Samsung is one of the leading smartphone manufacturers in the world. Their Galaxy S series smartphones are undoubtedly special. A couple of years ago in 2014, Samsung made a surprise Smartphone announcement called the Galaxy Note Edge. This product has evolved again and again into Samsung’s entire flagship line up which brought us to the Samsung Galaxy S8.

The headlining feature is how good it looks and how carefully it is designed. Of course, being a flagship, it has all the bleeding-edge techs inside. You will like this phone’s build. Like pretty much everything about the outside of this phone is premium and well-built and awesome.  

Galaxy S8 was the ultimate flagship of Samsung. It was announced in March 2017 and released on April 24, 2017.

Key features:

Let’s take a look at the full specifications of the Samsung Galaxy S8

Network

Samsung Galaxy S8 supported GSM/HSPA/LTE. That means it was a 4G supported phone.

Body

The body dimension is 148.9 x 68.1 x 8 mm or 5.86 x 2.68 x 0.31 inches. The overall weight is 155g. This means the phone is a little bit tall but handy. The body structure is a glass-aluminum-glass sandwich-like build.

Here in front and back, Samsung used the most premium scratch-proof glasses which is Gorilla Glass 5. The mainframe is made with aluminum which makes the phone more durable. That means the phone will never bend under usual pressure.

SIM

Samsung Galaxy S8 comes with a hybrid sim slot. You can use either a single nano-SIM card with an SD card expandable up to 256 GB or two nano-SIM (Dual stand-by) with no SD card option.

Display

Undoubtedly Samsung is the best in its display technology. The display comes with Samsung’s own amazing Super AMOLED technology which consumes less power and provides a clear view. It supports HDR 10. The 5.8-inch display is large enough with ~83.6% screen-to-body ratio.

The display resolution is 1440×2960 pixels. 550 pixels per inch (PPI) density makes this display special. You can use the always-on display feature which only supports the AMOLED panel. The 3D touch is enabled for the home button.

OS

You will get android 7.0 (Nougat) out of the box and it is upgradeable up to android 11. That means you will get Google support for the upcoming 3 to 4 years easily. The user interface (UI) Samsung uses on its flagship phones is called ONE UI. This UI is well decorated and rich with unique features.

Chipset

There are two versions of this phone. One is the Global version which comes with their own Exynos 8895 processor. This processor is built on 10-nanometer technology. Another version is for the USA and China region. In this one, they used a slightly more powerful Snapdragon 835 and it is also fabricated on 10 nm technology.

You can measure the difference if you notice the core information of both CPUs. There are also some differences in GPU. Exynos 8895 contains a Mali G71 MP20 and Snapdragon is packed with Adreno 540 GPU.

Memory

Samsung Galaxy S8 comes with 64GB internal storage with an expandable SD card option. The storage is UFS 2.0 or 2.1. Higher UFS means a faster transfer rate. There is no option to choose from different variants of RAM because the Galaxy S8 comes with 4 gigs of RAM.

Camera

The main camera is a single 12 megapixel. The sensor is f/1.7, 26mm (wide), 1/2.55”, 1.4µm. Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) helps you to record stable video. LED flash, auto-HDR, and panorama are key camera features of Galaxy S8.

This back camera can capture 4K video at 30FPS and 1080p video at 60 FPS. HDR, Stereo sound recording, and Gyro are important specs for recording video.

There is a dual camera set up in front. The selfie camera is 8 megapixels. Aperture is f/1.7, 25mm (wide), 1/3.6”, 1.22µm. This camera supports dual video calls and can record video in 1440p at 30FPS. Another one is 2 megapixels. It is a dedicated iris scanner. It is a futuristic feature of this phone.

Sound

There is a single speaker that is placed at the bottom of this phone. The sound is crisp but not so loud. You will get a 3.5mm port for your headphones. This useful little port is rare nowadays. 

Wireless

The WLAN setup is dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac which is also able to create a Hotspot. In this phone, you will get the latest Bluetooth 5.0, A2DP, LE, aptX. NFC is one of the newest features of this smartphone. It is a new technology which is very helpful for making e payments.

You will get all kinds of GPS services with A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS, GALILEO. Unfortunately, the radio option is being removed from this device.

Sensors

Samsung Galaxy S8 is enriched with all necessary sensors. Iris scanner, fingerprint (rear-mounted), accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass, barometer, heart rate, SpO2 all these sensors made this phone sophisticated. You will get Bixbi as a virtual assistant. Samsung has also included supportive features like Samsung DeX, Samsung Pay, and ANT+.

Battery

There is a 3000mah Li-ion Non-removable battery in Galaxy S10. Samsung claims this will give you almost 20 hours of Talktime upon 3G. Though it seems unconvincing, you will get a 15W fast charger out of the box which is able to charge this phone within 80 minutes.

Pricing

Samsung Galaxy S8 started at around 720$ back then. As production of this phone was discontinued, the price is not the same as its launch time. So you have to negotiate if you are going to get one new.

Summary

At the end of the day, you will find the Samsung Galaxy S8 is awesome. You have to give Samsung credit for making a phone that can stand out for how good it looks in an era where so many phones are accused of all looking the same.

There are little things you may not like about it. But as a complete package, this is an extraordinary phone. The thing I love about this phone is the display which looks like it melts over both sides smoothly. It actually looks so relaxing.

If you decide to purchase one in 2021 then I will recommend the updated ones. The new Galaxy S21 is ruling the market. Make your choice according to your requirements.