managed to get some small scratches here and there. Especially on the bottom, so something that I would recommend is to put a skin to protect the back glass from scratches.

The display

Now looking at the front, we can see the beautiful infinity display which is a 6.2″ Quad HD+ Super AMOLED display with an aspect ratio of 18.5:9. The Galaxy S8 screen was also rated one of the first HDR-capable smartphones so when watching HDR content from apps like YouTube Or Netflix, the S8 screen ups up the screen brightness and saturation to offer the best mobile entertainment experience.

Image by Samsung

Even though Samsung removed the physical Home button in favor of a bigger screen with smaller bezels, they still included a pressure sensor at the bottom of the display which vibrates when pressed hard enough. So if for example, you have the phone on a desk, and you want to check the time or your notifications quickly, you can just push the bottom part of the screen, and it will wake up the phone just like it would do with a physical button. So that is a big plus.

Image by Samsung

What’s inside

The Galaxy S8 and S8+ come packed either with Samsung’s own Exynos chipset. Which is in the international version of the phone or with the Snapdragon 835 here in the U.S. It also comes with 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of onboard storage which can be expandable with a microSD card. These are excellent specs, but the real question here is, how is the Galaxy S8 performance in the long-term? Well, when playing games or running apps that require a lot of CPU and GPU power, the phone performs flawlessly.

Now, if we talk about TouchWiz, which is Samsung’s UI Skin that goes on top of Android, is a mix of feelings. Samsung has improved TouchWiz a lot over there year, and there is some cool feature that I which were available directly from Android but there are still some small issues here and there where for example, when trying to unlock the phone, or opening apps, it would take a second or two. It is surely not a deal breaker, and it is not something that happens all the time. In fact, I do enjoy TouchWiz, and I can say that this is the first Android phone that I got where I did not rush to the Google Play store to download a third party launcher.

Battery performance

The Battery life for me has been great. The Galaxy S8 Plus comes with a 3,500 mAh battery which for most people it is good enough but at the same time not quite sufficient for others. I always have Bluetooth, WiFi, Location, and Auto-Brightness turned on, and my daily usage consists of checking emails, listening to music, watching videos on YouTube, a little bit of gaming, and I also use some Samsung features like the Always On Display. With all these said, I can go about a day an half before I have to charge the phone. And as far as I can tell, I have not noticed any degradation of the battery in the past year, so it has definitely held pretty well.

Now, the camera on the Galaxy S8+ takes some excellent shots. It is not the best in the market right now, but it is unmistakably an excellent camera capable of producing some excellent images with popping colors. Also, the camera app is easy to use, and it has some great features that help to take some great shots.

OK so, what are the things that I do not like about the Galaxy S8+?

One of the main things is the location of the Fingerprint sensor. I was just not able to get used to it, so I pretty must stop using it to unlock the phone. Also, it does not work that well. Many times when I do use it to sign in to apps, sometimes it can take a few tries before it recognizes my fingerprint for some reason.

Bixby is another feature that I do not like what so ever. I tried it when I first got the phone, I gave it another shot after like eight months, but it is just not good enough. If Samsung is trying to compete with Google Assistant, it still has a long way to go. I also dislike that Samsung made a dedicated button for Bixby which causes many accidental clicks when trying to lower the volume on the phone.

Conclusion

Is the Galaxy S8 and S8+ still work getting in 2018? Definitely! Moreover, now that the Galaxy S9 and S9+ are releasing, the Galaxy S8 and S8+ will have a significant price cut.