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- 12MP rear camera, video up to 4K@30fps; 8MP front camera, video up to Quad HD
- Crisp and vibrant photos in high to medium light, but noisy images in the dark
- Handy movable shutter button
- 4K video recording stuttered and had glaring compression
The Galaxy S8 Active camera is the same shooter you’ll find on the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus, making it one of the best mobile phone cameras on the market. Pair that with the long-lasting battery of the S8 Active, and you’ve got a great photography experience.
The camera interface is also easy to use at a basic level while still offering access to a pro shooting mode, though different shooting modes are somewhat hidden, requiring a swipe on the camera screen with no clear indication they’re over there. Being able to add a second shutter button anywhere on the screen also made the camera easier to shoot with one-handed.
The bright screen of the Galaxy S8 Active makes it easy to see what you’re shooting even in direct sunlight, and the camera is capable of great shots, capturing plenty of detail and vivid colors. It can capture dim scenes fairly well, too, for evening or shaded shots. However, it still struggles with dark scenes, with images getting a lot of noise.
The 8 megapixel front-facing camera offered decent clarity, and included some goofy Snapchat-style filters so you can send silly photos or videos to your less-trendy friends. It’s also capable of recording video at Quad HD resolution
The rear video camera offered impressive image quality, and it shoots in 4K at 30 frames per second. I caught an Of Montreal concert while reviewing the Galaxy S8 Active, and even in the dark settings, I was impressed with what the video camera was able to capture. Sure, there was noise in the images, but it captured insane lighting changes really well, and the audio was actually crisp without the usual levels of distortion you’d get from a smartphone microphone at a concert.
Unfortunately, the 4K video recording experience didn’t continue to impress in other tests. I took a panning skyline shot, and the motion didn’t appear smooth. The camera occasionally even jerked around, like it had stuttered while processing the footage. I tested it again, turning image stabilization off to see if it had an effect, and it improved the stuttering some, but still left some odd blurring in the panning motion. One video I recorded at the concert managed to rotate itself 90 degrees while saving. Compression in the video was glaring in some of the video, raising the question of why I should even bother recording in 4K.
Battery life
- 4,000mAh battery
- Ready for binge watching
- Quick Charge fills it up around 1% per minute
One kink that needs no resolving is the insane battery life of the Galaxy S8 Active. It may stutter opening Bixby, and take some time to unlock, but with a 4000mAh battery, the Galaxy S8 Active is probably not going to die on you – no matter what you do with it during your day.
As I’ve mentioned, I’m a relatively light mobile user. I pull my phone out frequently to accomplish a brief task, like sending a message or checking a notification. A few times in a day I might scroll through the news or Facebook. And I’ll often use it with the screen off to listen to music of podcasts.
Given that low level of usage, the Galaxy S8 Active didn’t punish me for forgetting to charge it overnight. It didn’t punish for forgetting a second night in a row, either. It’s not as though I tried to save battery either. I left Wi-Fi and GPS on all the time. I forced the screen to stay at its maximum resolution. And I kept the brightness at max, though turning on adaptive brightness to save my eyes.
When it came time to start my battery test, which involves a timed charge from 0% to 100%, I had a hard time making this thing die. I put on videos at full brightness, I toyed around with the camera and I even ran a quick benchmark. Roughly 3 hours later, the phone was still alive, even though I’d started this process with it already around 40%.
Once it was finally down for the count, charging the powered-down Galaxy S8 Active with the included quick charger was surprisingly fast. Starting from 0%, it hit 17% in the first 15 minutes, and then added on another 16% every 15 minutes until the phone mostly full. It slowed down slightly in the last 25%, but still reached 100% after just 103 minutes.
From 100%, I tested the battery drain by running the phone with all the usual radios running, and played a 90-minute video off internal storage with the screen at full brightness. That test only managed to bring the battery down to 88%. This means I could have played the video twice, for a total of 3 hours, just to get the phone close to having 3000mAh of charge remaining. Why does that matter? Because the standard Galaxy S8 starts with just 3000mAh.
For my issues with the software, the hardware in the Galaxy S8 Active is nothing to complain about and has me wishing more phones opted for thicker chassis to fit in 4000mAh batteries.
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