Samsung Galaxy Note 8 Review

Pros

•  Stunning design and build
•  Great screen
•  Well-implemented stylus and software
•  Superb cameras

Cons

•  Potentially sub-average battery life
•  Wildly expensive

What is the Samsung Galaxy Note 8?

Some thought the Note 8 might never happen. After the successful launch and subsequent disastrous recall and discontinuation of the Note 7, which still gets namechecked on some airlines as a banned object, you’d have forgiven Samsung for dropping the Note name and starting again.

The Note 8, then, is supposed to be Samsung’s humble return to the phablet market – plus a big rival to the iPhone 8, and in many ways this phone is a huge success. With a gorgeous design, incredible 6.3-inch screen, great software and excellent stylus, there’s very little not to like here. In fact, the only big concern is that this phone’s battery life might not be long enough for heavy users.

The Note 8’s screen is ginormous. At 6.3in on the diagonal, with a tall and thin design taken straight from the Infinity Display of Samsung’s Galaxy S8 devices, the Note 8 dwarfs almost every other device, including the previous Note 7, in sheer screen real estate.

The curvature of the screen on the Note 8 and its corners is much reduced compared to the Note 8. The result is harder corners and less screen on the rounded edges, which makes using the stylus easier. The 74.8mm width of Note 8 is also easier to keep a hold of with a metal ridge down the side aiding grip.

The screen is simply brilliant. Big, bright and bold, with rich colours, deep blacks and great viewing angles. It’s the best on the market, and has there’s plenty of customisation options from colour to screen resolution.

The Note 8 has the same virtual home button and pressure-sensitive screen as the Galaxy S8, and you get a choice of orientation of the navigation buttons, which is welcome.

The glass back of the device is monolithic, with a simple Samsung logo about two-thirds of the way up and the cluster of cameras, flash, heart rate sensor and fingerprint sensor near the top that all sit flush marked out by a small raised bezel.

The Note 8 is water resistant to depths of 1.5 metres for 30 minutes with an IP68 rating, and Corning’s Gorilla Glass 5, which should hopefully make both front and back more scratch and shatter resistant than other glass-backed devices, although most will probably want a case to protect the large device.

Specifications

• Screen: 6.3in quad HD+ AMOLED (521ppi)
• Processor: octa-core Samsung Exynos 8895 or octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 835
• RAM: 6GB of RAM
• Storage: 64GB + microSD card
• Operating system: Android 7.0 with TouchWiz
• Camera: dual 12MP rear cameras with OIS, 8MP front-facing camera
• Connectivity: LTE, Wi-Fi, NFC, wireless charging, Bluetooth 5, GPS and Iris sensor
• Dimensions: 162.5 x 74.8 x 8.6 mm
• Weight: 195g

S-Pen

Other software additions are associated with the S-Pen, which now has a noticeably thinner tip and supports up to 4,098 levels of pressure. You can still write on the screen when it’s off, which is incredibly handy for making shopping lists. The best feature of the Note 7, instant gif-making from a video, returns, as does Samsung’s other sketching, screen-writing, selection and other productivity tools that use the S-Pen.

A new feature that’s quite cute is the live message feature, which allows you to draw or write out something to create an animated gif to send via pretty much any messaging app or email via Android’s built-in share system. It’s fun, fast and cross compatible. 

The S-Pen itself is great. There’s no perceptible lag, it’s comfortable to use and is the best combination of performance, size and convenience, slotting into the bottom of the phone and safely out of sight when you’re not using it. It’s water resistant too, just like the Note 8. It’s easy to see why Samsung has some die-hard Note and S-Pen fans.

Dual cameras

The Note 8 has Samsung’s first dual camera setup on the back. Both cameras have 12-megapixel sensors and optical image stabilisation but with different focal lengths and apertures. One is a traditional smartphone camera with a f/1.7 lens, the other is a “telephoto” lens with a f/2.4 aperture, which together allow a 1x and 2x optical zoom.

The normal camera behaves like any of Samsung’s other top-end cameras, including the Galaxy S8, which is to say it’s an excellent all-rounder, good in low light, with fast focus, good colour reproduction and detail. It’s not quite the best camera on the market but it’s very close.

The telephoto camera is a bit of a mixed bag. It gets you slightly closer and that can be useful in some scenarios, but it’s also noticeably worse performing, producing much darker and grainier photos in less-than-optimal lighting situations where the normal camera produces can still produce good results.

Observations

• - The fingerprint scanner on the back is marked out more clearly on the Note 8 than the Galaxy S8 making it easier to find with your finger
• - Samsung’s virtual assistant Bixby is pre-loaded on the Note 8 with a dedicated button
• - The stylus clicks into place quite satisfyingly and quickly became a object to fiddle with
• - The stylus doesn’t fit in the slot the wrong way up and doesn’t get stuck
• - You need big pockets