Today I was in town for a whiskey and a meal. And I realised later that the shops would be open longer than usual. Great, let's see if Tmobile has some S8+ lying around.
They do! Couldn't find one iPhone in the store. "Yeah sorry, no iPhone 7 , all out of stock" And they pointed me to the complete samsung blue corner. The latest and greatest from Samsung was presented with "please use this" signs and what not. VR headsets, their watches, their S8+ phones, etc. I had a blast playing with the things.
The super high resolution on the s8+ looks really fantastic. It's so so so sharp, it's a true competitor to Apple's retina. And the small letters are with my super bad eyes actually readable. The same resolution or font size on the iPhone 6s+ that I was holding in my hand was harder to read for me. I honestly tried to compare as objective as possible. Despite being biased to Apple's stuff. But that OLED display in that size, with that really high resolution is like a glowing bright bit of print paper you're holding - even more so than the Apple products. I was quite impressed.
But it did stop there. The fonts are great, when it comes to system fonts. Quite a few apps didn't adapt, zoomed in weird, couldn't handle the resolution so smoothly, and became jittery when scrolling or switching apps. It's like it was just a bit too much for the GPU (which it wasn't, it were the apps). The games were not my type of games, but racing in a car was great, it looked really smooth. However, getting into the game I ended up not winning the round simply because of holding the phone with this dripping over screen had a direct influence on handling the device and what was touchable on the screen. Maybe i am just not used to it, but that's my first experience and impression.
The normal s8 i left on the 1080p resolution, set it full bright (the scroll bar started turning red and i got a warning?) so i pushed it back down and left it alone. I let it run the game while the camera was on and i loaded up about 20 apps in the background. The UI/UX is "sorta" new to me, it was a drag to figure out though how things worked, where they were. Clearly i am used to iOS, but its the type of interface i am not so sure i want to get used to. Something's to be said about having bigger touch spaces and areas and more consistency in app design, etc. This android phone felt like it was a pretty presentation to blow you away, and then when you start to use it, you have to adjust to each app, its a bit different than i am sued to , how apps work.. i dunno. And yes, I asked the guy in the store to just unplug it to test the battery while we used it.
The s8+ i maxed out, i put the screen on the biggest resolution, the brightness all the way up, and i got it unplugged. I had a bunch of eyes staring me down because who knows, i might wanna steal the phone! i ensured them i had no interest in running away with it, fanboy here (waved apple phone). whatever..
Used it to do the same kinda things as on the s8 and i noticed quite a bit of scrolling issues, jittery behavior in certain apps, and webpages were super smooth. But games resized in screen, they didn't stick to this resolution. Other apps seemed to just zoom in or something. it felt weird. Taking a few pictures made the camera stutter as if it was calculating way too much to figure out what i wanted to while trying to pretend it's actually snappy. The pictures turned out great, but when they weren't great, they were quite terrible to honest. if the software tries too hard, its just like a 6mp pixel in low light. quite strange! but when it nails it, it nails it good. The camera doesn't seem to be any better than the s7 i once played with, they seem like 8 to 10mp cams with software to make it look like 12mp. i dunno.. it surely wasn't as snappy as my iphone 6s+ What it does do well is recognize multiple faces at once - i hardly ever see my iphone recognize ppls faces let alone more than a couple.
All in all, i can't wait for the iPhone 8, this is like a sneak preview, it feels like a solid but very very light device. it's so much lighter than my iphone 6s+ , it's a bigger screen, but less wide in the hand. The s8+ , the s8 is the same, if you can't afford the +, the s8 is a nice big phone, but i am a tall person, big hands, i didn't quite like the normal s8 in my hands, the screen was just as outstanding though.
This light feeling, i can't imagine the battery doing well .. and it showed. The s8 was doing ok, it drained the battery as much as my one year old iPhone now (but new iPhone battery withstood the mini stress test a lot better)
The s8+ went down a lot faster than i even expected, max settings certainly has an effect.
We had a few people handling it, it was difficult to figure out the heat of the phone vs ppl being nervous and playing with a new toy.
I had fun trying it out, it does feel like an android OS on the iphone 8 prototype.. as if at any time i could dual boot into iphone 8's iOS and go 'ah, back home'
But after YEARS, i finally feel android is as good as an alternative (bare, no telecom crap on it) to iOS, and not a pretend-OS as i sometimes called it when i was using it during photo shoots for b-roll etc. (what a hassle, GOSH).
And after years, it finally feels like it's a bloody good looking and not plastic feeling fake phone for an android, htc, lg, pff, whatever, they are off the list, the top 3 is now samsung s8, samsung s8+ and samsung s8+ maxed out in settings and specs.
Would I buy it? no. I can't compare it to the iPhone 7, it's better in some elements, not so much in others. I am a nApple platform person with love for Apple (not a sheep, i've been hating a lot lately at tim cooks' questionable performance grrr - and i don't buy everything when it comes out, i can wait 4 years sometimes.. ) There's simply no iPhone 8 to compare it with, besides rumors. If apple doesn't make a better iPhone 8 than the S8+ from SAmsung, i can imagine samsung taking a portion of the market, i can see htc/lg/oldiPhone/windows users convert to this samsung phone. And I could see apple if they screw up more and focus on pencils and watch bands ... lose customers more than they expect.
Competition, finally!
It was fun to play with, to get an impression beyond what you see on theverge, here, etc.. And feel it in your hand. a huge difference. It's hard to take a picture of a phone like this when you get a different experience when you hold it.
If there was no choice, but i had to convert, this s8+ is the one I'd convert to, and i would be willing to make that compromise to move to android. Do i want to? no. sorry.. i feel the iphone 8 or iphone 8s could be better, and be what i want from a phone. but boy, apple.. it's time you listen to customers as well. the competition is.
Ugh, i never thought i'd be saying nice things about android phones ..
