From Essential to Galaxy S8

Welp, the USB C port on the Essential phone is bad and I needed a phone right away. For $399 at Best Buy, I picked up a Galaxy S8 and I am content with it, I just need to turn off Bixby. I was tempted to buy the $599 S9+ from the Microsoft Store, that thing was fast and lag free but, $200 less to spend is better for me.

Anyone else have suggestions on making this phone even better? Thanks.

I went from an Essential phone to an S8 last year. I think the only things I did were to change the default Samsung apps to Google apps. It's a nice phone and the bloatware wasn't nearly as bad as the old S5/S6 era. I was running on Oreo though. Not sure if Pie made it's way to the S8 yet.

I've seen the S9 on sale for $500ish ($525 here) a few times in the last month since the S10 launched, definitely would have looked around for that. S8 is still a decent phone, but I'd have a hard time spending $400 on a 2 year old phone even if it was a high-end phone when it launched, if just to have that much longer software updates/support. But at least the Pie/One UI update seems to be rolling out to most S8 variants now and that's a considerable improvement IMO over the previous versions of Samsung's UI, it just sucks that it will be the last major update your phone gets and you just bought it.

T4rd said:

I've seen the S9 on sale for $500ish ($525 here) a few times in the last month since the S10 launched, definitely would have looked around for that. S8 is still a decent phone, but I'd have a hard time spending $400 on a 2 year old phone even if it was a high-end phone when it launched, if just to have that much longer software updates/support. But at least the Pie/One UI update seems to be rolling out to most S8 variants now and that's a considerable improvement IMO over the previous versions of Samsung's UI, it just sucks that it will be the last major update your phone gets and you just bought it.

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Going to have to agree with T4rd. No chance I would spend $400 on a 2 year old Galaxy phone as the update support for it is already pretty much over (excluding spotty security patches). I would've honestly purchased a second hand, mint condition S9 for roughly the same price off of Swappa.

exlink said:

Going to have to agree with T4rd. No chance I would spend $400 on a 2 year old Galaxy phone as the update support for it is already pretty much over (excluding spotty security patches). I would've honestly purchased a second hand, mint condition S9 for roughly the same price off of Swappa.

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I really cannot say I agree but, I also needed a phone immediately and could not wait for a possibility of a working phone, regardless of the savings. Except that probably the S8 will not get Android Q, I cannot see anything that I am missing out on. I did find that the Touchwiz interface can be laggy but, I saw that exact same thing on the S9 as well. To remove the lag completely, I would have had to go with at least an S10e or Razer Phone 2, at least from the units I got to mess around with.

At least for me, an extra $100 is just not something I wanted to spend and besides, with a restocking fee, it is too late now.

You can get AMOLED wallpapers that are supposed to be great for your device.

I used various icon packs for Android. You can try launchers and maybe reduce blue light.

I was in a similar boat and through a series of circumstances had to get an S8+. As long as you keep your expectations reasonable, it's a great phone. There are better deals/options available, but in a time crunch it's not a bad option to go with.

I have the S8+. There is a blue light filter in the settings.