Samsung Galaxy S8 – A Brilliant Comeback Story

How does a company shake a global recall of a high profile product? If you're the world's biggest smartphone maker, you keep doing what you know -- tweaking, innovating, improving and building the very products that lead to success.

Samsung could have taken the easy route, slightly changing the modern S7 design while it regrouped. Instead, Samsung pushed the smartphone narrative forward with the Galaxy S8.

After almost a week after the Galaxy S8 release, one thing is abundantly clear: Apple is now in a position of playing catch-up when it comes to design and features.

Samsung Galaxy S8 Specs:

Price: $750 in the US (MSRP only, actual price may vary)

Size: 148.9 x 68.1 x 8.0 mm, 155g

Water/Dust Resistance: IP68

Display: 5.8-inch Quad HD+ (2960x1440) 570 ppi

Storage: 64 GB with microSD support up to 256 GB

Memory: 4 GB RAM

Battery: 3,000 milliamp-hour

Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 in the US, Samsung's Exynos in regions to be announced

Camera: Rear-facing dual pixel 12-megapixel. Front-facing 8-megapixel with autofocus

Operating System: Android 7.0 (Nougat) with Samsung Experience 8.1

Connectivity: USB-C, NFC, Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth

FROM DESIGN FOLLOWER, TO DESIGN LEADER

Apple has, for years, been considered the leader in the design of smartphones, setting the standard for the entire industry, and Samsung spent years copying those designs. At times, Samsung's devices were a blatant rip-off of Apple's hard work.

For the past few years, Samsung has slowly moved away from following Apple's lead, finding its design prowess. First glimpse was -- quite literally -- when the Note 7 got launched.

However, with the Galaxy S8, Samsung has set the bar for all smartphone makers in 2017. Ditch the bezels, increase screen size, and get rid of the camera bump for good. How Samsung has designed the Galaxy S8… it's just pure premium from start to finish. The way the front and back of the phone roll into the metal rim that sits around the outside of the phone is simply exquisite, and there's a real pleasure to be had when just rolling this phone around and around in your palm.

You can already hear Apple pundits crying foul in regards to that statement, finding fault with the fact that the various ports and holes dotting the edges of the S8 still aren't lined up; but it's a tired narrative and needs to end.

Apple takes the time to ensure all of the ports line up perfectly and it does look nice. That said, its frivolous to discount an entire device based on the alignment of ports.

Speaking of ports, on the bottom of the Galaxy S8 is a 3.5mm headphone jack, a USB-C port, and a lone speaker grill. It's unfortunate the S8 doesn't have stereos speakers, especially considering Samsung's continued approach powering Gear VR with its flagship phones.

The buttons are all well-crafted, and have a pleasant click and travel – and this year Samsung has both removed keys from and added keys to important parts of the Galaxy S8.

The right side is home to the lone power button. The top of the phone has a SIM card and microSD tray. The left side is the busiest, with a volume rocker and the dedicated Bixby button.

Samsung's physical home button is gone, replaced by a pressure sensitive digital button that appears and disappears depending on what you're actively doing on the phone. At any time, you can press where the home button should be to activate and use it.

The fingerprint sensor moved to the back of the phone, to the left of the camera lens. It's an odd place for the sensor, with most Android device makers instead putting the fingerprint sensor below the camera lens. Doing so reduces the number of inadvertent fingerprint smears across the camera lens which can muck up photos.

During first day of using the S8, you might struggle to find the sensor. And when you’ll find it, you might fail to line up your finger to get an accurate reading to unlock the phone. But, after a few days of use, finding the sensor will become second nature. It's an adjustment that users will fret over for a few days, and then any reservations will go away.

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE (LACK OF) BEZELS

If you're coming to the S8 from the Galaxy S5 or S6, or switching from the iPhone, then you'll be genuinely amazed by a phone that would look thoroughly at home in a sci-fi movie. Placing the iPhone 7 Plus next to the Galaxy S8, the iPhone's design instantly looks dated, as does the LG G6's box-like design. The curved edges serve two purposes. First, they look good. Second, they make the phone fit comfortably in the palm of your hand.

Due to the S8's taller 5.8-inch display and odd 18.5:9 aspect ratio, the phone is narrower and easier to hold with one hand than Apple's iPhone 7 Plus, despite the S8's bigger display. The bezels of the iPhone 7 Plus, making room for sensors and the home button, are to blame for its gigantic size.

Rumors indicated Apple is planning to follow Samsung's lead by trimming down the bezels and potentially moving the fingerprint sensor to the back of this year's iPhone -- all things Samsung has already done and has in customers' hands.

THE SAMSUNG EXPERIENCE

Drill down into the settings app, and you'll be hard-pressed to find a single reference to Samsung's longtime proprietary Android skin, TouchWiz. The lack of TouchWiz references isn't new, as Samsung has slowly moved away from a term associated with overbearing changes and features.

As Samsung's focus on design has increased, its focus on making substantial software changes has decreased. Starting with the Galaxy S8, any alterations made to Android are considered part of the "Samsung Experience." Specifically, the S8's settings menu lists Samsung Experience 8.1.

TouchWiz is dead, long live... actually, never mind.

The new user interface on the Samsung Galaxy S8 is sleeker and things are miles better now in the interface, and Samsung has worked hard making everything appear where it should.

The Samsung Experience includes a new launcher, ditching a button dedicated to opening the app drawer and giving users the option to abandon the app drawer altogether (going with an iOS-like home screen with every app on display).

There are still some changes Samsung makes to Android that seem more confusing than they are helpful. For example, a long-press on an app icon displays a popup menu to uninstall or put an app to sleep, instead of Android 7.1's quick actions shortcut. How is Samsung going to reconcile the two interactions when the S8 is updated to Android 7.1?

In spite of quick actions, the overall changes Samsung has made to Android have added to the experience, instead of completely distracting from it as has been the case in the past.

HALF-BAKED BIXBY

The other big feature that’s launched with the Samsung Galaxy S8 is Bixby, the brand’s voice assistant rival to Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa and Google's less-interestingly-named Assistant. Well, Bixby is Samsung’s big play in its bid to compete in the arena of artificially intelligent assistants, and it clearly thinks it can succeed despite being so late to the game.

The aim here is to make Bixby an indispensable accompaniment to your daily life, reminding you of things when you need them, letting you know what you're looking at, and being a single-button one-stop shop for all the information you need.

In fact Samsung is so confident that Bixby is going to be brilliant that it's popped a button dedicated solely to this function on the side of the phone.

Bixby is pretty mundane at launch, and that's largely because it's not coming with any kind of voice recognition. As Samsung announced last week, the company's personal assistant isn't quite ready. At launch, the S8 will have Bixby Reminders, Home, and Vision. Voice, arguably the most important aspect of the feature, will arrive via an update later this spring in the US.

Bixby Home, the screen that lives to the side of the home screen, is much better. It's contextual and interesting, and you can pin your favorite elements (like Spotify, for instance) or feed of information and services such as your daily agenda, contact and app recommendations based on time of day, news updates (pulled from Flipboard), and Samsung Health data, to the top for easy access from anywhere in the phone.

The Home panel is accessed through a quick press of the Bixby button, or by swiping to the right on the S8's home screen. Samsung has updated the Bixby app since launching the Galaxy S8.

Bixby Vision uses the camera to scan objects, giving you shopping results via Amazon, translate or extract text, and identify landmarks.

And then there's Bixby Reminders, where you'll be alerted to things you've made a note of in the past. You can set a location trigger to remind you to buy fruit when you pass a location, or ping you at a certain time to remind you to call someone.

It's frustrating and unfortunate Bixby isn't ready. Samsung included a dedicated button for the service, and right now that button is crippled. When Bixby Voice is released in the US, a long press on the button will prompt the phone to wait for commands such as "Text my wife" or "What's the weather like?"

As disappointing as it is for Bixby Voice to be missing right now, delaying a product that isn't ready is the right move by Samsung. Its better to have a product that's available for use than try to use something that's nowhere near ready.

PERFORMANCE

In the US, Samsung continues using Qualcomm's Snapdragon line of processors. For the S8, the Snapdragon 835 is making its debut.

Outside of the slowness, you might experience when launching Bixby Home – something surely is a software issue – you’ll rarely experienced any sluggishness or slowing on the S8.

One aspect of using Android devices to live with is some stuttering when quickly scrolling through the Facebook app or Twitter feed. From the Google Pixel to the Galaxy S7 Edge to the LG G6, a stutter while scrolling, no matter how small, is always present. With the S8, you’ll not notice any scrolling stutter.

The battery life of the Samsung Galaxy S8 was always likely to be pretty good, and it proved to be just that. The Galaxy S8 has a 3000mAh battery – one suspects this would have been larger were it not for the Galaxy Note 7 fires and explosions forcing Samsung to play it safe with the S8.

On top of that Samsung has also thrown in fast and wireless charging (using any popular wireless charging standard around), and you've got loads of ways to make sure you don't run out of power with this handset.

As for the new iris scanner and facial recognition features, while it's fun to advertise either one as a positive feature, fingerprint unlock continues to be the quickest and most reliable method to unlock the S8 using biometrics; especially for those of who wear glasses.

CAMERA

Samsun Galaxy S8 has 12MP camera on the rear and the (upgraded) 8MP sensor on the front, with auto-focus and facial recognition. Both are brilliant in low light as well. Samsung left its rear camera unchanged, instead relying on software processing improvements to provide better image quality. It took a gamble in not sticking a dual-lens sensor on the back of the S8, which is the new fashionable thing to do in terms of smartphone cameras, and instead made it easy to take a photo.

You can double-tap the power button to instantly be into the camera app (or swipe from the lock screen) and you're less than a second away from the shutter firing. It might take a few attempts to learn the rhythm, but once you've got it there's very little lag between grabbing your phone from your pocket and the photo being saved.

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 the iPhone 7 Plus' second camera lens.

A NEARLY PERFECT DEVICE

The standard is set.

Between the hardware design, software tweaks and services such as Samsung Pay, Samsung has not only put the Note 7 fiasco firmly in its rear view mirror, but it's passed every other smartphone manufacturer.

The Galaxy S8 is as close to a perfect smartphone as you can get. The fingerprint sensor is accurate, but the facial tech is still a work in progress.

Samsung's new less-is-more approach to software is welcomed, though some changes are still confusing. And launching a flagship device without its flagship software feature is a huge miss.

Even with its imperfections, Samsung's Galaxy S8 is the best smartphone money can buy right now. And unless Apple surpasses everyone's expectations later this year, it likely will continue to be for the foreseeable future.