The Samsung Galaxy 8 Star: A Good Device with Some Caveats

Samsung smartphones have been able to handle my day-to-day usage efficiently, but there's one thing that's still lacking - high settings for Pop Genie. As an alternative, we get a lower setting which is kind of disappointing since other devices like the One Plus 6 can play it in high settings at the same price point.

The talking point here is the price. The Galaxy 8 Star is surely expensive when compared side-by-side with the One Plus 6 that features a Snapdragon 845 chipset. You get a flawless processor in the device, but when you're paying a premium price, you should expect the best. At this price point, it would be nice to see the device equipped with a more powerful processor like the Snapdragon 710, which is found in some other devices.

In terms of storage, the device comes with RAM and UFS storage options that are lacking compared to some other devices at this price range. So, does the pricing justify everything? The software on the device is where it shines. It comes with Android 8.0 Oreo and Samsung's Experience UI 9.0 on top. The software is fluent and free of any sort of stuttering if you're wondering.

Now, let's talk about the cameras. The Galaxy 8 Star follows the dual camera trend by equipping a 16 megapixel primary camera and a 24 megapixel secondary camera at the back, both with focal lengths of 1.7 apertures. The pictures come out great and are well-detailed and sharp. They're also saturated, but if you compare them against some other devices of this price range, you'll see where it shines and where it falls behind.

One of the best parts of the images is the level of detail captured by the camera. One Plus 6 loses a lot of details when you zoom in, whereas the Galaxy 8 Star retains its sharpness even at close distances. However, if you take a closer look at the images, especially those with golden-colored plates, you'll notice how artificial they look due to over-saturation. On the other hand, the One Plus 6 certainly outperforms it in terms of saturation and colors.

The device also features Light Focus Mode, which lets you toggle the intensity of blur. The fake blur is indeed good, but if you zoom in, you can easily notice areas around the head where it hasn't been able to blur out properly. Compared to the One Plus 6, the latter does a better job at this.

The rear cameras on the device are capable of shooting FHD+ videos and 40fps, which is a nice feature. I tried recording full HD videos on the device, and even without stabilization, it takes stable videos with good colors and zoom capabilities. The device also supports slow-motion videos, but we'll let you be the judge for that.

Nighttime photography is where things get interesting. Although the pictures are noisy and slightly grainy, they're well-saturated and retain their colors quite nicely. If you zoom in on the pictures, you'll notice a loss in quality, but it's still decent. The device also features a 24 megapixel selfie camera, which is one of the highest megapixel counts for any Samsung selfie camera.

Samsung has finally focused on selfies with this new device, and it shows in the samples we have here. All of these images have good details and capture natural skin tones well. There's also a night mode for selfies, but I didn't notice any major difference.

The device packs a bottom-firing speaker that fills up a small room but is nowhere close to the stereo speakers on other devices like the Note 9+. If you play games or watch videos frequently, you'll have to be careful not to cover it. In terms of call quality, I had no issues with the phone; callers on the other end never complained about the call, and the earpiece produces pretty loud sounds.

In conclusion, the Galaxy 8 Star is a good device in many ways - it has a crisp display, a flawless processor, good cameras both front and back, and everything you'd want in a smartphone. However, the price point is where it falls short. The phone is well-expensive, and I think Samsung should focus on aggressive pricing if they want to stay competitive in the mid-range smartphone market.

Overall, the Galaxy 8 Star is a solid device with some minor drawbacks. If you're looking for a good smartphone at this price range, it's definitely worth considering. However, if budget is your top priority, you might want to look elsewhere.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthe e-series has always been a kid wave from mid-range devices to high-end flagships for Samsung they pack in some features from the mid Rangers while the others they borrow from flagships this is the case for a long lineup of Samsung's ETV smartphones and that is the case yet again here this is the Samsung Galaxy 8 star Samsung's answer to the growing number of cheap high-end Chinese smartphones so is this device a star of the smartphone galaxy let's find out this is the galaxy a star it has followed the trend of smartphone sporting minimum vessels and a glass back what we get with it is a boxy design that has sharp edges all around these sharp edges make the fold a bit difficult to use I know that some of you might like this but at a time when companies are focusing on better looks and good on hands feel Sam's light has gone old-school but still the device has a heft to it and feels premium the shiny glass pack looks quite good don't you think but yes like every other smartphone of the present time it attracts finger prints so I carried around a microfiber cloth all the time sandwiched between the two glasses is a metallic rail that helps with better gripping on this rail rest a few buttons there's a power button on the right with the volume rockers and the infamous fix B button on the right for me the worst feature of this mock phone is definitely the placement of buttons I mean just look at it the buttons are so hard to reach and whenever I thought I reach the volume rockers it was always the Bigsby button and trust me it's very very annoying when it happens a lot of times during the day another disappointment is the placement of the fingerprint sensor Samsung and fingerprint sensors they don't go together ever I had praised the placement of the fingerprint sensor in the note 9 and s9 but yet again there is Samsung placing the fingerprint sensors so high another area where the eight star did not quite live up to my expectations is on the battery front with a 3700 mAh battery I had expected it to last for more than a day but that was not the case and it only gave me a screen on time of around five to five and a half hours now running for all the time is good but for that battery size and for what it's worth I think it's not good enough also it only has Full HD plus resolution so running for a little longer should be a necessary right there's a fast charging tech embedded inside though with the default charger which is Type C enabled so that's good but what's good here lies in front the eight star follows Samsung strengths of having a top notch display even though there is no not here the front has a tall 6.3 inch full HD display which shredder top and bottom bezels just like the eight plus I like everything about this display it's bright outdoors and with the Super AMOLED panel it is well saturated pleasing to the eyes and colorful it certainly gives other smartphones are run for their money if you compare it against the 1 plus 6 which is available in a similar price tag in some countries they look quite similar to the eye however the bezels could have been a little shorter to make the phone look even more attractive now let's talk about security like every other smartphones in 2018 this one 2 comes with 2 security options facial unlock and a fingerprint sensor the fingerprint sensor gets unlocking right every time and is a little faster than some of the Samsung devices the face unlock on the other hand takes a second to unlock the device so you have that onto the performance the 8 star feature snapdragon 616 possessor with 6 GB of RAM I had have no complaints with the CPU whatsoever it performs all your basic tasks flawlessly and lives are already the things of the past in samsung smartphones it has been able to handle my day-to-day usage efficiently as well however you can only play pop genie medium settings which is kind of a bummer since we can play it in high settings in the similar price 1 + 6 so the talking point here is the price the 8 star is surely expensive when compared side-by-side with the 1 plus 6 that features a snapdragon 845 chipset you get a flawless processor in the age start but when you are paying a premium price you should get the best what do you think it should at least be equipping the Snapdragon 710 processor which is found in the chip permeate as II and if you talk about ramen room it does not feature a ddr4 X RAM or ufs storage so does the pricing justify everything on the software front the device comes with android 8.0 Oreo with Samsung's experienced UI 9.0 on top the software is fluent and everything and it is free of any sort of stutters if you are wondering and if you are curious about when Android Pi will arrive on the eight star well we don't know that yet let's talk about the cameras now the eight star follows the dual camera ban vegan by equipping a 16 megapixel plus 24 megapixel cameras at the back both with focal 1.7 apertures the pictures come out great and they are well detailed and sharp they are saturated as well but if you compare it against some of the other devices of this price range you will see where it shines and where it falls behind the best part of the images I showed is thirdly the details captured the oneplus 6 loses a lot of details when you zoom in however if you see the golden colored plates on these images you will notice how artificial it looks and even though samsung's phone shoot oversaturated images the oneplus 6 certainly outperforms it with the saturation and colors front also the oneplus 6 retains the high dynamic range whereas the 8 star falls only a little behind in that aspect there is also the light focus mode on the phone which lets you toggle the intensity of blur the fake blur is indeed good but if you zoom in you can easily notice the areas around the head where it hasn't been able to blur out properly compared against the 1 plus 6 and you will notice the 6 doing it better right away the red cameras on this device are capable of shooting fhd plus and 40 videos at 30fps now I tried full HD videos on this device and even without stabilization engraved it takes stable videos with good colors and zoom capabilities and yes it should slow motion videos as well I will let you be the judge here for this video let us know how you like this feature during the night time is where the things get interesting although the pictures are noisy and slightly grainy they are well saturated and retain the colors quite nicely if you ask me if you zoom in the pictures you will notice the loss in quality but for what it's worth it definitely takes some decent pictures on the frontside vest a 24 megapixel selfie camera which is the highest count of megapixels on any Samsung selfie camera Samsung has definitely taken a step forward to buy against other smartphones like Oppo and VEVO among others take a look at some of the samples here all of these images have good details and they have captured a natural skin tone you can also apply a lot of stickers on your selfies if you want to there's also a night mode for selfies but I didn't see any major difference here so all in all Samsung has finally felt the necessity of focusing on selfies as well the 8 star packs in a bottom firing speaker the speaker is alright to fill up a small room but it is nowhere close to the stereo speakers of that note 9 + vs 9 and if you play pop G and watch a lot of videos you will have to be very careful not to cover it in terms of call quality I had no issues with the phone the callers on the other ends never complained about the call and the earpiece gives of pretty loud sounds to conclude yes the galaxy eight star is a good device no doubts on that it has a crisp display of flawless processor good set of cameras both front and back and everything you would wish in a good smartphone but everything boils down to the pricing in the end and there are other smartphone brands like oneplus honor and Xiaomi that are giving a tough competition to the mid-range smartphones by Samsung and the price of the 8 star is well very expensive and I think Samsung should focus on aggressive pricing if it wants to stay long in the game so that was all for the review tell us what do you think about the 8 star in the comment section below till then I am Freddie magically and thank youthe e-series has always been a kid wave from mid-range devices to high-end flagships for Samsung they pack in some features from the mid Rangers while the others they borrow from flagships this is the case for a long lineup of Samsung's ETV smartphones and that is the case yet again here this is the Samsung Galaxy 8 star Samsung's answer to the growing number of cheap high-end Chinese smartphones so is this device a star of the smartphone galaxy let's find out this is the galaxy a star it has followed the trend of smartphone sporting minimum vessels and a glass back what we get with it is a boxy design that has sharp edges all around these sharp edges make the fold a bit difficult to use I know that some of you might like this but at a time when companies are focusing on better looks and good on hands feel Sam's light has gone old-school but still the device has a heft to it and feels premium the shiny glass pack looks quite good don't you think but yes like every other smartphone of the present time it attracts finger prints so I carried around a microfiber cloth all the time sandwiched between the two glasses is a metallic rail that helps with better gripping on this rail rest a few buttons there's a power button on the right with the volume rockers and the infamous fix B button on the right for me the worst feature of this mock phone is definitely the placement of buttons I mean just look at it the buttons are so hard to reach and whenever I thought I reach the volume rockers it was always the Bigsby button and trust me it's very very annoying when it happens a lot of times during the day another disappointment is the placement of the fingerprint sensor Samsung and fingerprint sensors they don't go together ever I had praised the placement of the fingerprint sensor in the note 9 and s9 but yet again there is Samsung placing the fingerprint sensors so high another area where the eight star did not quite live up to my expectations is on the battery front with a 3700 mAh battery I had expected it to last for more than a day but that was not the case and it only gave me a screen on time of around five to five and a half hours now running for all the time is good but for that battery size and for what it's worth I think it's not good enough also it only has Full HD plus resolution so running for a little longer should be a necessary right there's a fast charging tech embedded inside though with the default charger which is Type C enabled so that's good but what's good here lies in front the eight star follows Samsung strengths of having a top notch display even though there is no not here the front has a tall 6.3 inch full HD display which shredder top and bottom bezels just like the eight plus I like everything about this display it's bright outdoors and with the Super AMOLED panel it is well saturated pleasing to the eyes and colorful it certainly gives other smartphones are run for their money if you compare it against the 1 plus 6 which is available in a similar price tag in some countries they look quite similar to the eye however the bezels could have been a little shorter to make the phone look even more attractive now let's talk about security like every other smartphones in 2018 this one 2 comes with 2 security options facial unlock and a fingerprint sensor the fingerprint sensor gets unlocking right every time and is a little faster than some of the Samsung devices the face unlock on the other hand takes a second to unlock the device so you have that onto the performance the 8 star feature snapdragon 616 possessor with 6 GB of RAM I had have no complaints with the CPU whatsoever it performs all your basic tasks flawlessly and lives are already the things of the past in samsung smartphones it has been able to handle my day-to-day usage efficiently as well however you can only play pop genie medium settings which is kind of a bummer since we can play it in high settings in the similar price 1 + 6 so the talking point here is the price the 8 star is surely expensive when compared side-by-side with the 1 plus 6 that features a snapdragon 845 chipset you get a flawless processor in the age start but when you are paying a premium price you should get the best what do you think it should at least be equipping the Snapdragon 710 processor which is found in the chip permeate as II and if you talk about ramen room it does not feature a ddr4 X RAM or ufs storage so does the pricing justify everything on the software front the device comes with android 8.0 Oreo with Samsung's experienced UI 9.0 on top the software is fluent and everything and it is free of any sort of stutters if you are wondering and if you are curious about when Android Pi will arrive on the eight star well we don't know that yet let's talk about the cameras now the eight star follows the dual camera ban vegan by equipping a 16 megapixel plus 24 megapixel cameras at the back both with focal 1.7 apertures the pictures come out great and they are well detailed and sharp they are saturated as well but if you compare it against some of the other devices of this price range you will see where it shines and where it falls behind the best part of the images I showed is thirdly the details captured the oneplus 6 loses a lot of details when you zoom in however if you see the golden colored plates on these images you will notice how artificial it looks and even though samsung's phone shoot oversaturated images the oneplus 6 certainly outperforms it with the saturation and colors front also the oneplus 6 retains the high dynamic range whereas the 8 star falls only a little behind in that aspect there is also the light focus mode on the phone which lets you toggle the intensity of blur the fake blur is indeed good but if you zoom in you can easily notice the areas around the head where it hasn't been able to blur out properly compared against the 1 plus 6 and you will notice the 6 doing it better right away the red cameras on this device are capable of shooting fhd plus and 40 videos at 30fps now I tried full HD videos on this device and even without stabilization engraved it takes stable videos with good colors and zoom capabilities and yes it should slow motion videos as well I will let you be the judge here for this video let us know how you like this feature during the night time is where the things get interesting although the pictures are noisy and slightly grainy they are well saturated and retain the colors quite nicely if you ask me if you zoom in the pictures you will notice the loss in quality but for what it's worth it definitely takes some decent pictures on the frontside vest a 24 megapixel selfie camera which is the highest count of megapixels on any Samsung selfie camera Samsung has definitely taken a step forward to buy against other smartphones like Oppo and VEVO among others take a look at some of the samples here all of these images have good details and they have captured a natural skin tone you can also apply a lot of stickers on your selfies if you want to there's also a night mode for selfies but I didn't see any major difference here so all in all Samsung has finally felt the necessity of focusing on selfies as well the 8 star packs in a bottom firing speaker the speaker is alright to fill up a small room but it is nowhere close to the stereo speakers of that note 9 + vs 9 and if you play pop G and watch a lot of videos you will have to be very careful not to cover it in terms of call quality I had no issues with the phone the callers on the other ends never complained about the call and the earpiece gives of pretty loud sounds to conclude yes the galaxy eight star is a good device no doubts on that it has a crisp display of flawless processor good set of cameras both front and back and everything you would wish in a good smartphone but everything boils down to the pricing in the end and there are other smartphone brands like oneplus honor and Xiaomi that are giving a tough competition to the mid-range smartphones by Samsung and the price of the 8 star is well very expensive and I think Samsung should focus on aggressive pricing if it wants to stay long in the game so that was all for the review tell us what do you think about the 8 star in the comment section below till then I am Freddie magically and thank you\n"