The Best Android Phones

Photo: Ryan Whitwam

If you prefer to buy a phone from your carrier, or if you want a phone with a huge screen, water resistance, a microSD card slot, or wireless charging, you should get the Samsung Galaxy S8 or S8+. In addition to those features, they have the best displays of any phone we’ve tested. With curved sides, tall aspect ratios, and impressively narrow bezels, each one has a lot more screen than the same-size Pixel does. The Galaxy S8 is about the same size as the Pixel 2 but fits a 5.8-inch screen in the space, and the S8+ offers a hand-stretching 6.2-inch screen in a chassis that’s only a few millimeters taller than the 6-inch Pixel 2 XL. Although the S8 and S8+ are great Android phones, they can’t quite match the Pixel’s camera, software, or responsiveness, and they’re both more expensive than the Pixel 2. In addition, Samsung’s software isn’t as responsive as Pixel’s pure Android, and it won’t get updates as fast, though it’s better than what you get from LG or Huawei.

The S8 is available from all major carriers for around $750, usually with a payment plan that breaks down to $30 to $35 per month over two years. The S8+ is around $850, with a slightly higher monthly payment. Both are also available unlocked directly from Samsung.

The Galaxy S8 makes a good first impression with a 5.8-inch, 2960×1440 Super AMOLED display. (The 6.2-inch panel on the S8+ is the same resolution, but reaching all of the screen with one hand is more difficult.) Samsung’s new AMOLED is the brightest, sharpest display we’ve ever tested. DisplayMate says this screen can reach an astounding 1,000 nits of brightness for excellent outdoor readability, and the colors are more accurate than on other phones. The left and right edges of the screen curve down toward the back of the phone, giving the body a comfortable, rounded shape (although this design can make it more vulnerable to drops, as well). Samsung has improved its palm-rejection technology, too; the tech in last year’s curved phone, the Galaxy S7 Edge, caused a problem that led to phantom touches. Dan Seifert at The Verge writes, “I didn’t have an issue with errant touches with either the S8 or the S8 Plus in my time with them.”

The Galaxy S8 has a solid metal-and-glass body, but the fingerprint sensor is inconveniently placed high up on the back of the phone.

The metal-and-glass body of the S8 line feels extremely solid, and it’s rated IP68 for water and dust resistance, which means it’ll keep working after exposure to rain or even complete submersion in a pool. Samsung finally killed the physical home button and the capacitive navigation buttons in favor of on-screen versions, and the portion of the screen that holds the home button is pressure-sensitive (like Apple’s 3D Touch, but only on part of the screen), so it works even when the screen is off. However, because of this, Samsung moved the fingerprint sensor to the back of the phone, and unlike on the Pixel 2, on the Galaxy S8 it’s very high up, right next to the camera, making it inconvenient to use and often leading to smudges on the camera. CNET warns: “You will curse this.”

The Galaxy S8 has a 12-megapixel main camera very similar in specs to the one on the Pixel 2. Its large f/1.7 aperture lets it take in more light than the camera on many other phones, and it has optical image stabilization and almost instantaneous autofocus. The result is that the Galaxy S8 captures a bright, sharp photo in almost any lighting conditions. David Ruddock of Android Police writes, “[W]ith a steady hand you can get some pretty crisp shots where other phones would just render an unpleasing mess of noise and blur.” We still like the Pixel 2’s camera a little better, because it’s faster (both to open the app and to capture photos), its white balance is better in low light, and the HDR images look nicer. The Galaxy S8, S8+, and Galaxy Note 8 are close seconds, though.

The S8 and S8+ come with 64 GB of storage and a microSD card slot, which gives you the option of expanding the storage if you need to. The 3,000 mAh battery on the S8 packs enough power to get you through more than a day of heavy usage, including games, messaging, email management, and navigation. The S8+’s 3,500 mAh battery lasts even longer. The Galaxy S8 includes wireless charging (both Qi and PMA), unlike the Pixel, but its wired fast-charging standard is the relatively ancient Quick Charge 2.0 instead of USB Power Delivery, so it’s slower than the Pixels’ wired charging.

The S8 and S8+ were the first phones to ship with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 CPU, but Samsung’s additions to Android and other software quirks make the phones feel slower than phones such as the Pixel 2. The Galaxy S8 is fast enough, but it won’t blow you away.

Samsung has improved its Android interface a little each year, and the S8 version is better than the UI layers that companies like Huawei or LG use. However, the settings layout is confusing, and Samsung’s painfully colorful “squircle” icons stick out like a sore thumb. The Galaxy S8 also has Samsung’s new Bixby assistant, which takes up space on your home screen and even has its own hardware button. This feature does little more than list news stories and link to themes in the Samsung store—Tom’s Guidecalls it “incomplete,” which is an understatement. Samsung has also added support for Daydream VR, which was limited to Pixel and Moto Z phones previously. The Pixel 2’s clean version of Android is much faster, easier to use, more attractive, and still a version ahead at Android 8.1, compared with 7.1 on the Galaxy S8.

Samsung has pledged to keep its flagship devices updated with monthly security patches, but it still struggles to stay caught up. On US carriers the Galaxy S8 regularly goes two or three months between security patches, whereas the Pixel 2 gets regular monthly updates and Google never misses a patch. Samsung also takes several months to push new Android versions, and the Galaxy S8 is still on Android 7.1 several months after Oreo’s release. Samsung says Oreo is on the way, but hasn’t committed to a timeline.