The Samsung Galaxy S8 and Samsung Galaxy S8+ are due to be released into the American market on Friday, April 21, but some customers have already been receiving their pre-ordered devices and a number of reviews have already appeared online. The new Samsung Galaxy S8 models are constructed from a similar glass material as compared with the previous generation Samsung Galaxy S7 models, which means that they are broadly as difficult to repair.



The iFixit website discovered that there are some subtle differences between the two generations of handsets. And perhaps not surprisingly, the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ have similar components and arrangements inside.

For 2017, Samsung has introduced a number of new features to the Galaxy S lineup such as a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor, a front-mounted iris scanner and the Bixby digital personal assistant including its own dedicated hardware button. Each device is powered by either the Samsung Exynos 8895 or Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chipset with 4GB of RAM, which in the source links can be seen stacked on top of one another. The chassis shell consists of glass, which is bonded to the rest of the device. This means that in order to open the shell, one must apply plenty of heat in order to soften the glue, and then gently pry the device apart. iFixit reported that the curved front glass makes it extremely difficult to open the handset without damaging the touchscreen.

Other interesting points include how Samsung is using a small number of combination antenna on the device, including bundling the speaker and antenna array together, and the antenna / NFC arrangement together as part of the handset’s frame. Because both the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ include support for Samsung Pay, the source website believes that the NFC antenna arrangement also includes the magnetic stripe hardware, which allows the smartphone to behave like a swiped banking card at the till. The final hardware observation is that Samsung has glued the batter firmly to the handset, which makes it difficult to replace. Overall, iFixit rated both devices a 4 out of 10, highlighting how many individual components are relatively easily replaced, but that the device was difficult to open and a battery replacement was made harder thanks to the amount of adhesive Samsung used. Another observation is that Samsung has cleaned up and simplified the charging port by removing the button ribbon that runs from the port around the mid-frame and under the glass. This means that replacing the port and daughterboard for the Galaxy S8 is much easier.

SOURCE iFixit [Galaxy S8] [Galaxy S8+]