Samsung Galaxy S8, S8+, DeX, new Gear 360,Connect Home: Launch highlights

Samsung on Wednesday launched its flagship smartphones -- Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ -- that will be available globally from April 21. The Korean giants also launched a new Windows Continuum-like productivity service called DeX and a new edition of the Gear 360 camera that allows users to create their own 360-degree videos. Highlights of the launch

By: ANIRBAN GHOSHAL
| Updated on: Mar 30 2017, 10:21 IST

Korean electronics giant Samsung on Wednesday launched its flagship smartphones -- Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ -- that will be available globally from April 21. (Samsung)

Samsung on Wednesday launched its flagship smartphones -- the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ -- alongside some new products at a event in New York.

The Samsung Galaxy S8 smartphones, that Samsung hopes will help it woo more customers after the Note 7 fiasco, will come with newer technologies such as Infinity display, iris scanner and face recognition, a virtual home button and a UHD bezel-less curved display.

The phone, which will be available globally from April 21 (expectedly at a price of $720) along with Harman AKG earbuds priced at $99, will come with top of the line Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor in the US and Samsung Exynos processor in other countries.

image caption — The smaller 5.8-inch Samsung Galaxy S8 will come with a QuadHD Infinity display with 570 pixels per inch (ppi) along with 4GB RAM. The S8 will have an internal memory of 64GB with microSD support upto 256GB. (Samsung)

The smaller 5.8-inch Samsung Galaxy S8 will come with a QuadHD Infinity display with 570 pixels per inch (ppi) along with 4GB RAM. The S8 will have an internal memory of 64GB with microSD support upto 256GB. The phone, which will draw power from a 3,000 mAh battery, will run on Android Nougat. In terms of optics, the S8 will sport a 12-megapixel rear camera and a 8-megapixel front shooter.

The larger 6.2-inch S8+ will come with an OLED display with 529 ppi support. The S8+ will come with a higher battery capacity of 3,500 mAh due to the bigger display. Other features of the S8+ are same as the S8.

Both the phones, which are IP68 (dust and water resistant) will come with USB-C, 3.5mm headphone jack, NFC and MST for Samsung Pay, wireless charging, fingerprint sensor, LTE Cat.16, Bluetooth 5.0 that supports streaming to two devices and Wi-Fi.

Additionally, both the phones will come with digital assistant Bixby that will help the user in interacting with the device. According to Samsung, Bixby also shows contextual info. This means it learns about app usages and throws back info in the form of cards. It simply adapts to the user based on usage, time and date. It also has a basic reminders tool that lets you set geo-location alerts. Bixby is also compatible with Google Play Music.

Samsung has designed a button on the side of the S8 that's entirely dedicated to launching Bixby. The S8 and S8+'s camera is enhanced with Bixby for visual search. This means that it can search for similar images, identify landmarks, and of course let users buy things from Amazon.

Other striking features of the phone is the iris scanner and face recognition just like Windows Hello. An user can unlock the phone using iris scans. Samsung also has upgraded a few services like Samsung Health to woo the user to the ecosystem. Users can now directly connect with a doctor to get diagnosis and prescriptions without having to leave your house via video calls.

The picture shows Samsung Galaxy S8's face recognition in action. (Samsung)

The company also launched a new productivity tool like Windows Continuum called DeX that allows the user to turn the phone into a PC with the help of a keyboard, screen and mouse. The price of the DeX was not revealed.

The picture shows Samsung DeX in action. (Samsung)

Other product launches included the new motion sensing Bluetooth remote for the Gear VR, a new 360 Gear camera and a smart WiFi mesh called Connect Home.

While the new remote will help Samsung put in more immersive content on its VR platform, the new 360-degree camera will help users create content for VR. The Connect Home also comes with an app to manage other Samsung products just like Apple Home.