Samsung has unveiled in New York its latest flagship smartphones, the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus. The new phones, featuring gigabit LTE, the new digital assistant Bixby and bigger screens, will be available from 21 April for respectively EUR 799 and EUR 899, in a choice of black, grey, silver, blue or gold.
Compared to the S7 generation, the new phones are bigger, with screens of 5.8 inches for the S8 and 6.2 inches for the S8 plus. Both offer 2K/QHD resolution, the same as the S7, while the screen-to-body ratio increases to over 80 percent. With an aluminium frame and glass casing, the S8 and S8 Plus are also dust- and water- resistant to the IP68 standard and feature Gorilla Glass 5 and wireless charging.
The S8 will run in some regions the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 and in other places Samsung's new Exynos 9 octa-core processor. Both chips are built on 10nm production and support a gigabit LTE modem. The S8 also runs 4 GB RAM and comes with 64 GB internal storage, plus a microSD card slot up to 256 GB.
Both new phones feature the same 12-megapixel DualPixel back camera on the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge, with a number of software enhancements. The front camera is improved to 8 megapixels from 5 on the previous generation, with added iris and facial recognition features.
After the problems with the Note 7, Samsung is not offering bigger batteries on the new phones, despite their larger screen size. The Galaxy S8 comes with a 3,000 mAh battery and the S8 plus with 3,500 mAh, compared to respectively 3,000 and 3,600 mAh on their smaller predecessors.
The main new features on the S8 phones are the new Bixby digital assistant and the possibility to use the phones as desktop computers with the optional DeX Dock. The docking station allows users to connect a screen, keyboard, mouse and network cable to the phone so it can be used as a computer. Software vendors such as VMware and Citrix have already announced support for DeX.
