Cellphone location tool reviews Galaxy A8

At a nearby farmer's market, the S8 captured a crate full of apples with better contrast, richer colors and better details than the Pixel XL. When I really tried to push both cameras to the limit by shooting a backlit scene pointing straight at the sun, the Pixel XL stunned us with a shot featuring big, bold colors and sharp details, even though there was some serious lens flare going on.

How to Use Bixby | Digital Trends

The one difference is that the Pixel's cool color tone brought out the green in the pistachio macaroon, while the pic from the S8 sported a more neutral white balance, which led to a more pleasing overall photo. Finally, at a local bar with even less light to work with, both the Pixel XL and the Galaxy S8 impressed us with photos that were brighter than the scenes in real life.

Small differences included less blown-out highlights in the S8's pic, which was countered by more detail in the darker areas of the scene in the Pixel's photo. When it comes to tweaking your photos or changing modes, Samsung has added new Snapchat-like filters that let you decorate faces with various animal masks, hats and other silly emojis. But if that doesn't strike your fancy, the camera also comes with modes for shooting panoramas, food, slow-mo and more.

And as with all good camera apps, there's also a Pro mode that lets you adjust settings manually.

We compared photos shot by the S8 and the Pixel XL outside on a sunny day. Our face looked a little too smooth and perfect on the Samsung, to the point where we were wondering whether Beauty Mode was kicking in even when we had it set to 0. In comparison, the LG G6 shoots at just 60 fps in slow-mo. And for a hallmark feature on Samsung's flagship phone, Bixby feels pretty half-baked right now, even after Samsung has rolled out voice controls to its virtual assistant. The main difference between Bixby and other digital assistants is that it lets you use voice commands to control your phone in lieu of tapping the screen, which can save you time and energy.

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You can also use Bixby to tell you the weather or look up the definition of quixotic, but its real purpose is giving you a whole new way to control your phone. For instance, you can ask Bixby to show you emails from a specific person by name, and it will slickly pull up all your conversations in just a couple seconds.

That's way faster than tapping to open the email app, hitting search and then typing in that person's name.

Galaxy S8 Review: A great Android phone for a good price

Bixby can also understand complex commands with contextual language, so you can do things like ask Bixby to post the last photo you took to Instagram and add a caption, all with one command. You can also change almost any setting on the S8 using your voice, which is often much faster than trying to dig through a modern phone's increasingly complex array of menus and tabs. Or at least, that's how things should work. The big problem is that Bixby's voice-command functionality, while now available , was pretty erratic when we tested it.

Sometimes Bixby will fail to understand your language at all, while other times, Bixby will get confused and try to open the wrong app or adjust incorrect settings. But every once in a while Bixby will get everything right and you won't even be able to tell that its voice commands are still a work in progress.

Currently, simple commands have the best success rate. As of August 22, Samsung announced that the Bixby voice command feature is now available in more than countries and territories, though you'll still need to use either English or Korean to make it work. Support for additional languages, as well as more third party apps, is in the works.

Then there's Bixby Vision, which leverages the S8's camera along with object recognition to identify items in the world. We found this worked pretty well when we pointed the S8 at various household items, such as shampoos, snacks and aluminum foil. It also works for books. After pointing the Galaxy S8's camera at any object, we could check prices online on Amazon. Say you're at the liquor store and want to know the rating of that wine or what food to pair it with. Bixby has also partnered with Vivino to identify that bottle and spit back information.

However, at a wine store in New York, the feature was more miss than hit, as it seemed to have trouble with the bright lights. At home, however, Bixby identified three wines correctly, though we were greeted with a home server error. Bixby's other talents include the ability to set reminders and a Bixby Home tool with a card-based interface that shows you your schedule, what's trending on Facebook, the weather, news and other info. All told, Bixby is a frustrating mix of success and failures, though there is a lot of potential should Samsung work out all the kinks. Thankfully, though, you can turn to the Google Assistant , which also comes preloaded on the S8.

Running Android 7. Finally, swiping in from the left provides access to Edge screen shortcuts, such as a customizable list of apps, a device maintenance screen for battery, choosing performance mode, etc. The ones at the top of our list include a one-handed mode that you can activate by tapping the home button three times to shrink the screen, as well as the ability to quickly launch the camera by pressing the power key twice. At least on the T-Mobile S8 we tested, there was minimal bloatware.

The dock can connect to a full-size monitor via its HDMI port, as well as a keyboard and mouse via Bluetooth. It also has an Ethernet jack and a USB port. Out of the box, the Samsung Connect app will let you access and control various Samsung-branded smart home gear. Samsung offers a slew of other accessories, including an LED View cover for always having the time in view, a wireless charging stand and more.

One concern about a phone with this much screen is how that extra real estate might impact battery life. They come with the less demanding x setting on by default. The iPhone 8 Plus hit , while the smaller iPhone 8 lasted LG G6 finished way behind, with a time of just On top of that, the S8 has battery smarts that let it learn about your usage patterns to help extend its longevity even further. But even with that shortcoming, the Galaxy S8 still beats the Android competition while surpassing the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus in terms of design, display quality and features.

The iPhones are better, though, when it comes to sheer speed and their cameras.

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Tom's Guide. Home Reviews. Editor's Choice. Against Bixby isn't a great assistant Fingerprint sensor is awkwardly placed Lacks dual cameras for optical zoom. See our best phones list for all of our top picks. Design: It feels like the future The Galaxy S8 exemplifies a nearly bezel-free phone done right. Videos look great on the small display. I spent most of the past two weeks watching Netflix on the Galaxy A8 and I never felt like I was missing any details, though in bright sunlight I felt like I needed to switch to one of the other flagship smartphones I had around.

The dual-camera setup — 16 and 8-megapixels — take stellar images with clear and crisp shots. Pictures are detailed and allow users to adjust the smoothness, or even the slimness of their face.

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Further, you can change how much background depth-of-field there is. You can even change the setting to take wide angle pictures to include more of yours friends in a snap. Further the phone, on occasion, can over-sharpen. This was especially noticeable when greenery was present in the image. At night the phone definitely overexposes light in an attempt to improve quality. However, night images are definitely low quality and considerably blurry.

The phone also has Bixby Vision which can identify items, foreign texts and even places. The Galaxy A8 is powered by a 3,mAh battery. The phone can last a whole day of usage — from 7am to 10pm — with around an hour of Netflix and four hours of screen on time, in my tests.

In fact, in my experience the A8 still has around five to ten percent battery life at the end of the night.