Samsung has huffed, puffed and coughed out a . But in this eternal, yearly battle of smartphone Top Trumps, which device is worth your money: the iPhone 7 or Galaxy S8?
Here’s my breakdown of the five features that give the Samsung Galaxy S8 an edge over Apple’s flagship handset. Stay tuned for my top reasons why the iPhone 7 is a better choice.
If you’re not familiar with my buying guides, check out my breakdowns for the , , and .
Bixby
Bixby can’t compete with Siri in knowledge, but can with in-phone assistance.
Samsung’s second foray into an artificially intelligent personal assistant has some promise.
No, it’s not as accomplished as Apple’s Siri – or any other mobile AI from a major rival – but its goals are slightly different, which should pique your interest.
Unlike Siri, Bixby doesn’t act as a knowledge base for all of your questions (although this is something it tries to do, but not very well), but rather offers a helping hand for in-phone actions. For example, you could ask Bixby to send a picture you’re looking at to a friend without leaving the Gallery app. The assistant contextually understands what you’re doing on the phone and the app you have open – offering assistance within that app to both help you navigate but also speed up tasks and by spotting trends in your behavior.
This is exemplified by Bixby’s camera feature. Taking photos of landmarks and, as Samsung explained, a bottle wine will bring up additional information about it. So if you want to know where to buy the wine you’ve just ordered, or even what it’s called, a snap will tell you that.
This approach to a personal assistant solves the issue of ‘feature overload’ that most smartphones suffer from, particularly Samsung phones. New features and ever-shifting UI design concepts means lots of good software ideas go completely unused. An assistant that helps you discover and use them is what we need for 2017 smartphones.
More than a phone
The S8 as a desktop PC.
These PC capabilities of the S8 aren’t to be sniffed at. In essence, once Samsung’s flagship is connected to the – and an accompanying mouse and keyboard – it becomes a souped up Chromebook. The partnership with VMware means it supports a Windows virtual machine, giving you some additional Windows-related functionality.
In fairness, how useful this is to the everyday customer is questionable. But having remote access to your PC, or even the dexterity of typing a full document powered by your phone is useful for on-the-go business users.
The only thing Apple might be working on is a similar docking station that doubles up as a laptop shell, as detailed in . But, you know, it’s a patent so it’s entirely likely this may never happen. Samsung actually missed a trick here, a laptop shell with a built in screen and dock for your phone would’ve made the S8’s PC capabilities much more consumer friendly.
Similar frame, more display
The Galaxy S8′s long, (almost) bezel free display.
Samsung has clearly been ‘inspired’ by the iPhone 7’s design, so much so that a quick glance at the S8 and you might mistake it for an Apple product.
But one thing the S8 has over the iPhone 7 design is that ‘infinity’ display, as Samsung calls it. The thinned out bezels and maximised screen size is 2017’s design trend, which the Korean company seems to have nailed.
In , the the iPhone 7’s 65.6% screen-to-body ratio pales in comparison to the S8’s 83.6%. The dimensions, too, aren’t dissimilar considering how much more display you’re getting:
iPhone 7 dimensions: 138.3 x 67.1 x 7.1 mm
Galaxy S8 dimensions: 148.9 x 68.1 x 8 mm
MicroSD
The S8 supports up to 25GB of expandable storage.
Samsung found a between the discrepancy of read and write speeds between external and internal memory in the S7, so expandable storage shouldn’t harm performance.
With that in mind, The S8’s additional 256GB – on top of the 64GB that comes as standard – of storage dwarfs the maximum option available on the iPhone 7 (256GB).
It also means that you’re more likely to get huge increase in storage capacity for free…
Promotions
Many carriers are offering some good initial deals on the Galaxy S8, including free 256GB micro SD cards and a free Gear VR. Other carriers are offering a free bluetooth speaker and a to selected music streaming services.
Samsung’s pre-order site, too, is currently offering; ‘hand delivered replacements’ *cough*, a one-to-one set up service, training sessions and 24 month financing with 0% APR.
Apple, on the other hand, is offering a similar 24 month financing deal. But you’ll end up paying an extra £106 (£805 in total) for the iPhone 7 128GB rather than £699 if you pay upfront. Apple doesn’t tend to give away freebies when you purchase an iPhone, and carriers aren’t in the habit either. Mainly because Apple doesn’t need to.
Strong sales numbers following a major launch for Samsung means exorcising last year’s demons and finally putting the Note 7 story to bed. So I’d wager that we’ll see increasingly dramatic promotions a few months down the line to boost next quarter’s results.
If you’re still unsure about the Galaxy S8, should quench your knowledge thirst.
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