It's been quite an impressive past few months in the smartphone world.
Most of the top Google Android smartphone makers have now unveiled - at CES 2017 in January and Mobile World Congress (MWC) in February - their mass-market flagship device for the year including Huawei (P10), LG (G6), Samsung (Galaxy S8) and Sony (Xperia XZ Premium).
And so far the superphone that impressed us the most is Samsung’s S8.
The look of the Korean manufacturer latest Android device is simply gorgeous and a clear step up from its predecessor, the Galaxy S7 Edge, with its narrow ‘Infinity Display’, a new curved and edgeless screen that covers the entire front of the device which still feels confortable in the hand despite being taller.
A nearly perfect Android device…
The only let down in Samsung’s overall design was the misplacement of the fingerprint scanner that was moved to the back of the device, adjacent to the camera lens.
An incredibly awkward and unnatural position, especially considering that Samsung have gotten everything else right with this phone.
Since the fingerprint sensor is located so high up on this already tall phone, it’s actually hard to reach it without holding the device with both hands and sometimes requiring us to turn the smartphone around just to make sure we actually hit the fingerprint scanner and not the heartbeat sensor, which is symmetrically located on the other side of the camera.
These contorsions get even worse with the taller S8+!
To make matters worse, the fingerprint scanner is located so close to the camera that it’s almost impossible not to touch the camera lens every time you want to unlock the phone, leaving smudges on the lens.
Admitting the seriousness of this design flaw, Samsung decided to display a warning message to remind users to regularly clean the camera lens.
Indeed, what’s the point having one of the best smartphone camera if all the shots are blurred because of dirty and oily fingers!
A design flaw with serious implications on user experience, security
From our research, the most confortable placement for the fingerprint scanner - when located in the back of a phone - is of course far away from the camera (usually below it) and in the center of the device.
But why should you care?
Samsung’s Galaxy S8 design flaw goes beyond esthetic and is actually detrimental to both the device’s user experience - as you’ll be wasting so much time just trying to unlock it - but also to the its security.
Fully aware of the design flaw, Samsung is advocating instead to use its iris recognition feature to unlock the phone.
Unfortunately, iris scanning doesn’t work well in the dark or direct sunlight and requires taking off your glasses most of the time.
The Galaxy S8 can also be unlocked using its face recognition feature.
But to Samsung’s own admission, it’s still not secure enough and can easily be fooled using a captured photo of the user!
At the end of the day, fingerprint scanning is the fastest and more secure way to protect and unlock the Galaxy S8, which makes Samsung’s poor decision to misplace the fingerprint sensor even more mind-blowing.
The reason for the flawed design: Samsung had to rush out the S8
To Samsung’s defense, the Galaxy S8 posed some serious design challenges, the least being its ‘Infinity Display’ that required the removal of the physical home button in the front, which embeds the fingerprint scanner.
Instead, the Korean manufacturer aggressively decided to place a ‘virtual’ home button in the bottom front of the device, with haptic feedback a-la Apple, and embed a new generation ultrasonic fingerprint reader underneath it.
Unfortunately, that technical prowess was proven to take much longer to achieve than expected and Samsung was left with a tough decision to make: Delay the launch of the device to the summer or fall - another huge blow after the Galaxy Note 7 debacle which could also jeopardized AT&T’s and Verizon’s support for the S8 - or use the more classic capacitive fingerprint reader and rush the device out the door.
In the rush, Samsung engineers had also no other choice but to place the fingerprint reader in the spot of the heartbeat sensor, moving the latter to the other side of the camera.
Placing the fingerprint reader anywhere else would have required some serious redesign which would delay the launch of the S8 even further.
At the last minute, to give itself more time, Samsung decided to cancel the February launch of the S8 at MWC in Barcelona - losing millions in cancellation fees - and moved it a month later, in New York.
Better wait for the Galaxy Note 8
Bottom line, if you really want to see what Samsung had planned for the original S8, you’ll have to wait for the launch of its next flagship device, the Galaxy Note 8, in the second half of this year.
Ironically, it will coincide with the launch of the next iPhone which, according to our supply-chain sources, will also include a curved-like Infinity Display from Samsung and an ultrasonic fingerprint reader!
Note: This report is part of Atherton Research's extensive coverage of the key players in the Smartphone market, exclusively available to our global clients.
