The Samsung Galaxy S8. The hottest smartphone in the market right now. How can you lay your hands on it? By parting with not less than Kshs 85,000. Yes, I also have that look on my face.
But spending up to nearly Kshs 100,000 (that is if you are going to get the S8’s larger sibling, the Galaxy S8+) may not be in the crosshairs of many people. More so if your current smartphone is just fine and there’s nothing wrong with it. Maybe a little frustration here and there with the slow rollout of Android Nougat to it.
Good news: you might actually not need to spend that much to get to see and experience what Samsung engineers have spent the last couple of months putting together. Samsung has released the launcher on the Galaxy S8 and S8+ to the Play Store and as such many Android users can have it.
It’s best if you have a Samsung smartphone running a newer version of Android. While it’s possible to install the launcher on other Android smartphones, there is no guarantee it will work. It crashed on my Huawei Mate 9, crashed on the Infinix S2 Pro and worked on the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge. Magic.
Bad news: you can’t have it if you’re in Kenya. You’ll need to head our resident alternative Play Store: APKMirror. Grab it from there, install, lurk around TouchWiz (or is it Grace UI?).
Before this, users have had to make do with themes and icon packs in order to replicate the Galaxy S8 look and feel on their devices. I am one of them, I have been using this icon pack to mimic the Galaxy S8’s look.
This is not the first time Samsung has done this. Samsung has previously availed newer versions of its Android launcher to the Play Store.
So now there is one more application in addition to the Galaxy S8’s browser for the masses who may not necessarily have the device, to use.
