Samsung announced and released the Galaxy S8 Active in August 2017 as an addition to the Galaxy S8 lineup. The phone came out five months after the launch of the standard Galaxy S8 and the higher-end Galaxy S8+. At a price of Rs 54,900 at launch, this smartphone is more expensive than both the earlier S8 models.

Display

The Galaxy S8 Active comes with a Super AMOLED screen capable of displaying 16 million colors. The screen measures 5.8 inches, featuring a resolution of 1440x2960 pixels, a screen-to-body ratio of 75%, an aspect ratio of 18.5:9, and a pixel density of 568 ppi. The screen is protected with Corning Gorilla Glass 5, supports HDR10, 3D Touch, and has the always-on display feature.

AMOLED is short for active-matrix organic light-emitting diode. It’s a type of OLED screen technology, a type of thin-film-screen tech where the electroluminescent material is formed by organic compounds while the active matrix is the technology that addresses pixels. Meanwhile, Super AMOLED is Samsung’s marketing term for its AMOLED screen that has an integrated touch screen digitizer. It’s a layer detecting touch integrated into the screen panel instead of being laid on top. Samsung says that this type of screen reflects only 20% as much sunlight as the 1st-gen AMOLED panel.

As usual, Samsung makes some of the best smartphone displays in the world, and the Galaxy S8 Active will please you as well. The infinity design with two curved sides gives a futuristic feeling for users when they look at and use the screen. Not just that, this is among the first phones to sport a tall screen that was closer to a cinematic aspect ratio than other competitors at the time.

With this tall screen, you can enjoy a wider viewing experience when watching videos and films that make use of the entire panel. Even better, many games have now adapted to the long screen so you will get the same wide field of view when gaming with very thin black bezels on the sides.

When we talk about the screen, we cannot help mentioning how great images look on the Galaxy S8 Active. With a 2K resolution, images on this display are smooth and really sharp. Notably, the pixel density of this phone is almost the same as the Galaxy S8, meaning the images are as smooth and you can hardly spot the pixels individually. Besides, the colors are vibrant and the contrast is great.  

With such an amazing screen, the Galaxy S8 Active delivers beautiful graphics for gaming. Images in games are rich in detail, sharp, smooth, and actions are seamless. Through several gaming tests by different reviewers, we didn’t spot any frame drops or lags in gameplay. So you can freely play any game on this phone.

Chip

For different markets, Samsung used different processors for the Galaxy S8. In the US and China, users get the Snapdragon 835 while those in the EMEA regions get the Exynos 8895.

On AnTuTu, the Exynos 8895 gets 174,155 points in total while the Snapdragon 835 gets 162,101 points in total. Despite having a lower total score than Samsung’s processor, Qualcomm’s candidate is known to have better graphics performance, which is extremely useful for gaming. In fact, the Galaxy S8 Active gets 232,039 points on AnTuTu 8, including 61585 points for the GPU.

Over the years, the Korean phone maker has offered multiple variants for different markets with different chips. The reason behind this move is saving costs involved when using its own processors as well as the existing supports in markets.

However, regardless of the chip, the Galaxy S8 Active delivers great gaming performance. It can handle any mobile title you want, and it handles very well. Actions are smooth and you can play at high resolutions for the best viewing experience.

Storage

The Galaxy S8 comes with a single variant of storage, featuring 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. This is the same specification as the Galaxy S8. Though this RAM capacity is not large, the device already offers a superior gaming experience for you thanks to the combination with great processors and seamless display.  

Gaming tests show that the phone does heat up when you play games. Specifically, when tested in a 25-degree-C room, its temperature went up to 42 degrees C after 30 minutes of gaming. This is quite a difference in the heat, considering the room is cool. That means when you play in warmer environments like a 30-degree room, you should expect that the temperature can go higher.

Battery

The smartphone packs a 4000mAh battery, which is the largest capacity of the three S8 models, along with support for 15W fast charging, Quick Charge 2.0, and wireless charging depending on the market. The Galaxy S8 Active offers 32 hours of talk time over 3G networks and music playtime of up to 113 hours, so the Galaxy S8 Active should offer longer battery life This is still not a large capacity for gaming, however, you may get by a couple of hours.

Though the phone heats up during a gaming session, the heat doesn’t seem to come from the battery but rather the top of the phone. So, you won’t have to worry about the battery exploding when you play games.

Camera

The back of the Galaxy S8 Active houses a single 12MP wide-angle lens supported with an LED flash. The rear camera also provides the panorama and auto-HDR modes. You can record videos at 4K, 1080 pixels, of 720 pixels of resolution and 30, 60, or 240 fps of frame rate.

For selfie photos and iris scanning, there is an 8MP wide-angle lens alongside a 2MP lens dedicated to scanning the iris for unlocking the phone. The front-facing lens lets you record videos at 1440 pixels and 30 fps.

The cameras on Samsung’s Galaxy S smartphones always take great photos and the ones on the Galaxy S8 Active are no exception. However, it’s unfortunate that the company chose not to give the handset more rear cameras, meaning it lacks a few photographing modes compared with rivals. Other than that, the pictures taken by this phone look great with a lot of detail, vibrant colors, and high contrast.