Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus review: Redemption is here

Last year's Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge were excellent phones, and so was the Galaxy Note 7... until it started bursting into flames. While some within Samsung were tasked with figuring out what happened and how to prevent it from happening again, others were trying to build a phone that would make people move on. The Note 7 won't disappear so easily from our collective memory, but I have to hand it to Samsung: The S8 siblings are impeccably built, thoughtfully designed devices. It's not hard to look at these smartphones as the first steps on a road to redemption, and after a week of testing, I can confidently say these are two of the best smartphones money can buy. I just wish its virtual assistant wasn't so half-baked. Text and photos don't do the S8 ($750) and S8 Plus ($850) justice. From their rounded edges to their precisely formed metal-and-glass bodies, they feel like smaller, sleeker versions of the Galaxy Note 7. That's a hell of a compliment, battery insanity notwithstanding -- the Note 7 was a beautiful device and I'm glad that DNA lives on. The S8 and S8 Plus's rounded Infinity displays -- which are 5.8 and 6.2 inches big, respectively -- only add to the phones' appeal. We'll dig into these curved screens more later, but people seemed to like them enough that it didn't make sense to have non-curved flagships anymore.