Samsung has launched its much anticipated phones S8 and S8+ in five colours – Midnight Black, Orchid Gray, Coral Blue, Arctic Silver and Maple Gold. Prior to this, there were a lot of leaks of the phone and now the final version looks a lot like the leaked versions.
At the launch event, the Company also unveiled its in-house virtual assistant called Bixby, which will be available in both the new phones – S8 and S8+. Bixby will work with some of the pre-installed apps in the phone. It will be interesting to see how Bixby copes with the other Artificial Intelligence Voice based virtual assistants already in the market, such as Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa.
The phones have a stunning display of QHD+ (1440×2960 pixels) Super AMOLED which the Company calls the infinity display with corning gorilla glass 5. The bezel-less design of the phones gives a fresh new look to Samsung phones and the screen size of S8 is 5.8′ and S8+ is 6.2′.
In terms of the bio-metric capabilities both versions of the phone will have iris, facial and finger print recognition.
On the Camera front, both phones will consist of 12 Dual Pixel rear camera with image stabilisation and 8 mega pixel front camera. With IP68 certification, Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ have the highest grade of dust and water resistant ability.
It seems as if Samsung is not leaving any stone unturned for the features regarding the new phones even to the extent of their earphones. The earphones of the phones is tuned by Harman and the high performance earphones have a comfortable hybrid canal fit for optimal noise cancellation giving user the best experience.
Converting the phone into a desktop like feature is also introduced with this phone. This can be done using Samsung Dex Dock. It would be interesting to see how these phones with infinity display will work on Gear 360 VR with 4K videos.
At the launch event, the price of the phones was not announced by the Company but The Verge hints that S8 will cost around $750 and S8+ roughly $850.
Brief Specification of the phones:
| Samsung S8 | Samsung S8+ | |
| OS | Android 7.0 (Nougat) | Android 7.0 (Nougat) |
| Display | 5.8″ Quad HD+ Super AMOLED
(2960×1440) 570 ppi |
6.2″ Quad HD+ Super AMOLED (2960×1440) 529 ppi |
| Camera | Front: 8MP AF
F1.7 Aperture Rear: Dual Pixel 12MP AF OIS (Optical Image Stabilization) F1.7 Aperture |
Front: 8MP AF
F1.7 Aperture Rear: Dual Pixel 12MP AF OIS (Optical Image Stabilization) F1.7 Aperture |
| Chipset | Snapdragon 835 | Snapdragon 835 |
| CPU | Octa-core (2.3GHz Quad + 1.7GHz Quad), 64 bit, 10nm processor | Octa-core (2.3GHz Quad + 1.7GHz Quad), 64 bit, 10nm processor |
| RAM | 4GB | 4GB |
| Internal Memory | 64GB – one MicroSD slot (up to 256GB) | 64GB – one MicroSD slot (up to 256GB) |
| Water Resistant | IP68 | IP68 |
| Battery | 3000 mAh | 3500 mAh |
| Sensors | Iris Sensor
Pressure Sensor Accelerometer Barometer Fingerprint Sensor Gyro Sensor Geomagnetic Sensor Hall Sensor HR Sensor Proximity Sensor RGB Light Sensor |
Iris Sensor
Pressure Sensor Accelerometer Barometer Fingerprint Sensor Gyro Sensor Geomagnetic Sensor Hall Sensor HR Sensor Proximity Sensor RGB Light Sensor |
| Virtual Assistant | Bixby | Bixby |
Samsung also announced at the event that S8 will the be “Start of New Era” and that the phone will be go on sale from April 21st onward.