Samsung Galaxy S8 Review UK

Samsung Galaxy S8 Review: Overview & Price

The Samsung Galaxy S8 is a very interesting phone, in this review we will be going over that makes the phone unique, so if its a Samsung Galaxy S8 review you’re looking for, you have come to the right place.

We also showcase the best Samsung Galaxy S8 contract deals in the UK for the phone, to ensure we give you the best deals possible.

Samsung created a phone a while ago named the Galaxy Note Edge, and for a phone that was totally out of the blue it actually got a lot of attention, it had a crazy display that would hang of one side of the phone.

The Note Edge has actually evolved multiple times and that brings us to the Samsung Galaxy S8.

The Samsung Galaxy s8 specs are impressive too, the phone offers 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage, plenty of room to store music and videos whilst keeping the device running smoothly.

The Samsung S8/S8+ looks great and that is the hallmark feature of the phone, how good it looks.

The Samsung Galaxy S8 price is around £450 mark in the UK, which is not bad for such a good looking and good spec phone.

Check out the best Samsung Galaxy S8 deals here…

Samsung Galaxy S8 Review: Design & Display

The Samsung Galaxy S8 design is rather slick, very well built and looks the part.

The display melts over the side of the phone which we are a really big fan of as it gives it such a unique look.

The phone has very thin bezels on all sides of the phone which makes the 5.8inch and 6.2inch displays on the S8 and S8+ do not feel as big as they actually are.

The S8 and S8+ both have fingerprint sensors and because there is not enough room to have it at the front of the phone, because of the display they have moved it to the back in the centre of the phone.

We dislike this and feel it is such a strain and stretch to reach the fingerprint sensor, they could have picked a better location for this.

The phone is made purely from glass and surprisingly it actually does a good job at deflecting failed fingerprint unlocks.

But we would definitely recommend getting a case or a skin for this phone as it looks so much better with one on.

Samsung’s word on this is now they provide other ways to unlock the phone without having to use the fingerprint scanner.

The iris scanner and the face unlock is what they meant by this although they are not as secure as the face scanner can literally be tricked by a picture of you.

You had to hold the phone at all kinda awkward angles on previous models to get the Iris scanner to work but they seem to have fixed this as on the S8 I didn’t have a problem at all to get the phone to unlock.

The Samsung Galaxy S8 comes with an absolutely amazing design and we feel it is one of the best out there, the phone comes with expandable storage using a microSD.

You may be wondering if the Samsung Galaxy S8 is waterproof? Well yes, it is IP68 certified water and dust resistant meaning if you drop it down the toilet it will survive.

The phone also has USB-C with quick charge making it so much quicker and also has wireless charging.

It still has the headphone jack, although the speaker is on the bottom of the phone and is definitely below average, in my opinion, it is the worst part of the design but still not too big of a deal.

The screen is probably the best on any smartphone and gets extremely bright as it is an OLED so has great colours, it is super high resolution at 2960 x 1440 on both the S8 and S8+.

Given that the Samsung Galaxy S8 can be attained on a cheap contract deal now in 2019, we feel it is an incredible value for money, especially when looking at its fantastic OLED display.

Samsung Galaxy S8 Review: Performance

The Samsung Galaxy S8 specs are seriously impressive, it has the Snapdragon 835 chipset, 4GB of RAM, 64GB storage (expandable) and Bluetooth 5.0.

The performance aspect is great on this phone and runs very smoothly straight out of the box.

The edge screen on this phone has got better as there is now a couple of features taken from the Note.

See Related:

*Samsung Galaxy S9 Review*
*Samsung Galaxy S10 Review*
*Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Review*
*Samsung Galaxy A40 Review*

Such as smart select, the gif maker, the extended screenshot feature and a few others which we did not have before.

One of the biggest new features in the software department of the Samsung Galaxy S8/S8+ is called Bixby, it is the virtual assistant which is built for this phone and helps you check the weather or football score any other things you might want to know, it works a lot like google assist.

Samsung does have a Bixby button the side of the phone where you could remap it to a different setting if you did not use Bixby, but recently it has been patched so now it only works for Bixby and Bixby only, which is kind of annoying considering a lot of people simply don’t use it.

Considering that the Samsung Galaxy S8 price is reasonable, the specs make it worth considering for those wanting a strong handset that won’t break the bank.

Samsung Galaxy S8 Review: Camera

One cool feature of this button is that when operating the camera if you press the Bixby button it will try and identify what you are taking a photo of and search it and try and get you the best links for whatever it is.

Sometimes it works great and sometimes it doesn’t it all depends on what you are taking a picture of.

The camera on the back has the same specs as the previous model and is not a dual camera, it has a 12MP f1.7 aperture, dual-pixel autofocus, which is great but we have already seen this.

But it has been slightly updated with newer optics, the photos and 4K videos from the S8 actually look great, they have great detail, great contrast, colour and sharpness and the dynamic range are pretty wide.

Samsung Galaxy S8 Review: Battery Life

The Samsung Galaxy S8 Battery life is one areas that we would expect a little bit more, the 3000mAh barely got me through the end of the day although I do use it a lot with the brightness very high and do a lot of gaming on my phone.

On the flip side, it charged ridiculously fast which definitely makes up for it dying out so quick especially as it is wireless.

Fast and wireless charging works really well on the Samsung Galaxy S8/S8+ and will charge from 0-100 in around 70 minutes.

Samsung Galaxy S8 Review: Summary

We think Samsung did a great job with this phone, it stands out from the crowd and it looks great, which is hard to do nowadays.

There are a few flaws with the phone what we are not a fan of, for example, the speaker could do with some work but again the design is great and as a complete package the Samsung S8/S8+ is solid.

The Samsung Galaxy s8 specs are strong, and the price is fair too. We couldn’t complain too much when looking at the performance aspect of this phone in context with its price.

Samsung Smartphone Galaxy S8 64GB UK Version - Midnight Black 

We hope you have enjoyed our Samsung Galaxy S8 review UK, and feel free to leave a comment and check out the best Samsung Galaxy contract deals at the top of this post.

However, before you make any decisions we would definitely recommend checking our out Samsung S9 review to compare.

Samsung Galaxy S8 Review: Full Specification

Launch: 2017 April

Body:

• Dimension: 148.9 x 68.1 x 8mm (5.86 x 2.68 x 0.31 inches)
• Weight: 155g (5.47 oz)
• Build: Front/back glass (Gorilla Glass 5), aluminium frame
• Sim: Single SIM (Nano-SIM) or Hybrid Dual SIM (Nano-SIM, dual stand by)
• IP67 dust/water resistant (up to 1m for 30 mins)
• Samsung Pay (Visa, Mastercard certified)

Display:

• Type: Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, 16M colours
• Size: 5.8inches, 84.8cm² (-83.6% screen to body ratio)
• Resolution: 1440 x 2960 pixels, 18:5:9 ratio (-570 PPI density)
• Multitouch: Yes
• Protection: Corning Gorilla Glass 5
  – HDR10 compliant
  – 3D Touch (home button only)
  – Always-on display

Platform:

•  OS: Android 7.0 (Nougat), upgradable to Android 8.0 (Oreo)
• Chipset: Exynos 8895 Octa – EMEA
  Qualcomm MSM8998 Snapdragon 835 – USA & China
• CPU: Octa-core (4×2.3 GHz Mongoose M2 & 4.1.7 GHz Cortex-A53) – EMEA
  Octa-core (4×2.35 GHz Kryo & 4×1.9 GHz Kryo) – USA & China
• GPU: Mali-G71 MP20 – EMEA
  Adreno 540 – USA & China

Memory:

• Card slot: MicroSD, up to 512GB (uses SIM 2 slot) – dual SIM model only
• Internal: 64GB, 4GB RAM

Camera:

• Primary: 12MP (f/1.7, 26mm, 1/2.5″, dual pixel PDAF), OIS, LED flash
• Features: Geo-tagging, simultaneous 4k video and 9MP image recording, touch focus, face/smile detection, Auto HDR, panorama
• Video: 2160@30fps, 1080p@60fps, 720p@240fps, HDR, dual-video rec
• Secondary: 8MP (f/1.7, 25mm, 1/3.6″), AF, 1440p@30fps, dual video call, Auto HDR

Sound:

• Alert Types: Vibration; MP3, WAV ringtones
• Loudspeaker: Yes
• 3.5mm Jack: Yes
  – 32-bit/384kHz audio
  – Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic

Comms:

• WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct, hotspot
• Bluetooth: 5.0, A2DP, LE, aptX
• GPS: Yes, with A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS, GALILEO
• NFC: Yes
• Radio: No
• USB: 3.1, Type-C 1.0 reversible connector

Features:

• Sensors: Iris scanner, fingerprint (rear-mounted), accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass, barometer, heart rate, Sp02
• Messaging: SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email, IM
• Browser: HTML5
• More: Samsung DeX (desktop experience support)
  – Fast battery charging (Quick Charge 2.0)
  – Qi/PMA wireless charging (market dependant)
  – ANT + support
  -Bixby natural language commands and dictation
  – MP4/DivX/XviD/H.265 player
  – MP3/WAV/eAAC+/FLAC player
  -Photo/video editor
  -Document editor

Battery:

• Non-removable Li-Ion 3000 mAh battery (11.55 Wh)
• Talk time: Up to 20h (3G)
• Music Play: Up to 67h

Misc:

• Colours: Midnight Black, Orchid Gray, Arctic Silver, Coral Blue, Maple Gold, Rose Pink, Burgundy Red
• Price: As seen in blog post above

Tests:

• Performance: Basemark OS: 3272 / Basemark 2.0: 3376 / Basemark X: 42370
• Display: Contrast ratio: Infinite (nominal), 4.768 (sunlight)
• Camera: Photo / Video
• Loudspeaker: Voice 66dB / Noise 70dB / Ring 72dB
• Audio Quality: Noise -92.5dB / Crosstalk -92.8dB
• Battery life: Endurance rating 84h