Techstination, your destination for gadgets and gear.   I’m Fred Fishkin.   Pre-orders have begun for Samsung’s new Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus smartphones…and they look like  worthy successors to the Galaxy S7 line.  And Samsung is emphasizing the safety testing it is putting its devices through in the wake of last year’s Note 7 recall.     So what is special here? The edge to edge Infinity displays look great and give users bigger screen sizes…without making the phones too much bigger overall.   There have been improvements everywhere like eye and face scanning for security options.  And there’s a new AI assistant called Bixby.  Senior Director of Product Marketing Drew Blackard…

“If I’m at work, it might serve up applications that I commonly use at work.  But if I’m on my way home it might bring up my music player cause it knows that I listen to music when I’m in a car.”

The Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus are due to arrive in stores on the 21^st of this month.

You can find us at Techstination.com.   I’m Fred Fishkin.