The S8 and the iPhone 7 side by side.

It’s been around 73 days since Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S8 to the world and the verdict is out, the S8 and S8+ are way ahead of the curve and the phones to beat this year. Both the S8’s make almost every phone look a generation or two behind. Samsung knocked it out of the park this time around.

Design of the year so far, without a doubt.

With it’s eye catching design and a display so pretty, you will be bound to say wow, once you get a hold of this phone in person. I have had my fair share of alone time with this phone, but yet I wasn’t entirely convinced with the S8 as a complete package and I went back to my iPhone 7 in less than 20 days. I was using the smaller brother to the S8+, given I don’t like big phones and trust me even the S8 to me, felt like a tall phone, even though it doesn't have a big chin like the iPhone’s or the Pixel.

So here are my top reasons for ditching the S8:

A beautiful but hard to handle phone: Well, I will be honest I am not a fan of big phones, that’s part of the reason I ditched my 6P, last fall. The S8 has probably the best display on the market as of today, let’s not take away that from it. The design is polished, smooth, subtle and the phone is tightly packed between two sheets of glass, which marks a new benchmark in mobile design for the industry. But the hard to reach fingerprint scanner and too tall display makes over all use not so easy. And in my book that’s pretty inconvenient especially when I am struggling to reach the notification drawer with one hand. I ended up using the phone mostly with two hands. Plus apps are still not updated for daily use and you end up stretching apps like YouTube which ruins the overall video expereince. Awkwardly placed fingerprint scanner and slippery design: The second reason is closely connected to the first one. Just a few weeks before the official launch a report from Korea came out indicating that Samsung was trying hard to integrate it’s fingerprint scanner on the front panel but the results were frustrating and that design never went to mass production. All that said, it took me a few days to get used to the weirdly placed sensor and the slippery back. It is really hard to use this phone without a back cover, given it’s a fingerprint magnet and slippery. I was more confident using this phone with a back cover, but that ends up ruining the feel of the device and hides the beautiful design. And that bezel-less display makes it very prone to cracks incase the phone falls, especially on it’s corners. Software which is really good but yet not the best: Samsung is known for being always notorious about it’s UI and overall UX TouchWiz and with the Galaxy S8 lineup, Samsung has learned from it’s mistakes and made TouchWiz so much better, it has really matured into on of the best skins over Android as of today. Especially nifty features like the way the contours of the screen pulse with blue light when the phone is placed backwards when you get a call or a notification, or when you get a notification in general. It’s packed with features like iris-recognition (which works instantly once in a while), a new camera app, edge panels, on screen buttons & bixby (which is kinda sorta useless). Even though there’s the occasional stutter, but Samsung’s overall software experience is it’s best version of TouchWiz, yet a bit overwhelming in my book. I would any day pick the Pixel with pure unadulterated Android Nougat. Also battery life on the S8 is average at best, but I would not blame Samsung for trying to fit more battery after last year’s explosive launch of the Note 7. The overall package and more phones this year: If you ask me which phone to go for right now, I would suggest the S8 blindly. As of today, nothing comes close to the S8 in terms of design, features and especially if you are bored with the boring iPhone-chin like design. But if you would ask me again, I would ask you to wait till October, because that’s when a certain fruit company and the world’s most used search engine will launch their flagships of the year. That’s when you can actually compare and contrast between the S8 and the latter phones and get the most bang for your buck. Because the LG and HTC flagships of 2017, don’t really come close to the S8. As an overall package the S8 is amazing, yet it made me want to go back to my iPhone 7, which I did, mainly because it was hard to handle and the software wasn’t to my liking. Thus, all in all, S8 did not tick all the boxes to what I want from a phone.

If you can’t wait till October then, the S8 has too many features that you just can’t neglect. Fast and wireless charging, expandable memory, water resistant, USB Type-C, a pretty good camera and a good software experience.

Whoever at Samsung came up with this ad concept, deserves a raise. 👏🏼

The S8 just isn’t for me. It is an amazing phone and with Samsung’s marketing muscle I am sure, Samsung is gonna dominate sales for the months to come. But I, I like a small phone like the iPhone 7 or the Pixel (not the XL), that to with on point software which in my opinion iOS and stock Android always deliver. But I am sure Samsung isn’t done for the year, we shall see the Note 8 as well, which will be a big improvement over the S8, but I doubt I would use it.

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