I did get my new toy on Friday and it is awesome. As I described a few days ago, this is the year for hardware to shine. The awesomeness of the S8 (S8+ in my case) is impossible to either explain by text or even photos. The user experience is beyond text or still photo. The tactile feel of the glass front and back, the practically seemless flow of glass and frame, the soft edges and curves, the image quality of the screen, and the responsiveness of the processor culminate to an experience that doesn't translate into text or photo.
My new all black phone came 10 years 1 month and 1 day after I added a black theme to my website (for the Rock subdomain, here). It was the fifth and final theme, the only one I've added any content to since then. I've wanted an all black phone to match and gotten closest with the Note 4, but this S8+ is surely the best yet. Also remember my post in September 2014 for the inevitable cell phone design, here, where I described the ultimate design being one that made the device look like it was just a single, solid, piece of glass. Here's a photo of it on my kitchen counter, a closer up image of it on a table, and then how it looks on my car dashboard. Visually it fits the description.
Of course for demonstration purposes I had the Always on Display off, which I normally keep on and find very useful. And FYI, the vent clip I use for my phone in my car is from iKross and is the only valid style of car vent mount on the market, here, because it can be used one handed. I seriously don't understand why there are no copycats out there.
Not only is the phone itself all black, but Samsung allows us to theme it, and no surprise, I picked an all black one. This way the software and the hardware look like they were made for each other.
And while I was at it, here's a photo of how big the screen is. It may or may not look like it in a photo, but in person, this is huge.
To quantify some of the radical hardware upgrade, here's a couple numbers. The S8+ has a physical body 0.8% bigger than the iPhone 7+ but has 12.7% more screen. That's huge. For anyone still holding on to Samsung's battery problems in last fall's Note 7, don't forget Apple has had their share of problems, too. The iPhone 4 antenna made Apple the laughingstock of the industry for a while (here), and they've recently had their own battery issues (here). I'm not really trying to pick on the iPhone, just using them as a comparison since iPhone is the single best selling smartphone in the world (and Android is the single most popular operating system in the world of smartphones).
Earlier in April I was wondering how many times a day I check my phone. The question is in the context of amortizing the cost of the phone over a one year period. I installed an app and found over the last 2 weeks I've checked my phone an average of 75 times per day. If we say we can allocate a penny per check, then over 365 days that's $274. 2¢ would be 548, 3¢ = $822, and 4¢ = $1,095. Similarly (yet opposite) since this phone will cost me $420 a year and I check it 75 times a day, then that's 1.6¢ per check. If you only paid $200 for your phone but only check it 20 times a day, then you're paying 2.7¢ per check. If you pay $200 but only check it 4 times a day, you're paying a whopping 14¢ per check. So while my phone is expensive, I get my use out it.
I do love the feel of glass front and glass back phone. In the case of the S8+, the glass on the back is too thin, causing it feel like plastic. It should probably be an extra half millimeter thicker. It's so obvious I noticed the first time I picked it up out of the box. That was Friday, and Monday I found a CNET article that essentially confirmed it, here. When I showed another techie friend the first thing they said was it felt like plastic. I think making the back have as good of glass as the front would be worth any extra thickness. The S7 felt great, the S8 (or now the S9) should too.
By the way, I was pleased to see that another manufacturer has embraced the design style that Apple started with the all black iPhone 7 and Samsung followed with the S8. A company called Xiaomi is releasing a phone called the MI6 that looks beautiful. It's out in China this week and in the US in May. I've never heard of them, but this looks awesome. Especially if the price tag is less than $400 like some websites claim: here. It's not waterproof, but I like the idea of an Android phone that looks this good and is half the price of the S8. Not for myself but for consumer choice.
My new all black phone came 10 years 1 month and 1 day after I added a black theme to my website (for the Rock subdomain, here). It was the fifth and final theme, the only one I've added any content to since then. I've wanted an all black phone to match and gotten closest with the Note 4, but this S8+ is surely the best yet. Also remember my post in September 2014 for the inevitable cell phone design, here, where I described the ultimate design being one that made the device look like it was just a single, solid, piece of glass. Here's a photo of it on my kitchen counter, a closer up image of it on a table, and then how it looks on my car dashboard. Visually it fits the description.
Not only is the phone itself all black, but Samsung allows us to theme it, and no surprise, I picked an all black one. This way the software and the hardware look like they were made for each other.
And while I was at it, here's a photo of how big the screen is. It may or may not look like it in a photo, but in person, this is huge.
To quantify some of the radical hardware upgrade, here's a couple numbers. The S8+ has a physical body 0.8% bigger than the iPhone 7+ but has 12.7% more screen. That's huge. For anyone still holding on to Samsung's battery problems in last fall's Note 7, don't forget Apple has had their share of problems, too. The iPhone 4 antenna made Apple the laughingstock of the industry for a while (here), and they've recently had their own battery issues (here). I'm not really trying to pick on the iPhone, just using them as a comparison since iPhone is the single best selling smartphone in the world (and Android is the single most popular operating system in the world of smartphones).
Earlier in April I was wondering how many times a day I check my phone. The question is in the context of amortizing the cost of the phone over a one year period. I installed an app and found over the last 2 weeks I've checked my phone an average of 75 times per day. If we say we can allocate a penny per check, then over 365 days that's $274. 2¢ would be 548, 3¢ = $822, and 4¢ = $1,095. Similarly (yet opposite) since this phone will cost me $420 a year and I check it 75 times a day, then that's 1.6¢ per check. If you only paid $200 for your phone but only check it 20 times a day, then you're paying 2.7¢ per check. If you pay $200 but only check it 4 times a day, you're paying a whopping 14¢ per check. So while my phone is expensive, I get my use out it.
I do love the feel of glass front and glass back phone. In the case of the S8+, the glass on the back is too thin, causing it feel like plastic. It should probably be an extra half millimeter thicker. It's so obvious I noticed the first time I picked it up out of the box. That was Friday, and Monday I found a CNET article that essentially confirmed it, here. When I showed another techie friend the first thing they said was it felt like plastic. I think making the back have as good of glass as the front would be worth any extra thickness. The S7 felt great, the S8 (or now the S9) should too.
By the way, I was pleased to see that another manufacturer has embraced the design style that Apple started with the all black iPhone 7 and Samsung followed with the S8. A company called Xiaomi is releasing a phone called the MI6 that looks beautiful. It's out in China this week and in the US in May. I've never heard of them, but this looks awesome. Especially if the price tag is less than $400 like some websites claim: here. It's not waterproof, but I like the idea of an Android phone that looks this good and is half the price of the S8. Not for myself but for consumer choice.