“While the full-size display is the most eye-grabbing feature of the S8, its biometric capabilities will also come as notable enhancements over previous Samsung smartphones…”

Samsung has officially released its new flagship phones, the Galaxy S8 and the S8+, in the US, Puerto Rico, Canada, and South Korea.

For industry watchers and smartphone enthusiasts, the devices are already very familiar, after a long stream of leaks and updates from Samsung. While the full-size display is the most eye-grabbing feature of the S8, its biometric capabilities will also come as notable enhancements over previous Samsung smartphones – and even helped to make that extra-large display possible.

That’s because the device features both iris scanning and facial recognition for user authentication, with the former being carried over from the failed Note7 smartphone, where it didn’t have the chance to make the impact many had expected. By allowing faster, more convenient, multi-modal authentication, the technology allowed Samsung to place less emphasis on its fingerprint scanner, which it moved to the rear of the device. That, in turn, allowed for a display that could take up almost the entire front face of the device – 5.8″ on the S8 and 6.2″ on the S8+.

Other notable features include an 8MP F1.7 front-facing camera, a 12MP F1.7 Dual Pixel rear camera, Gigabit LTE and Wi-Fi connectivity, and Bixby, Samsung’s new voice-controlled AI assistant.