These Are The 5 New Samsung S8 Features That Could Make You Ditch Your iPhone
Samsung leads the smartphone feature wars with
the S8’s edge-to-edge OLED display, improved iris scanner, and disappearing
home button.
For the last few years, Apple has reliably trailed Samsung in
releasing the latest and greatest premium smartphone features. And this morning, Samsung jumped out in front again with the
official launch of its new Galaxy
S8 and S8+ smartphones.
The new devices offer several features that
the iPhone doesn’t yet have—and some of them could really change (and improve)
the way we use the devices.
Samsung’s strong suit is the display, and the company put a beauty
on the S8. It’s an edge-to-edge OLED screen, so it removes the bezel space
around the screen area.
“So it’s the same footprint (same size as S7 and S7+), there’s
nothing bigger to hold, and you get a much bigger screen,” says Gartner analyst
Brian Blau, who spoke from the Samsung event in New York.
The S8 has a 5.8-inch display compared to the S7’s 5.1-inch
screen. The S8+ has a 6.2-inch display, compared to the S7+’s 5.5-inch display.
That’s a big step up. However, it does create an elongated aspect ratio in the
new phone screens. We’ll see how that works with third-party apps.
And like all Samsung displays, it’s noticeably bigger and brighter
than those on other smartphones.
The screen is so big that it crowded out the space needed for a
physical home button. So users will rely on the software buttons in Android for
control.
Samsung included an biometric iris scanner in its failed Galaxy
Note 7 phone, but the technology was a little unreliable as a quick way to
unlock the phone. Samsung has tried again in the S8, with hopefully better
results.
“The iris scanner is going to be big,” says Bob O’Donnell of
Technalysis Research (who also spoke from the event). “It’s a really secure
biometric method, and it’s great that Samsung is giving people the option of
using that and using the fingerprint reader.”
Gartner’s Blau is also bullish on the iris scanner but isn’t a fan
of the new placement of the fingerprint reader (which got pushed to the back of
the phone when the physical home button went away).
“It’s ill-positioned because it’s right next to the camera on the
back of the phone,” he says. “I worry that it’s going to lead to users smudging
the camera lens.”
O’Donnell is impressed with the new AKG earbuds that will ship with the new S8s. They normally cost $99, but are included for
free. Smartphone makers have traditionally made poor earphones (Apple
recently became the exception) so Samsung let somebody who knows audio provide the buds. “It’s an
impressive first integration with Harmon,” O’Donnell says. Samsung bought
Harmon in late 2016 for its automotive and
consumer audio technology, and has been furiously working to bring the
U.S.-based company into the Samsung fold.
Both O’Donnell and Blau thought Samsung’s new DeX desktop dock for
the S8 was notable, but are reserving judgment until they learn how well it
actually works.
“The notion of the phone as pocket computer is something that
we’ve seen before from Motorola and others, but this looks like a more serious
effort,” O’Donnell said. He added that the dock is powered by a bit of software
called Citrix Receiver, which will allow users to securely connect to a cloud
and display enterprise apps in the S8’s Android environment.
Gartner’s Blau: “To be honest, it’s not going to be something for
everyone, but it might be useful for a certain segment of mobile workers.”
Samsung used the event as a sort of coming-out party for its new “Bixby”
digital personal assistant and Siri competitor.
“Bixby is interesting because it does both voice and image recognition,”
O’Donnell said. “The concept is that the assistant can both understand talking
and can see, which is conceptually the right idea.”
Samsung demonstrated how Bixby can recognize a specific bottle of
wine through the lens of the S8 camera—and since it’s connected to Amazon, the
user could actually buy the bottle. Gartner’s Blau points out that we’ve
already seen such technology in Amazon’s Fire Phone and in the Amazon shopping
app, so it’s not that new.
Bixby looks very rudimentary at the moment, and Samsung will need
time to build the assistant into something really useful to consumers, said
Blau. “It’s an interesting first pass.”
On the downside, Samsung did almost nothing to improve the
rear-facing camera in the new phone. Aside from some software enhancements, the
hardware is the same, Blau said. “With other companies introducing dual-lens
cameras, I would have expected that Samsung would have done something here.”
Samsung did, however, increase the front-facing camera from a 5-megapixel to
8-megapixel lens.
Samsung’s big message is that it’s offering a meaningful set (a
“galaxy”) of products and services around its premium smartphones. O’Donnell
believes the company did a more compelling job of expressing that vision at
today’s event. “They’ve been able to build an ecosystem that has broad appeal
and enables a whole bunch of services that extend beyond the phone,” he said.
And, of course, the elephant in the room was the company’s PR
nightmare with the exploding batteries in its last major smartphone release,
the Galaxy Note 7. Samsung’s mobile chief D.J. Ko was convincingly contrite at
the end of the event today, saying his company needs to be “humble” and to
learn from the past.
“Samsung needed a solid event today to help them get past the Note
debacle,” Blau said. “I think they did that; I think they’re clearly stepping
past that.”
BY MARK SULLIVAN
https://www.fastcompany.com/3069291/5-samsung-s8-features-that-could-make-you-ditch-your-iphone?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fcdaily-top&position=6&partner=newsletter&campaign_date=03302017
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