 I loved the Galaxy S6 Active, but aside from being kind of a frump compared to its much hotter cousin, the S6, it lacked a fingerprint sensor at a time when that was the next big thing to have for quick secure authentication. The next generation of Active integrated a fingerprint reader with the clicky home button for a truly no compromises experience though, except the regular S7's killer new feature was IP68 water resistance, removing one of the Active's main selling points. That and the S7 Active was really bulky, even for an Active. So, as you'd probably expect, this generation is full of compromises again. Here we go. After the expected message from our sponsor, Intel. HP's new OMEN X lineup comes equipped with Intel's seventh generation Core i7 processors. Check them out at the link in the video description. Now in terms of the internal hardware, the S8 Active is every bit as worthy of the flagship label as the S8 and the Note 8. It's got an octa-core processor, 4 gigs of RAM, 64 gigs of storage with micro SD expansion. I mean, you guys know the drill, but it's also got a couple of tricks up its sleeve that they don't. First is the shatter resistant screen encased in a mil-standard 810G temperature, dust, shock, and pressure resistant enclosure. And second is the massive 4,000 milliamp hour battery inside. Let's start with a closer look at the screen. This one is a bit of a mixed bag. From the regular S8, it carries over the bright, accurate, once configured correctly, 5.8 inch 2960 by 1440 AMOLED panel, the unusual 18.5 by 9 aspect ratio, and on-screen buttons, including a pressure sensitive home instead of hardware buttons. A tough pill to swallow for some long time active fans. Though it wasn't a huge deal for me, I personally like the flexibility of being able to hide them for more room for consuming vertical content. Not to mention horizontal content. The big screen makes the S8 Active supremely awesome for watching movies or other ultra wide aspect ratio content when you're on the go. As long as you don't mind using headphones or the, in my opinion, inexcusable in 2017, mono bottom facing speaker configuration. But, if you were hoping for a shatter resistant display that also manages to somehow wrap around the edges of the device, infinity style, then you'll be sorely disappointed by the flat glass and definitely not bezel-less 75% screen to body ratio. Though again, this isn't something that bothered me that much. The S8 Active is actually as big an improvement over the S7 Active in terms of its screen to body ratio as the S8 was to the S7. The bigger issue is that while both phones use Gorilla Glass 5, many users are reporting that the shatter resistant coating seems to make this one much more susceptible to micro scratching. And mine does definitely have some micro scratches. Though with that said, my S8 has just as many from similar use in my pocket. So take that as you will. I actually have a theory that whether it's Corning's batch to batch variation or the different configurations that OEMs request for it, their glass products are ending up with the same name for marketing purposes, but really different characteristics. The Droid Turbo Gen 1 that I used for a year and then that Taron has been using since has Gorilla Glass 3, but it has almost no surface imperfections to this day while the rest of my phones, Apple and Android usually end up scuffed to hell by pocket lint within a few days. Anyway, I digress. Let's talk about the second big selling point of this phone, the battery. Even as a pretty heavy user, I managed only once to kill the S8 Active in a single day. And that was only because I subjected it to over six hours of simultaneous GPS navigation and Wi-Fi hotspot sharing during an all day on location shoot down in Seattle. This is by far my favorite thing about active phones. I mean, I still end up charging every night, but most people would easily get two days or more with some of the clever power saving features in the Android 7 Nougat version of Samsung Experience. But wait a second, don't active phones have a third awesome selling point? Ah, yes, the programmable button on the left. Wait, what the? It's a Bixby button just like the rest of Samsung's current lineup now? I mean, at least they let you disable it for accidental presses now, but I'm still going to copy paste my usual spiel about how they should allow native reprogramming, you know, like they used to. Speaking of copy paste, the camera, including the front-facing iris scanner that I still don't find as fast or reliable as the fingerprint reader, is literally copy pasted from the Galaxy S8. And that's a good thing. I never noticed any difference in image quality or launch times on the rear 12 megapixel camera that records 4K video at up to 30 FPS. And while it doesn't have a dual sensor system like the Note 8 for optical zoom or fake bokeh, which I'll be calling FOCA from now on, honestly, that matters way less to me these days than a quality front-facing camera. And this one gets me better results than even the iPhone 8. I mean, it's not like I take a bunch of selfies with my duck face friends in the club or whatever, but when I'm hanging out with my kids, I end up capturing a lot more moments thanks to the wider angle lens and its decent low-light performance. Just remember before you use it, make sure you turn off all the cheesy face shaping and skin smoothing effects. Now let's talk gripes. The Samsung experience on this phone is not the smoothest experience. This device crashes more than every other phone that I've reviewed combined. It's not every day or anything, but it's too much. Everything from random reboots to the screen staying on with the clock stopped, so clearly not working until I hard reset, to the phone clearly being working like it'll lock and unlock with the buttons, but the touchscreen is totally unresponsive until I hard reset it. And before you ask, I checked AT&T site to make sure that I was running the latest software. So, uh, Samsung? An update would be super swell. And while you're at it, you can't move an expanded list around on me while I am swiping stuff away from it. And fix this one too. When you hit the fingerprint sensor, which I still don't like on the back by the way, See? There you go. That's what it's supposed to do. Dump you on the home screen. Perfect. But if you hit it sometimes when the phone isn't actually locked, for some reason, I then have to swipe before I can see the home screen. Why would I want that? I mean, it's not like it matters that much. The instability that I've experienced already rules this phone out as a daily driver for me. If that could be fixed, I otherwise really like it. It's like a dog that's smart, friendly, playful, and pees on your stuff. It just needs a little bit more work. Speaking of needing a little bit more work, if you were just thinking, you know, my phone needs a little bit more work. You want to spend some time making it look awesome and making it resistant to scuffs and scratches. Well, dbrand has got you covered. Get it? That's a pun because they cover your phone. They're your source for awesome vinyl skins, and they've got tons of options. Colors, textures, and devices. You can cover your laptop, your phone, your tablet, your console, your console controllers, and more. They use only high quality, authentic, true textured 3M vinyl on every product, and they are cut with unrivaled precision. Their customer service robots are easy to work with, and their products are affordable with affordable, also worldwide shipping. So check them out at the link below. You can use their customizer to see exactly what your device will look like. It's pretty cool. So thanks for watching, guys. If this video sucked, you know what to do. But if it was awesome, get subscribed, hit that like button, or check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured in the video description. Also down there is our merch store, which has cool shirts like this one, and our community forum, which you should totally join.