Samsung Galaxy S8 display: What's the deal with the new aspect ratio?

The Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ are almost upon us. And, among their many unique features, the most notable one has to be the aspect ratio of their screens. After the LG G6 and its 9:18 aspect ratio, Samsung announced their flagships with an even stranger one – 9:18.5.

According to the South Korean behemoth, this provides a large screen in a body that fits in your hand. So, combined with the extremely slim bezels, making for a screen-to-body ratio of 84.26%, the “unboxed” Galaxy phones should provide a phablet-worthy display in a smartphone body, right?

Well, if you judge by diagonals alone, yes. The Galaxy S8 comes with a 5.8” screen diagonal, and the Galaxy S8+ boasts a 6.2” one. But this doesn't matter one bit anymore. Not now, when the South Korean manufacturers shattered the molds.

But if our favorite screen size measurement is on the way out, how can we judge the display size of future handsets? Well, thankfully smartphones are still sort of rectangular. And rectangles have an easy-to-calculate surface area. And if you do that for the Galaxy S8, you will see that not only is the screen not as big as advertised, but its weird aspect ratio is actually just a clever marketing trick.

5.7 inches are not what they used to be

Changing the aspect ratio of a rectangular display, obviously changes the proportion of its diagonal, compared to the two sides. What doesn't change, though, is the shape. A rectangle, no matter of its aspect ratio, can still be seen as two right triangles, conjoined at their hypotenuses.

So, using the same method Paul used in his article about the LG G6's screen, I applied the Pythagorean theorem to calculate the sides of the Galaxy S8's rectangular display. The long side turned out to be approximately 5.22”, and the short one – 2.54”. Therefore, the surface area of the display was approximately 13.26 in2.

Now, we'll take that surface area and convert it to a 9:16 display, and see what sides we get for it. After some more calculations, I concluded that the long side would be 4.9”, and the short one – 2.7”.

Having the two sides of the 9:16 rectangle, I went back to our good old friend Pythagoras. I applied what I had learned so far, in order to find the diagonal of said rectangle. I will spare you the boring numbers and formulas, since the conclusion is what we're here for.

I did actually use highschool maths in real life.

It turns out that if the Galaxy S8 display used the conventional aspect ratio, its diagonal would be nearly as conventional – 5.57 inches. Almost the same as that of the Galaxy S7 edge. The difference between the two would be that the Galaxy S8 would have a somewhat smaller footprint, thanks to its smaller top and bottom bezels.

What about the Galaxy S8+, though? Using the same method described above, I found out that the 9:16 equivalent of the bigger Galaxy would sport a diagonal of approximately 5.95 inches. That's 0.28” more than the Galaxy Note 5 and Note 7. Therefore, the Samsung Galaxy S8+ is not a phablet screen in a smartphone body, it's simply a tall phablet, that's just as wide as the Note 7.