The Samsung Galaxy S8 is a milestone for smartphones. It has an unbelievable screen, incredible specs and a body to die for. But those are just the headlining features. If you dig a little deeper, you’ll find that this phone has yet another first.
Bluetooth 5.0.
Those of you who watched MKBHD’s first impressions video would probably have noticed it, but it hasn’t seen that much coverage so far. Samsung’s Galaxy S8 is indeed the first phone ever to feature Bluetooth 5.0 technology.
Bluetooth on most outgoing phones currently are Bluetooth 4.2, a standard that was first announced about three years ago. With Bluetooth 5.0, things have been improved significantly. First up, this new standard is twice as fast as its predecessor with about four times the range. It’s also more robust, allowing Bluetooth 5.0 devices — like the Galaxy S8 and S8+ — to push audio to two separate wireless headphones at the same time, for example.
Although it gets a significant boost in speed, transfer speeds are still not going to be as fast as WiFi direct, so you’d be better of sharing files with WiFi direct instead.
Still, this is an interesting piece tech that, thanks to the incredible about of awesome things on the Galaxy S8, actually got buried and removed from the headlines.
