Three weeks in.
The screen is still awesome. I picked up some LG HDR 10bit demo videos. Stunning stuff.
Biometrics: iris scanner is eerily good (unlocking my phone by looking at my bleary 2AM eyes in total darkness in about 1 second flat). Fingerprint scanner is very accurate and fast - on par with the iPhone 6S+ which was so fast people whined about it. It's actually a little better than the iPhone's scanner at dealing with your fingerprint at jaunty angles. Face scanner? Dunno, don't use it.
Smart lock is the shiz. This is a feature where you can set the phone to stay unlocked in a particular location, or in proximity to a specific device, or both. I keep my phone unlocked when it's near my watch (Gear S3), or at home.
Always-on is nifty; no more unlocking your phone to see what the time is at night, assuming you're a post-clock person. You can flip the phone over to snooze an alarm. You can flip the phone to effectively put it into do not disturb mode.
Fast charging is les tits.
Surprisingly, the Samsung apps are actually very good, and in most cases are better than the Holy Stock Apps Of St. Google. The internet browser is faster, lighter, and fuller-featured than Chrome, and supports adblockers. The mail program looks and works great and has a nifty ability to "snooze" an unread email. It's long been known that S Planner is a better calendar than Google Calendar. The phone dialler has built-in spam call detection. Samsung Health is the mother of all health dashboards; I get to understand what a lazy shit I am in excruciating detail, all handily presented for at-a-glance viewing. This is also better than Apple Health, btw, and not just because it doesn't have those fuck-awful, un-disable-able tutorial videos front-and-centre.
One notable exception to this trend is the keyboard. Gboard is better. Not in a slam-dunk way, but definitely better.
Most of the time, the S8+ is better than my iPhone S6+ - not just in the hardware (which is basically front-to-back better and objectively so, but then it is two years newer) but in the software, too.
Tracking autofocus in the camera. Fast HDR that actually makes a difference. Tuning the output of the sound system to match your exact ears. LastPass integration in apps, so no dicking around with the shitty iOS multitasking to copy and paste passwords. Split screen multitasking. Driving your phone from your PC via SideSync. No, I dunno either, but it's cool. Any MP3 as any notification sound. Driving two separate Bluetooth devices from two separate sound sources, simultaneously. No, I dunno either, but it's cool. Being able to change the system font to a serif font made a huge difference in readability to me. A BlackBerry-style notification LED (although I would like more configurability for this one feature). Themes, if that's your thing. I downloaded a bunch and then reverted to the default (although I do have this as my wallpaper). Whitelisting apps so they don't get put to sleep by the system when it's saving battery. A compass that doesn't want to be recalibrated every five fucking minutes. The "game launcher" thinger that scoops up all your games together into a folder where you can manage performance attributes so five minutes of Creature Quest doesn't eat 25% of your battery. Or it does, if many frames per second is what you like. OH HALLEFUCKINGLUJAH YOU CAN JUST TYPE A TIME INTO A TIME FIELD WITHOUT HAVING TO TWAT ABOUT WITH THE SPINNY THINGS. Notifications are still much better on Android. The Gallery app is a million times less confusing than iOS Photos. Or Moments. Or whatever the fuck it does or is called.
There is also a bunch of stuff I miss. Swipe left to go back in just about everything. The iOS emoji are the best. Safari is a shitty browser from a webdev's POV (but eh, who cares?), but it handles video just about the best of any mobile browser. The mute switch is presumably patented out the wazoo, because this particular stroke of utter genius isn't present on any other phone I can think of. Being able to quickly swap aspect ratios in the camera. (sounds nerdy, but it's basically changing from "Instagram" to "normal" and back). But honestly, that's about it. This part of the post would be a lot longer if I was balls-deep in the Apple ecosystem, but I'm not, so it isn't.
There's stuff that's a wash. Apple Pay and Android Pay are basically the same app with the same dumbass system for looking at your previous transactions. Both OSes have a giant pile of settings that need a search function. Since Android 7, permissions are no longer a slamdunk for iOS. (My old Nexus 7 tablet finished up with Android 6, and its permissions stuff is dogshit). Both phones shipped with a pile of tones and sounds that are all crap. Apple's stock wallpapers look better in the demo context, but Samsung's wallpapers work better day-to-day. Both phones look totally badass and are pretty much invincible when I slap an Urban Armor Gear Pathfinder case on them.
So, no regrets.
Biometrics: iris scanner is eerily good (unlocking my phone by looking at my bleary 2AM eyes in total darkness in about 1 second flat). Fingerprint scanner is very accurate and fast - on par with the iPhone 6S+ which was so fast people whined about it. It's actually a little better than the iPhone's scanner at dealing with your fingerprint at jaunty angles. Face scanner? Dunno, don't use it.
Smart lock is the shiz. This is a feature where you can set the phone to stay unlocked in a particular location, or in proximity to a specific device, or both. I keep my phone unlocked when it's near my watch (Gear S3), or at home.
Always-on is nifty; no more unlocking your phone to see what the time is at night, assuming you're a post-clock person. You can flip the phone over to snooze an alarm. You can flip the phone to effectively put it into do not disturb mode.
Fast charging is les tits.
Surprisingly, the Samsung apps are actually very good, and in most cases are better than the Holy Stock Apps Of St. Google. The internet browser is faster, lighter, and fuller-featured than Chrome, and supports adblockers. The mail program looks and works great and has a nifty ability to "snooze" an unread email. It's long been known that S Planner is a better calendar than Google Calendar. The phone dialler has built-in spam call detection. Samsung Health is the mother of all health dashboards; I get to understand what a lazy shit I am in excruciating detail, all handily presented for at-a-glance viewing. This is also better than Apple Health, btw, and not just because it doesn't have those fuck-awful, un-disable-able tutorial videos front-and-centre.
One notable exception to this trend is the keyboard. Gboard is better. Not in a slam-dunk way, but definitely better.
Most of the time, the S8+ is better than my iPhone S6+ - not just in the hardware (which is basically front-to-back better and objectively so, but then it is two years newer) but in the software, too.
Tracking autofocus in the camera. Fast HDR that actually makes a difference. Tuning the output of the sound system to match your exact ears. LastPass integration in apps, so no dicking around with the shitty iOS multitasking to copy and paste passwords. Split screen multitasking. Driving your phone from your PC via SideSync. No, I dunno either, but it's cool. Any MP3 as any notification sound. Driving two separate Bluetooth devices from two separate sound sources, simultaneously. No, I dunno either, but it's cool. Being able to change the system font to a serif font made a huge difference in readability to me. A BlackBerry-style notification LED (although I would like more configurability for this one feature). Themes, if that's your thing. I downloaded a bunch and then reverted to the default (although I do have this as my wallpaper). Whitelisting apps so they don't get put to sleep by the system when it's saving battery. A compass that doesn't want to be recalibrated every five fucking minutes. The "game launcher" thinger that scoops up all your games together into a folder where you can manage performance attributes so five minutes of Creature Quest doesn't eat 25% of your battery. Or it does, if many frames per second is what you like. OH HALLEFUCKINGLUJAH YOU CAN JUST TYPE A TIME INTO A TIME FIELD WITHOUT HAVING TO TWAT ABOUT WITH THE SPINNY THINGS. Notifications are still much better on Android. The Gallery app is a million times less confusing than iOS Photos. Or Moments. Or whatever the fuck it does or is called.
There is also a bunch of stuff I miss. Swipe left to go back in just about everything. The iOS emoji are the best. Safari is a shitty browser from a webdev's POV (but eh, who cares?), but it handles video just about the best of any mobile browser. The mute switch is presumably patented out the wazoo, because this particular stroke of utter genius isn't present on any other phone I can think of. Being able to quickly swap aspect ratios in the camera. (sounds nerdy, but it's basically changing from "Instagram" to "normal" and back). But honestly, that's about it. This part of the post would be a lot longer if I was balls-deep in the Apple ecosystem, but I'm not, so it isn't.
There's stuff that's a wash. Apple Pay and Android Pay are basically the same app with the same dumbass system for looking at your previous transactions. Both OSes have a giant pile of settings that need a search function. Since Android 7, permissions are no longer a slamdunk for iOS. (My old Nexus 7 tablet finished up with Android 6, and its permissions stuff is dogshit). Both phones shipped with a pile of tones and sounds that are all crap. Apple's stock wallpapers look better in the demo context, but Samsung's wallpapers work better day-to-day. Both phones look totally badass and are pretty much invincible when I slap an Urban Armor Gear Pathfinder case on them.
So, no regrets.
