i loved the galaxy s6 active but
aside from being kind of a frump compared to its much hotter cousin the
s6 it lacked a fingerprint sensor at a time
when that was the next big thing to have
for quick secure authentication the next generation of active integrated
a fingerprint reader with the clicky home button for a truly no compromises
experience though except the regular s7's killer new
feature was ip68 water resistance removing one of the active's main
selling points that and the s7 active was really bulky
even for inactive so
as you'd probably expect this generation is full of compromises
again here we go
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now in terms of the internal hardware the s8 active is every bit as worthy of
the flagship label as the s8 and the
note 8. it's got an octa-core processor four gigs of RAM 64 gigs of storage with
microsd expansion i mean you guys know the drill but it's also got a couple of
tricks up its sleeve that they don't first is the shatter resistant screen
encased in a mil standard 810g temperature dust shock and pressure
resistant enclosure and second is the
massive 4 000 milliamp hour battery
inside let's start with a closer look at the screen
this one is a bit of a mixed bag from the regular s8 it carries over the
bright accurate once configured correctly 5.8
inch 2960x1440 amoled panel the unusual eighteen and a
half by nine aspect ratio and on-screen buttons including a pressure
sensitive home instead of hardware buttons
a tough pill to swallow for some long time active fans though it wasn't a huge
deal for me i personally like the flexibility of being able to hide them
for more room for consuming vertical content
not to mention horizontal content the big screen makes the s8 active supremely
awesome for watching movies or other ultrawide aspect ratio content when
you're on the go as long as you don't mind using headphones or the in my opinion
inexcusable in 2017 mono bottom facing
speaker configuration but
if you were hoping for a shatter resistant display that also manages to
somehow wrap around the edges of the device infinity style
then you'll be sorely disappointed by the flat glass and
definitely not bezel-less 75 screen to
body ratio though again this isn't something that
bothered me that much the s8 active is
actually as big an improvement over the s7 active in terms of its screen to body
ratio as the s8 was to the s7
the bigger issue is that while both
phones use gorilla glass 5 many users are reporting that the
shatter resistant coating seems to make this one much more susceptible to micro
scratching and mine does definitely have some micro scratches
though with that said my s8 has just as many from similar use in my pocket so
take that as you will i actually have a theory that whether it's corning's batch
to batch variation or the different
configurations that oems request for it
uh their glass products are ending up with the same name for marketing
purposes but really different characteristics the droid turbo gen one
that i used for a year and then that taren has been using since has gorilla
glass 3 but it has almost no surface
imperfections to this day while the rest of my phones
apple and Android usually end up scuffed to hell by pocket lint within a few days
anyway i digress let's talk about the second big selling point of this phone
the battery even as a pretty heavy user i managed
only once to kill the s8 active in a single day and that was only because i
subjected it to over six hours of simultaneous gps navigation and wi-fi
hotspot sharing during an all-day on-location shoot down in seattle
this is by far my favorite thing about active phones i mean i still end up
charging every night but most people would easily get two days or more with
some of the clever power saving features in the Android 7 nougat version of
samsung experience but wait a second don't active phones
have a third awesome selling point ah yes
the programmable button on the left that wait what the
it's a bixby button just like the rest of samsung's current lineup now
i mean at least they let you disable it for accidental presses now but i'm still
gonna copy-paste my usual spiel about how they should allow native
reprogramming you know like they used to
speaking of copy paste the camera including the front-facing iris scanner
that i still don't find as fast or reliable as the fingerprint reader is
literally copy-pasted from the galaxy s8 and that's a good thing i never noticed
any difference in image quality or launch times on the rear 12 megapixel
camera that records 4k video at up to 30 FPS
and while it doesn't have a dual sensor
system like the note 8 for optical zoom or fake bokeh which i'll be calling foca
from now on honestly that matters way less to me these days
than a quality front-facing camera and this one gets me better results than
even the iphone 8. i mean it's not like i take a bunch of selfies with my
duckface friends in the club or whatever but when i'm hanging out with my kids i
end up capturing a lot more moments thanks to the wider angle lens and it's
decent low light performance just remember before you use it make
sure you turn off all the cheesy face shaping and skin smoothing effects
now let's talk gripes
the samsung experience on this phone is not the smoothest experience
this device crashes more than every other phone that i've reviewed
combined it's not every day or anything but it's
too much everything from random reboots to
the screen staying on with the clock stops so clearly not working until i
hard reset to the phone clearly being
working like it'll lock and unlock with the buttons but the touchscreen is
totally unresponsive until i hard reset it
and before you ask i checked a t site to
make sure that i was running the latest software so
samsung an update would be super swell
and while you're at it you can't move an expanded list around
on me while i am swiping stuff away from it
and fix this one too when you hit the fingerprint sensor
which i still don't like on the back by the way see
there you go that's what it's supposed to do dump you on the home screen
perfect but if you hit it sometimes when the
phone isn't actually locked for some reason
i then have to swipe before i can see the home screen
why would i want that i mean it's not like it matters that
much the instability that i've experienced already rules this phone out
as a daily driver for me but if that could be fixed
i otherwise really like it it's like it's like a dog that's smart
friendly playful and pees on your stuff
it just needs a little bit more work
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so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if
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