The Samsung Galaxy S8 is a good phone. That much is clear already. But the tests that smartphone display geniuses DisplayMate have run on the S8’s super-long AMOLED screen are showing that it’s more than good. It’s bloody fantastic.
DisplayMate’s Galaxy S8 analysis shows it beating last year’s Galaxy S7 in basically every metric that matters; everything from its resolution is higher (at 3K, 2960x1440pixels) to its pixel density (570ppi versus 534ppi) and its outright size (5.8 or 6.2 inches versus the 5.1 or 5.5 inches of the S7 and S7 edge).
But more than those top-line specs, it’s everything else about the S8’s display that excels: its full 100 per cent DCI-P3 colour coverage and excessive sRGB , HDR Premium support, and a peak brightness of over 1000 nits that is 19 per cent brighter than last year’s flagship phone. We’re particularly interested by what sounds like an excellent ambient brightness mode that learns how bright you want your screen to be in different lighting.
It’s a brighter screen than ever before, but also a dimmer one in its lowest possible brightness setting, with just 2cd/m2 of screen brightness measured in its Super Dimming mode. It’s able to be used with polarised sunglasses in both portrait and landscape orientations, it’s wrapped in sturdy Gorilla Glass 5, it has better viewing angles than an LCD. It’s just a very very impressive bit of hardware.
There’s one particular note in DisplayMate’s testing that we wanted to point out, though: the S8’s DCI-P3 coverage in its AMOLED Cinema mode, optimised for accurate colour accuracy with super-high-res and high-quality content. DisplayMate says it’s “very likely considerably better than your living room 4K Ultra HD TV”, which is incredibly impressive when you consider that the Galaxy S8 is, y’know, a phone.
It’s also worth noting that while the S8 and S8+’s screen are longer, they aren’t any skinnier despite that 18.5:9 ratio. Both the S7 and S8’s displays are 2.5 inches wide, while the S7 edge’s and S8+’s are 2.7 inches wide.