Samsung Galaxy S8 review: Essence distilled

Gallery

The Samsung Gallery has been focused on Stories for a while now. Stories are shared, collaborative albums - that means your friends can add their own photos from the party or just a Story on a shared theme (e.g. sunsets).

Gallery: Timeline view • Albums • Storymaking

Several image editing tools are available - from basic cropping, to collage making, to a more capable editor (which supports image correction, effects and drawing).

Viewing an image • Image details • Powerful editor

Google Play Music for music playing

Google Play Music is the default player for your tunes on the Galaxy S8. It can play your local files, as well as stream music from the cloud and it's backed by Samsung's extensive sound enhancements.

They include the SoundAlive tool, which has an intuitive interface for tuning the equalizer. Presets and two simple dials are available for basic users, a manual 9-band equalizer for more advanced users.

Google Play Music

Adapt Sound is even simpler. It tunes the EQ to your hearing and your particular pair of ears and headphones by playing multiple frequencies and asking how well you hear them. Smart Volume automatically adjusts the volume of tracks from multiple sources.

UHQ sound resolution enhancer is available as well for upscaling compressed audio. There are also features such as Surround sound emulation and Tube Amp Pro simulator.

Equalizer and Adapt Sound

Video player

There is no video player app pre-installed so the Gallery handles the videos by default. Like with the music player, you can grab the traditional Samsung one from the Galaxy Essentials collection in Galaxy Apps (the Video Editor is there too). Even if you don't the Gallery app is up to the task. It has full subtitle support with advanced features to modify their appearance. The app lets you play only the audio track of the video.

With the odd display ratio that matches no standard video ratio, you're given the option to view videos in their original proportions (most often 16:9 videos with black bars on the sides, or in the 21:9 movie aspect - black bars top and bottom), stretch them to fill the display (resulting in disfigured 16:9 videos most of the time, but equally so with 21:9), or crop an 18.5:9 portion (again filling the display, losing some of frame, but keeping the original proportions). A pop-up view is also supported, which you can resize with a pinch gesture - don't look for resizing handles.

Video player: Settings • Fullscreen view • Pop-up view

You can download third-party video players and they can tap into the system-wide Video Enhancer feature as well. We tried VLC, MX Player and BS Player and they were all recognized correctly. Even YouTube worked. It touches up the contrast curve and color rendering to make the image pop.

Stellar audio output

The Samsung Galaxy S8 matched its Plus sibling for clarity, delivering perfectly accurate output both with an active external amplifier and headphones. Even the increase in stereo crosstalk with headphones was barely noticeable and exceeding our expectations.

Somewhat surprisingly the smaller member of the flagship duo outdid its sibling in terms of loudness. The Plus was not quite itself, but the Galaxy S8 is among the loudest handsets out there, rounding up a great performance.

Samsung Galaxy S8 frequency response

You can learn more about the tested parameters and the whole testing process here.