On Wednesday, South Korea tech giant launched the Samsung Galaxy Note 8, the successor of the infamous Galaxy Note 7 that humiliated the company. That is one line of the Galaxy Note series Samsung wishes everyone will forget, but no one really does. If anything, the company is now judged harshly for that one big ‘fcuk up,’ as people forget all the rest of great devices it has supplied.
Nonetheless, Samsung, in a show of resilience continued with the Galaxy Note line of devices and brought in a successor, the Galaxy Note 8. On paper, this device looks like it was fashioned to make you forget that the Note 7 ever happened. It is a high-end phablet with an S Pen like no other; scoring ‘bigly’ in both the aesthetics and functionality departments.
Galaxy Note 8 Specs and Features
As far as the outer design and outlook go, there is no much difference between the Note 8 and S8; the two lines seem to have been assigned almost identical design. The Note 8 has a curved body made out of a blend of metal and glass.
Under the hood, the Note 8 has an octa-core Snapdragon 835 chipset, 6GB RAM (S8 has 4GB RAM), runs Android 7.1.1. It has a 6.3-inch Super AMOLED display with QUAD HD+ resolution. That is the biggest screen Samsung has ever put on a Galaxy Note, and the company is calling it the ‘Infinity’ display.
Thanks to no bezels, the phone feels small that it actually is; the big screen runs from edge-to-edge. It has a sturdy feel, meaning its fit and finishing must have been executed impeccably. It has a fingerprint sensor at the back, next to the dual-camera. At the bottom, you get a USB-C port and a headphone jack to its right.
Note 8 is rated IP68 for water- and dust-proof. It also has a microSD slot for extending its built-in storage that comes in variants of 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB.
The Note 8 S Pen
In many ways, the Note 8’s S Pen is similar to that of Note 7. It is waterproof like the phone itself and recognizes up to 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity. It has impressive precision, though as sensitive as a regular pen when you are doodling on a piece of paper.
There is one big difference between the Note 8 S Pen and that of Note 7’s. This one has Live Messages, where you can write out animated messages using the S Pen and put them as an overlay on a picture then export it as an agnostic GIF. The GIF files can easily get too large, with a single GIF file ranging 10MB to 20MB.
Side-by-Side apps – Multitasking thanks to Android Nougat
Samsung is capitalizing on an Android Nougat feature, which it is calling App Pairs. That is basically opening two apps side-by-side on a split screen, so you can multitask by using both apps at the same time.
Samsung’s first Dual Camera
If you like taking pictures on your phone, you will love the Note 8’s camera. It features Samsung’s first dual camera that gives you a wide-angle 12MP with a f/1.7 aperture with 12MP camera.
The camera also has an optical image stabilization feature in both cameras (the wide-angle camera lens captures more light) giving your brightly lit pictures even when shooting dark areas.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 pre-orders start today, but the official start of shipping by Samsung will be on September 15th.
