SAMSUNG GALAXY S8 REVIEW

How does a company shake a global recall of a high profile product? If you're the world's biggest smartphone maker, you keep doing what you know -- tweaking, innovating, improving and building the very products that lead to success.

Samsung could have taken the easy route, slightly changing the modern S7 design while it regrouped. Instead, Samsung pushed the smartphone narrative forward with the Galaxy S8.

After using the Galaxy S8 for almost a week, one thing is abundantly clear to me: Apple is now in a position of playing catch-up when it comes to design andfeatures.

Specifications:

• Size : 148.9 x 68.1 x 8.0 mm, 155g
• Water/dust resistance: IP68
• Display: 5.8-inch Quad HD+ (2960x1440) 570 ppi
• Storage: 64 GB with microSD support up to 256 GB
• Memory: 4 GB RAM
• Battery: 3,000 milliamp-hour
• Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 in the US, Samsung's Exynos in regions to be announced
• Camera: Rear-facing dual pixel 12-megapixel. Front-facing 8-megapixel with autofocus
• Operating System: Android 7.0 with Samsung Experience 8.1
• Connectivity: USB-C, NFC, Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth

FROM DESIGN FOLLOWER, TO DESIGN LEADER

Apple has, for years, been considered the leader in the design of smartphones, setting the standard for the entire industry, and Samsung spent years copying those designs. At times, Samsung's devices were a blatant rip-off of Apple's hard work.

For the past few years, Samsung has slowly moved away from following Apple's lead, finding its design prowess. We had the first glimpse -- quite literally -- when the Note 7 launched.