Galaxy S8 Plus Vs Galaxy S7 Edge: What's The Difference?

Gordon Kelly ,  

 CONTRIBUTOR

I write about technology's biggest companies  

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Think the Galaxy S8 is a deal big? Well Samsung has an even bigger one in the shape of the eye-popping Galaxy S8 Plus. I’ve already explored how these two new smartphones differ, but is the Galaxy S8 Plus a good upgrade to the Galaxy S7 Edge which it replaces? Or is the older phone now a bargain you should look to instead?

Let’s take a look...

Displays - Beauty And The Beast  

Like the Galaxy S8, it is impossible to discuss the Galaxy S8 Plus without starting with the display because Samsung’s 2017 smartphone screens have got a lot bigger...

• Galaxy S8 Plus - 6.2-inch Super AMOLED, 2960 x 1440(570 ppi pixel density), 84% screen-to-body ratio, Corning Gorilla Glass 5
• Galaxy S7 Edge - 5.5-inch Super AMOLED, 2560 x 1440 pixels (577 ppi pixel density), 76.1% screen-to-body ratio, Corning Gorilla Glass 4

Samsung

Galaxy S8 Plus (left) vs Galaxy S7 Edge (right)

Yes, the Galaxy S8 Plus panel is a massive 0.7-inches larger than its predecessor. It also covers a class leading 84% of the front of the phone (marginally more than the 83.6% of the Galaxy S8) which creates a truly stunning looking device (the iPhone 7 Plus has 67%). The display is stronger too with Gorilla Glass 5 surviving falls better than Gorilla Glass 4 (though resistance to scratches is similar).

Aside from size and strength, the Galaxy S8 Plus has gained Mobile HDR Premium certification which means increased brightness and contrast levels that make it ideal for mobile HDR content coming to Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.

Gordon Kelly

The Galaxy S8 Plus display is stunning for watching video

That said both phones default to 1080p, lower than their native resolutions. The Galaxy S8 Plus runs at 2220 x 1080 (due to its longer 18.5:9 aspect ratio) while Samsung dropped the Galaxy S7 Edge to 1920 x 1080 with the update to Android 7.0. The latter benefits from an increase to its already excellent battery life, but seeing the latter ship at a lower resolution on day one poses more concerning questions in this area (more later).

Design - How Big Is Too Big?

While the Galaxy S8 (155g) weighs almost the same as the Galaxy S7 (152g) despite a jump from 5.1-inches to 5.7-inches, the same cannot be said about the Galaxy S8 Plus:

• Galaxy S8 Plus - 159.5 x 73.4 x 8.1 mm (6.00 x 3.09 x 0.31-inch), 173g (6.10 oz)
• Galaxy S7 Edge - 150.9 x 72.6 x 7.7 mm  (5.94 x 2.86 x 0.30-inch) and 157g (5.54 oz)

Samsung’s new smartphone is significantly larger than its predecessor and there’s a notable weight increase as well. It’s still remarkably compact for its screen size - the 5.5-inch iPhone 7 Plus measures 158.2 x 77.9 x 7.3 mm (6.23 x 3.07 x 0.29 in) and weighs 188g (6.63 oz) - but this is not a small phone.

Samsung

Even compared to the 5.8-inch Galaxy S8 (left), the Galaxy S8 Plus is significantly larger

The smaller bezels also see the home button removed and replaced by on-screen navigation keys with the fingerprint sensor moved to the back. This position is contentious as it is up high to the right of the rear camera, making it a big stretch and you’ll almost inevitably smudge the camera lens each time you unlock. So here the Galaxy S7 Edge holds the advantage.

To compensate for this the Galaxy S8 Plus matches the Galaxy S8 with the introduction of iris and facial recognition. Ignore the latter as it can be fooled by a photo (Samsung accepts the flaw), but the former is fast and very secure - though having to point your phone at your face each time makes it a conspicuous method and a pain to use when walking.

Samsung

Galaxy S8 Plus (left) and Galaxy S7 Edge (right) look a lot more similar from the back

Despite this the Galaxy S8 retains key practical parts of the Galaxy S7 Edge: microSD remains (crammed inside the sim card slot), as does IP68 dust and water resistance allowing for 30 minutes of full submersion in up to 1.5 metres of water. There’s also a common sense shift to USB Type-C as the new connector continues its honourable mission to replace all other USB form factors.

Gordon Kelly

Both Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus squeeze a microSD slot into the sim card tray

Like the Galaxy S8 you’ll only get the Galaxy S8 Plus in Midnight black, Orchid Grey and Arctic Silver at launch but with the Galaxy S7 Edge available in many more colours, expect Samsung to add new options right until the Galaxy S9 is with us.

Read More - Galaxy S8 Vs Galaxy S7: What's The Difference?

Cameras - Same Old, Same Old

Don’t upgrade to the Galaxy S8 Plus expecting a major camera upgrade from the Galaxy S7 Edge. Somewhat surprisingly, the Galaxy S8 Plus shares its rear camera module.

Gordon Kelly

Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus cameras use the same hardware as their 2016 predecessors

This isn’t the end of the world as the 12 megapixel, f/1.7 aperture shooter is still excellent (if not top of the class) and you’ll still get optical image stabilisation (OIS) and 4K video recording. Samsung says Galaxy S8 Plus improvements instead come from new multi-shot image processing software (multiple shots are taken and combined into a single image).

A pre-release version of the Galaxy S8 Plus I used still found it lagging behind the Google Pixel (sample below). This should improve, but remember Samsung may well also bring this new image processing to the Galaxy S7 Edge in a future software update.

Gordon Kelly

Galaxy S8 (left) vs Google Pixel XL (right) shows the latter coming out on top, but more testing is needed

Where you can expect a significant step up, however, is the front facing camera. Out goes the Galaxy S7 Edge’s mediocre 5MP camera in favour of a new 8MP module. You’ll also get Snapchat-style filters, though again expect these to come to the Galaxy S7 Edge eventually.

Performance - Incremental Improvements

Each year smartphones get faster, but the Galaxy S8 Plus is not dramatically faster than the Galaxy S7 Edge. Samsung says you can expect 10% more CPU performance and 21% more GPU performance, which isn’t a big step up given the Galaxy S7 Edge (Snapdragon 820/Exynos 8890) had a 30% faster CPU and 64% faster GPU than the Galaxy S6. Still, neither phone will be slow.

Qualcomm

Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835 chipset will feature on US sold Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus

Note Samsung is still delivering a different chipset to the US than the rest of the world but promising very similar performance:

• Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8 Plus (US) - Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 octa-core chipset (4x 2.35GHz and 4x 1.9GHz Kryo CPUs), Adreno 540 GPU; 4GB of RAM
• Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8 Plus (Europe and Asia) - Exynos 8895 (4x 2.3 GHz & 4x 1.7 GHz CPUs), ARM Mali-G71 MP20 GPU; 4GB of RAM

Where there are more significant upgrades is connectivity. Both the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus upgrade the Galaxy S7 Edge’s Bluetooth 4.2 to Bluetooth 5.0 (2x speed, 4x range) and support one gigabit (1,000 megabit) 4G, even if carriers may never offer these speeds until long after this phone is retired.

Software - More Refined, More Bloated

TouchWiz continues to get more attractive as Samsung evolves its polarising Android skin. I still prefer stock Android, but there’s no denying Samsung is making more cohesive software than ever before. Sadly it’s also more bloated.

The new features will come to the Galaxy S7 Edge in time, but at launch the new Galaxies will have exclusive access to Bixby (a Google Now/Assistant/Goggles hybrid which gets its own hardware button below the volume rocker) and Samsung Connect (a Google Home-style IoT hub), plus all the other bloatware you don’t really need but accepted a long time ago.

Gordon Kelly

Bixby's information screen is a clear copy of Google Now

Unfortunately the Galaxy S8 Plus still ships with Android 7.0 when Android 7.1 is a) nearly six months old, and b) a huge advance. Again, despite Samsung’s promises, if you buy a Galaxy smartphone one of the things you have to accept is software updates will be slow.

The Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus do have a neat trick up their sleeve though, which the Galaxy S7 Edge cannot do: turn into a barebones PC. Spend $150 on Samsung’s optional DeX dock and you can connect a monitor (via HDMI), keyboard and mouse (via USB) and use a desktop-style interface with Android apps and Citrix and Amazon Workspaces compatibility.

Gordon Kelly

When paired with the DeX dock, users can create a basic multi-window desktop environment which runs Android apps

It’s not quite as advanced as Chrome OS (and you could just buy a Chromebox for $150) and you can’t use your phone at the same time, but it remains a tantalising peak at the future of smartphones.

Battery Life - The Big Backwards Step?

But now we come to an area where I expect the Galaxy S7 Edge to beat its successor. The reason for this is Samsung has retained the same 3500 mAh capacity battery in the Galaxy S8 Plus, despite its much larger display. Displays are the biggest single factor in battery drain, so I very much doubt you’ll find the Galaxy S8 Plus lasting as long as the Galaxy S7 Edge.

Gordon Kelly

The Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus are very thin, but should they have been thicker with bigger batteries?

On the flip side, the Galaxy S8 Plus battery will age better as it has improved cycle longevity losing just 5% of its capacity after one year versus 20% with the Galaxy S7 Edge. Its wired and wireless charging is also slightly faster (though Samsung didn’t say by how much), but brace yourself for the cost of replacing all your micro USB charging cables.

At least Samsung’s new ‘8 Point Quality Check’ means it shouldn’t explode.

Price And Storage

At this stage it is time to decide how impressed you are by the Galaxy S8 Plus, because both it and the Galaxy S8 have had $100 increases compared to the launch prices of the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge:

• Galaxy S8 - 64GB - $750 / €799 / £689
• Galaxy S8 Plus - 64GB - $850 / €899 / £779

Perhaps more important than this $100 increase, however, is the fact that these days you can pick-up a Galaxy S7 Edge for little more than half that price and there are plenty of second hand models floating around for less than that. You won’t get the $99-valued AKG headphones Samsung bundles with the Galaxy S8 Plus, but you may not need them?

Gordon Kelly

The Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus may not be massive upgrades internally, but those stunning displays will win over a lot of customers

Early Verdict

Just like the Galaxy S8, the Galaxy S8 Plus looks truly stunning. Unlike its smaller stable mate, however, it is a much larger and heavier phone than its predecessor. This is worth bearing in mind in particular when it comes to reaching for that badly placed fingerprint sensor.

It is also worth noting that the Galaxy S8 Plus has the same camera and battery capacity as the Galaxy S7 Edge and is only marginally faster. So that increased price tag needs careful consideration.

There’s no doubt every Galaxy S8 Plus owner will attract envious glances from others, but it isn’t perhaps as big an upgrade over the Galaxy S7 Edge as many may have assumed based on looks alone. The 2016 phone is also clearly better value one year on, but if you still opted for that stunning 6.2-inch display I wouldn’t blame you in the slightest.

4 Words People Ask Meteorologists About That Are Actually Not Weather Terms

Marshall Shepherd ,  

 CONTRIBUTOR

I write about weather and climate related topics (and study them too)  

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Many of the contributions that I write for Forbes are inspired by things that I experience as a meteorologist or scientist. This post is one of them. My daughter plays competitive volleyball. One of the teams that she played recently was from Club Tsunami. People often approach me with statements like the following......."Oh that's right you are a meteorologist, can you tell me if the tsunami is going to strike Hawaii? We are going there in a few days on vacation." As I stared at the ceiling this morning in that familiar transition from deep sleep to "gosh, I really do not want to get up," I thought about four words or terms that people often asks meteorologists about that are actually not weather related.

Meteors: This one is somewhat understandable because the word meteorologist has the word "meteor" in the name.  When there is a big meteor shower, people will email or call me at the University of Georgia. Broadcast meteorologists also get inquiries. According to Marc Lallanilla in Livescience.com,

A meteor is an asteroid or other object that burns and vaporizes upon entry into the Earth's atmosphere; meteors are commonly known as "shooting stars." If a meteor survives the plunge through the atmosphere and lands on the surface, it's known as a meteorite.

By the way, if the meteor explodes into a fireball it is called bolide As I wrote in Forbes last year, "the term 'meteorology' seems to have originated in 340 BC when the Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote a book on natural philosophy entitled Meteorologica......The manuscript was entitled Meteorologica because in those times, any particle which fell from the sky, or was suspended in the atmosphere, was called a meteor. Today, we distinguish between "meteors" (extraterrestrial meteoroids) and "hydrometeors" (particles of water or ice in the atmosphere)."

Tsunami: Usually when someone asks me about tsunami, I tell them that it is a term that they should be asking a geologist or oceanographer about, but I always proceed to explain it. NOAA defines a tsunami as,

a series of ocean waves generated by sudden displacements in the sea floor, landslides, or volcanic activity. In the deep ocean, the tsunami wave may only be a few inches high. The tsunami wave may come gently ashore or may increase in height to become a fast moving wall of turbulent water several meters high.

Last January I wrote in Forbes about something called a "meteorological tsunami" but it is different than an ocean tsunami.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Space weather processes and Earth. Source: NASA

Space Weather: This one is a bit tricky for two reasons. It has "weather" in the name. The other tricky aspect is that some people associate it with things like storms on Jupiter or dust devils on Mars. In actuality, NASA defines space weather this way,

...the dynamic conditions in the Earth’s outer space environment, in the same way that “weather” and “climate” refer to conditions in Earth’s lower atmosphere. Space weather includes any and all conditions and events on the sun, in the solar wind, in near-Earth space and in our upper atmosphere that can affect space-borne and ground-based technological systems and through these, human life and endeavor. Heliophysics is the science of space weather.

Coronal mass ejections (pulses of magnetized plasma that the sun spews to the earth periodically) and solar processes have a significant impact on activities on Earth such as GPS systems, the electrical power transmission, radio communications, satellite communications, and satellite drag. Some experts have warned that a three trillion dollar economic disaster looms from a massive space weather event. Thankfully NOAA, whose budget was recently slated for large cuts, operates the Space Weather Prediction Center to provide early warnings of harmful solar events. I should also backtrack and mention that NOAA operates Tsunami Warning Centers for our protection also. NASA also monitors space weather threats with specialized satellites and models.

Gulf Stream: Okay, okay, I know...... this one is a bit of a stretch because the gulf stream is actually quite important for weather. Every now and then someone is talking to me about the "Gulf Stream" when I am pretty sure they mean "jet stream." The Gulf Stream is defined by NOAA's Ocean Service as,

an intense, warm ocean current in the western North Atlantic Ocean. It moves north along the coast of Florida and then turns eastward off of North Carolina, flowing northeast across the Atlantic. Off the Atlantic seaboard of the United States, the Gulf Stream flows at a rate nearly 300 times faster than the typical flow of the Amazon River. The Gulf Stream transports nearly four billion cubic feet of water per second, an amount greater than that carried by all of the world's rivers combined.

NOAA GFDL

The Gulf Stream current. Source: NOAA GFDL

Jet streams are strong, narrow bands of wind in the upper level of the troposphere and separate boundaries of warm and cold air. Both jet streams and the Gulf Stream are very important to weather  in the United States but for different reasons. For an excellent scholarly overview of the role of the Gulf Stream on the atmosphere, an outstanding synopsis is published in the journal Nature. The role of the jet stream in weather processes is described at this useful National Weather Service weather tutorial, ironically called Jet Stream.

In the broadcast world, TV meteorologists are often considered Station Scientists and address all science questions covered. Meteorologists are well-trained physical scientists so should be able to answer questions about any of these four words. Even if they are not "technically" meteorological. By the way, what other words did I miss?