The Samsung Galaxy S8: 10 Things You May Not Know

With its sleek design and impressive features, the Samsung Galaxy S8 is one of the most anticipated smartphones of the year. But there's more to this phone than meets the eye. Here are 10 things you may not know about the Galaxy S8.

**1. The Camera is Capable of Faster Burst Shots and Panorama Stitching**

The Galaxy S8 has a new image signal processor (ISP) that enables multi-frame processing, allowing it to take multiple photos when you press the shutter button. This feature, similar to Google's Pixel HDR+, uses the multiple frames to create a better-looking final photo. As a result, you can review your photo right after taking it without waiting for it to finish processing.

**2. The ISP is Also Responsible for Improved Photo Thumbnails in the Gallery**

The new ISP not only improves burst shots and panorama stitching but also makes photo thumbnails load up faster in the gallery. This means that when you scroll through your photos, they'll appear more quickly than before.

**3. The Galaxy S8 Uses a New Camera Sensor**

One of the new variants of the camera sensor used in the S8 is Sony's IMX 333, which is also used in their upcoming XZ Premium phone. However, it appears that the S8 will not be able to shoot at 960 frames per second, but the sensor itself is technically new.

**4. The Camera Doesn't Look Any Better on the Spec Sheet**

Despite having a new camera sensor, the camera on the Galaxy S8 doesn't look significantly better than its predecessor, the S7. However, it's likely that the camera will perform better in real-world usage.

**5. The Battery Degradation is Significantly Slower**

According to Samsung, the battery of the Galaxy S8 degrades much more slowly than the batteries on other phones. This means that the effective battery capacity of the S8 remains at 95% after a year's worth of charge cycles, while the S7's effective battery capacity drops to only 80%.

**6. The S8 Uses Bluetooth 5.0**

The Galaxy S8 is the first phone to use Bluetooth 5.0, which offers four times the range and twice the bandwidth of Bluetooth 4.2. This means that you can push audio over Bluetooth to two different headphones or speakers at the same time.

**7. The Phone Supports Gigabits LTE Speeds**

The Galaxy S8 is also the first phone to support gigabit LTE speeds, which is over double what the S7 could do. For most people, this may be overkill, but if you live in an area that supports gigabit LTE, no other phone will give you faster data.

**8. The Fingerprint Scanner was Originally Planned for the Back**

Samsung initially planned to put the fingerprint scanner on the back of the phone, under the screen where the pressure-sensitive home button is located. However, they ran into some issues and opted to put it on the back instead.

**9. The Phone Doesn't Have Stereo Speakers**

Contrary to what some may think, the Galaxy S8 does not have stereo speakers. Instead, it has a single bottom-firing mono speaker that may only be slightly louder than the speaker on the S7. However, Samsung includes AKG headphones in the box, which is valued at $99.

**10. The Phone is More Expensive Than Expected**

Finally, the Galaxy S8 is more expensive than its predecessor, the S7. Despite this, the phone offers some impressive features that make it worth considering for those looking to upgrade their smartphone.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's up guys david here and by now you probably know a good amount about the galaxy s8 you know that it has a big beautiful infinity display and that the fingerprint scanner is now on the back but is really hard to reach you know that the navigation buttons are now software based and that the home button is always on and pressure sensitive and finally you know that samsung added a dedicated button to the side of the phone for their new voice assistance called bixby not that anyone was really asking for it so today i figured why not do something a little bit different and talk about the things you probably don't already know starting off with the higher end third model that not only has more ram at six gigabytes instead of only four but it also has more internal storage at 128 gigabytes double what's available on the other models now if this sounds like the galaxy s8 for you and for me honestly well the bad news is you can only buy it if you live in china or korea unless of course you plan on importing it but if you don't want to import and have to give up things like support for samsung pay the second thing you might not know is samsung is going to offer an unlocked model of the galaxy s8 without any of the carrier bloatware just three weeks after the initial launch but be warned samsung did a really bad job at updating the unlocked galaxy s7 last year which you would think would kind of be the other way around but it wasn't and there's no telling if the story will be any different with the s8 third thing you might not know is there will actually be two different chip sets on the galaxy s8 one with qualcomm snapdragon 835 and the other with samsung's exynos 88 95. and according to some benchmarks it looks like the exynos variant is going to be a little bit more powerful of course we won't know the full story until our fumble style speed test thumbs up if you guys are excited to see that but to be honest i wouldn't be surprised if the exynos variant outperforms since this is exactly what happened last year with the s7 the good news is the fourth thing you might not know is that all of the s8 variants will be using faster ufs 2.1 storage compared to ufs 2.0 which first debuted on the galaxy s6 this faster storage should improve things like multitasking app load up times and file transfer speeds ufs 2.1 should also lead to faster burst shot and panorama stitching in the camera while also making photo thumbnails in the gallery load up faster as well which brings us to the fifth thing that you might not know which has to do with the camera so with the help of a new image signal processor or isp the s8 is capable of multi-frame processing which will take multiple photos when you press the shutter and then use those multiple frames to create a better looking final photo this is a lot like what google is doing with the pixels hdr plus but it's happening at a hardware level on the s8 meaning it should take less time for it to process the photo this allows you to review it right after you take it without having to wait for the photo to finish processing in addition to the isp the s8 is actually using a new camera sensor one of the new variants is sony's imx 333 which is the same sensor sony is using in their upcoming xz premium a phone that's capable of shooting slow motion video at an incredible 960 frames per second but before you get too excited from what i've seen it doesn't look like the s8 will be able to shoot at 960 fps but the point here is that the sensor is technically new the sixth thing like the camera doesn't look any better on the spec sheet but is actually better in reality in an improved battery no i'm not talking about an improvement in battery life on any given day but an improvement in the life of the battery in any given year according to samsung the s8 battery degrades much more slowly than the batteries on other phones with it having an effective battery capacity of 95 percent after a year's worth of charge cycles for comparison the s7 has an effective battery capacity of only 80 after a year so if you do the math after a year of normal charging the s8 battery would be an effective 2 850 milliamp hours compared to the s7 2400 milliamp hours so while the battery life won't be any better than the s7 on launch day over time the s8 battery should last you a little bit longer the seventh thing that you may not know is something that does show up on the spec sheet and that the s8 is the first phone to use bluetooth 5.0 now why does this matter well in addition to having four times the range of bluetooth 4.2 bluetooth 5.0 also offers two times the bandwidth one of the benefits of this is you can push audio over bluetooth to two different headphones or bluetooth speakers at the same time now while this is definitely cool the feature i'm actually more excited about is an option the s8 has to control audio output at an app level so for example you can set it so only the audio from your music app outputs over to your bluetooth speaker while the rest of the phone's audio whether it be a snapchat or a text message ringtone will come through the phone's speaker itself the eighth thing that you may not know about the galaxy s8 is it's also the first phone to support gigabits lte speeds which is over double what the s7 could do now for most people this is overkill as you probably don't live in an area that supports gigabit lte but if you do then no other phone is gonna give you faster data the ninth thing that you may not know about the galaxy s8 is samsung didn't initially plan on putting the fingerprint scanner on the back it was originally supposed to be under the screen where the pressure sensitive home button is but apparently they ran into some issues where like things wouldn't have been ready in time so they opted to put the fingerprint scanner on the back now like that sounds like a reasonable excuse but at the same time i'm not sure why they couldn't have put the fingerprint scanner a little bit lower but hey at least samsung added a gesture that lets you bring the notification shade down by swiping on the scanner and then finally the 10th thing that you may not know or at least there seems to be some confusion about is no the s8 doesn't have stereo speakers okay it's a single bottom firing mono speaker and from what i can tell it's no better than the speaker on the s7 maybe only a little bit louder however samsung kind of makes up for this by including akg headphones in the box which is supposedly a 99 value but then again they raised the price of the s8 by a hundred dollars over what they sold the s7 for last year so yeah the s8 is officially more expensive than the iphone who would have ever thought anyways that is it for me in this video there will be a bunch of coverage on the s8 coming up soon so make sure you subscribe if you haven't already thank you guys for watching and as always i'll see you in the very next episodewhat's up guys david here and by now you probably know a good amount about the galaxy s8 you know that it has a big beautiful infinity display and that the fingerprint scanner is now on the back but is really hard to reach you know that the navigation buttons are now software based and that the home button is always on and pressure sensitive and finally you know that samsung added a dedicated button to the side of the phone for their new voice assistance called bixby not that anyone was really asking for it so today i figured why not do something a little bit different and talk about the things you probably don't already know starting off with the higher end third model that not only has more ram at six gigabytes instead of only four but it also has more internal storage at 128 gigabytes double what's available on the other models now if this sounds like the galaxy s8 for you and for me honestly well the bad news is you can only buy it if you live in china or korea unless of course you plan on importing it but if you don't want to import and have to give up things like support for samsung pay the second thing you might not know is samsung is going to offer an unlocked model of the galaxy s8 without any of the carrier bloatware just three weeks after the initial launch but be warned samsung did a really bad job at updating the unlocked galaxy s7 last year which you would think would kind of be the other way around but it wasn't and there's no telling if the story will be any different with the s8 third thing you might not know is there will actually be two different chip sets on the galaxy s8 one with qualcomm snapdragon 835 and the other with samsung's exynos 88 95. and according to some benchmarks it looks like the exynos variant is going to be a little bit more powerful of course we won't know the full story until our fumble style speed test thumbs up if you guys are excited to see that but to be honest i wouldn't be surprised if the exynos variant outperforms since this is exactly what happened last year with the s7 the good news is the fourth thing you might not know is that all of the s8 variants will be using faster ufs 2.1 storage compared to ufs 2.0 which first debuted on the galaxy s6 this faster storage should improve things like multitasking app load up times and file transfer speeds ufs 2.1 should also lead to faster burst shot and panorama stitching in the camera while also making photo thumbnails in the gallery load up faster as well which brings us to the fifth thing that you might not know which has to do with the camera so with the help of a new image signal processor or isp the s8 is capable of multi-frame processing which will take multiple photos when you press the shutter and then use those multiple frames to create a better looking final photo this is a lot like what google is doing with the pixels hdr plus but it's happening at a hardware level on the s8 meaning it should take less time for it to process the photo this allows you to review it right after you take it without having to wait for the photo to finish processing in addition to the isp the s8 is actually using a new camera sensor one of the new variants is sony's imx 333 which is the same sensor sony is using in their upcoming xz premium a phone that's capable of shooting slow motion video at an incredible 960 frames per second but before you get too excited from what i've seen it doesn't look like the s8 will be able to shoot at 960 fps but the point here is that the sensor is technically new the sixth thing like the camera doesn't look any better on the spec sheet but is actually better in reality in an improved battery no i'm not talking about an improvement in battery life on any given day but an improvement in the life of the battery in any given year according to samsung the s8 battery degrades much more slowly than the batteries on other phones with it having an effective battery capacity of 95 percent after a year's worth of charge cycles for comparison the s7 has an effective battery capacity of only 80 after a year so if you do the math after a year of normal charging the s8 battery would be an effective 2 850 milliamp hours compared to the s7 2400 milliamp hours so while the battery life won't be any better than the s7 on launch day over time the s8 battery should last you a little bit longer the seventh thing that you may not know is something that does show up on the spec sheet and that the s8 is the first phone to use bluetooth 5.0 now why does this matter well in addition to having four times the range of bluetooth 4.2 bluetooth 5.0 also offers two times the bandwidth one of the benefits of this is you can push audio over bluetooth to two different headphones or bluetooth speakers at the same time now while this is definitely cool the feature i'm actually more excited about is an option the s8 has to control audio output at an app level so for example you can set it so only the audio from your music app outputs over to your bluetooth speaker while the rest of the phone's audio whether it be a snapchat or a text message ringtone will come through the phone's speaker itself the eighth thing that you may not know about the galaxy s8 is it's also the first phone to support gigabits lte speeds which is over double what the s7 could do now for most people this is overkill as you probably don't live in an area that supports gigabit lte but if you do then no other phone is gonna give you faster data the ninth thing that you may not know about the galaxy s8 is samsung didn't initially plan on putting the fingerprint scanner on the back it was originally supposed to be under the screen where the pressure sensitive home button is but apparently they ran into some issues where like things wouldn't have been ready in time so they opted to put the fingerprint scanner on the back now like that sounds like a reasonable excuse but at the same time i'm not sure why they couldn't have put the fingerprint scanner a little bit lower but hey at least samsung added a gesture that lets you bring the notification shade down by swiping on the scanner and then finally the 10th thing that you may not know or at least there seems to be some confusion about is no the s8 doesn't have stereo speakers okay it's a single bottom firing mono speaker and from what i can tell it's no better than the speaker on the s7 maybe only a little bit louder however samsung kind of makes up for this by including akg headphones in the box which is supposedly a 99 value but then again they raised the price of the s8 by a hundred dollars over what they sold the s7 for last year so yeah the s8 is officially more expensive than the iphone who would have ever thought anyways that is it for me in this video there will be a bunch of coverage on the s8 coming up soon so make sure you subscribe if you haven't already thank you guys for watching and as always i'll see you in the very next episode\n"