The newest Samsung flagship, the Samsung Galaxy S8, has been in the market for weeks, and this time the South Korean tech giant has decided to grace the Kenyan market earlier than usual. Instead of the over one month wait Kenyans have been accustomed to, the Samsung GalaxyS8 launch in Kenya is due tomorrow at 9.30AM right inside the the Samsung Delite Store, ICEA Building.
What this means is that those who had placed their pre orders can finally lay their hands on Samsung’s best handset yet – at least as far as design is concerned. As already explained in this previous article, the Samsung Galaxy S8 focuses on the screen’s real estate. When it comes to bezel size, the Galaxy S8 has close to no bezels, meaning that although the device is small enough for a comfortable one hand use, the screen size has increased from the average of 5.0 inches to phablet size of 5.8 inches. Then there is the Samsung Galaxy S8+ which takes the screen size even further – way beyond the 5.7 inches typical of the big Note sisters to a gigantic 6.2 inches.
Other than the improved screen real estate that makes Samsung brag that the device enables you to go beyond boundaries, to enable you unbox your device, Samsung Galaxy S8 also features the fastest processor yet, more memory, improved camera especially the front facing camera (Samsung hasn’t included the latest dual rear camera tech that is becoming common in smartphones), and provided the corning gorilla glass 5 for both the front and back protection.
Samsung’s remarkable design philosophy is meant to serve one purpose, salvage Samsung from the embarrassments caused by Samsung Galaxy Note 7, and so far the device is serving its purpose pretty well. According to pre order numbers, already the S8 is outselling the all time best seller – the S7, and by the end of this financial year, Samsung is expected to have sold over 50 million units of the Galaxy S8.
But for the Samsung Galaxy S8 to have uplifted Samsung from the pit of shame and loss, the device ought to have come with zero flaws – zero mistakes. Samsung Galaxy S8 with zero flaws could have been heaven in paradise for Samsung, especially given the good reception the device is receiving even in the US where Apple rules, but somehow there are three flaws you as a willing buyer ought to be aware of:
The first flaw is the pink tint on that gigantic high res 2K screen. The pink tint is a problem that has affected quite a number of first buyers, and although Samsung initially explained that the tint could be removed by a mere tweak in the settings, it was found that a software update was needed to actually deal with it. So far, Samsung has already rolled out the update for fixing the tint screen problem, thus as a buyer you ought to update your OS immediately after laying your hands on the new device.
The second flaw that was reported across tech sites in the course of last week was the auto restart. Hundreds of initial users from around the world were reporting that their devices were auto restarting themselves, and seemingly there was nothing they could do to stop the process. A few were however successful to do away with the auto restart after resetting the phone to factory setting, but many others were unable to. There were those who took their devices back to the vendors and received a replacement, only to report that the replacements were also on auto restart mode. By the time of writing this article, there seemed to be no solution to the auto restart flaw. When going to buy your Galaxy S8 device, just hope that your version won’t have the auto restart glitch.
Finally GSMArena reported about a drop test that reveals how Samsung Galaxy S8 is fragile at the corners. According to the GSMArena article, “German testers from test.de put the Samsung flagship in their special testing drum, and the S8 broke faster than other devices” – see featured image above. Although the Galaxy S8 is quite strong given the strong Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection, it seems this protections does not extend to the corners. That is, if your S8 device were to drop from lets say 80 centimeters high, and it dropped on the ground either on its back or front, the device should be alright. The problem comes when your device hits the ground by the corner – this type of drop would shutter the screen to pieces. Solution – buy a protective case for the almost all glass Samsung Galaxy S8 once you get yours.
