5 Business-Friendly Features Of The Samsung Galaxy S8

Not Just For Consumers

Just a few years back, Samsung's mobility efforts were dominated by the interests of the consumer. Not so today. With the launch of the Galaxy S8, it's clear that the needs of businesses wield significant influence within Samsung. "Now there's a great balance between consumer and B2B," said Kevin Gilroy, executive vice president and general manager of the commercial division at Samsung, speaking to CRN at Samsung's Galaxy Unpacked event on Wednesday. "We're getting more and more input into rollouts, product designs, feature sets. And that will continue."

The Galaxy S8, Gilroy added, "is not a consumer product jammed into B2B."

In the following slides, we've rounded up five features of the new Galaxy S8 that should prove useful to many businesses.

DeX

With the launch of the Galaxy S8, Samsung is debuting a new feature for getting productive with a phone. The feature, called DeX, essentially turns the Galaxy S8 or S8+ into a desktop computer (using some special hardware and software). Users plug their S8 into the DeX dock, and the dock connects to an HDMI-compatible monitor, a keyboard and a mouse. The phone can then power an Android desktop on the monitor, and users can access mobile apps such as those from Microsoft Office and Adobe. Also, users can access Windows apps through a virtual desktop (VDI providers for DeX include Citrix, VMware and Amazon Web Services). The promise of the technology is that on-the-go employees can more easily transition between mobile and office work environments by relying on a single device.

Along with the new hardware and software, DeX is made possible by the enhanced processing power in the Galaxy S8 and S8+, which features the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 system-on-a-chip. HP has previously deployed the concept behind DeX with its Elite x3 smartphone, which can power a Windows desktop using a special dock.

Iris Scanning

The Samsung Galaxy S8 salvages one of the Galaxy Note 7's most impressive features: authentication through iris scanning. Iris scans are far more secure than passwords or PINs, and the inclusion of iris authentication in the Galaxy S8 means fewer requirements for password/PIN changes by IT departments. That's good for employees, of course, and also for enterprises as a whole, which can feel more assured that their employees are using mobile devices securely. "Iris scanning is a huge opportunity for B2B on authentication," Gilroy said.

Knox Configure

The Galaxy S8 and S8+ will be the first smartphones to support a new feature for businesses called Knox Configure, which offers an over-the-air bulk configuration of devices. If an enterprise wants all of its users in the field to have the same configuration and setup process on their device, Knox Configure will allow for that level of control, according to Samsung. The result is that enterprises can more easily provide the "same look and feel" for all users of the Galaxy S8/S8+ in a corporate deployment, the company said.

Bixby

While it's still early days for Samsung's virtual assistant Bixby – brand-new with the Galaxy S8 – the assistant's fresh approach could have big implications for businesses. On voice interaction, Bixby aims to let you do any task with your voice that you would normally need to accomplish with touch. That could mean getting productivity tasks done more quickly, such as pulling up a contact or email that would normally require typing. But Bixby also aims to lay the groundwork for increasingly sophisticated mobile computing down the road. "As Bixby develops, it can become an access point to cognitive and AI" technologies, Gilroy said.

Split-Screen Mode

As useful as smartphones are, one limitation is around having multiple windows open at a time. Navigating between windows can be a real pain. But because the Galaxy S8 and S8+ offer such large displays -- 5.8 inches and 6.2 inches, respectively -- split-screen computing becomes a much more serious option. Even on the smaller of the two phones, split-screen mode offers a significant amount of space for multi-tasking in two windows at once.