Category: Samsung Galaxy S8

As rumored, Samsung has begun the public beta testing of their Android Oreo build for the Galaxy S8.  The program officially kicked off today and is expected to run for at least a couple of months.  It is good news for S8 owners as Samsung is notoriously slow about getting major updates out to their devices.  It would see, at least with Oreo, Samsung is trying to reverse the trend.

Unlike the beta program for Google’s Pixel and Nexus devices, Samsung is being very limited in the number of Galaxy S8 owners who get the beta & who have signed up for the program.  In talking to their technical support team today, I was informed that a small number of users who had signed up for the beta were randomly selected and were offered the OTA update to the beta.  When I asked if this would be expanded later, the support agent indicated it was possible but that she could not comment.

It looks like owners of the latest Samsung Galaxy devices have a bit of a wait before they see the Android Oreo update.  The company’s Turkish site has posted that the testing of the new Oreo build has begun and that it will begin rolling out next year.

Our work on our pilot model for Android 8.0 (Oreo) has begun. We aim to present the new operating system to you at the beginning of the new year.

The problem, of course, is when exactly it will be in the new year but this all-but confirms that the update won’t hit in 2017.  Samsung has been very quiet about a timeline on when the update will roll out and this is the only confirmation that has been seen to this point.

If it is indeed 2018 before the Galaxy S8 phones and the Note8 see Oreo, it will once again make Samsung one of the last of the major OEMs to get the update out to their current devices.  Huawei, OnePlus, LG, Sony, HTC and Moto have all confirmed that at least some of their devices will get the update prior to the end of the year.

Samsung has finally started allowing the Bixby button on the S8 lineup and the new Note8 to be disabled… well, partially at least.  Bixby is Samsung’s assistant built into these phones and one of the biggest complaints about the Galaxy S8 lineup when it was released this summer was the fact that the dedicated hardware button for the assistant could not be disabled or remapped (to say Google Assistant).  Samsung stood by their decision and despite numerous hacks to get around this (which Samsung subsequently closed with software updates), pretty much forced the issue with users.  Until this past weekend.

A small software update for the Galaxy S8, S8 Plus and Note8 is allowing the button to be partially disabled.  In the Bixby settings, you can disable to button although it will still fire up if you long press the button.  The software update does not allow for remapping of the button.

Several current Android phones are starting to see the long awaited YouTube HDR content come to them.  YouTube rolled out HDR content at the end of 2016 but to this point, virtually no devices were able to render it.  That has changed throughout the course of 2017 and now several reports indicate that multiple devices are seeing an HDR option on video playback.

For those who don’t know, HDR stands for High Dynamic Range.  Images and video shot in HDR have more contrast, a wider color palette and greater brightness levels.

As for devices that are now reportedly able to show HDR content, it is growing rapidly.

Earlier this week, I let you know about a Today’s Deal on the powerful flagship Android phone, the Samsung Galaxy S8.  The good news is, you can still pick up the unlocked version of the phone with 64GB of storage in Midnight Black for $574.99.  That’s $150 off the original price of the phone.

The 5.8″ Galaxy S8 will be powered by the octa-core Snapdragon 835 processor running four cores at 2.3GHz and the other four running at 1.9GHz.  It is coupled with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage which is expandable up to an additional 256GB thanks to the MicroSD card.  The display renders at 2960 x 1440 QuadHD with an impressive 571 PPI.  Powering all of it is a 3000mAh battery which is charged with inductive charging.

Camera wise, the rear shooter is a 12MP camera with OIS and has a f/1.7 aperture.  On the front is an 8MP camera.  The S8 is IPS68 rating meaning it is water and dust proof.

Good news this morning for those of you who have the unlocked variant of the Samsung Galaxy S8 or S8+.  The July Android Security Update patch is currently rolling out to these devices along with a handful of other improvements to the phones.  The update was release Friday by Samsung and comes after several carriers released the update already to the devices on their networks.  If you have the unlocked version of either phone, you should see the update at some point this week.

For reference, the Galaxy S8 will be receiving firmware G950U1UEU1AQG2 while the S8+ will see build G955U1UEU1AQG2.  Both updates bring the July security patch but also brings improvements to the camera as well as a new ability to hide the navigation bar on the device.