I was glad to be working Wednesday on a film (with Denzel Washington!), but couldn’t wait till the night ended so I could get home to my new Samsung Galaxy S8+, which had been delivered earlier in the day. I finally got home at 10:00 p.m. an opened up my new toy.
I had played with the Galaxy S8+ late last month and was impressed, but wasn’t sure mine would last beyond the two weeks return period. I recently wrote about how disappointed I was at the single-lens camera (apparently Samsung originally intended to have a dual-lens camera), which is inferior to that on the iPhone 7 Plus. I’m still disappointed, but in some tests, found that the Galaxy S8+ camera is slightly improved from the Galaxy Note 7 and Galaxy S7 Edge from last year.
The Samsung Galaxy S8+ has a beautiful screen.
Overall, I am leaning on keeping the Galaxy S8+ and using my T-Mobile “JUMP” plan to exchange it for the Galaxy Note 8 when that comes out. In fact, I have to say that the most disappointing thing about the S8+ is that I wish it had a pen to go with it’s mammoth screen.
Here are some of my first-day use observations:
- The screen is a beauty. There is no reason Samsung should have gone with a 4K screen; the battery life would have been dismal.
- This is the most premium-feeling phone I’ve ever used. It also feels like if I dropped it, it would break in pieces.
- Android Nougat is an improvement, but Apple’s iOS still remains the best mobile operating system.
The Galaxy 8+ screen curves, but not too much.
- I love that the screen curves, but not too much. The Galaxy S7 Edge was sometimes hard to operate because my fingers would accidentally hit part of the screen that curves over.
- I am disappointed that there are no stereo speakers, but the mono speaker on the S8+ is the best mono speaker I’ve heard.
- I only used the iris scanner for a half day; it’s too buggy to be reliable — at least for now.
- Putting the fingerprint scanner right next to the camera lens in the back was not a good idea.
- For the very first time, I can say that Bluetooth audio from a Samsung device sounds just as good as it does on the iPhone.
- The phone quality is excellent and the HD calls sound even better than calls do on a landline phone.
- The blue light filter is helpful and certainly reduces eye strain.
