Samsung Galaxy Note 8 review By The Verge

It was just about a year ago, then I sat here and told you that a Samsung Galaxy Note 7, was the best take on a big smartphone ever made. Now we all know what happened to the note 7, and it wasn't good it basically caught on fire and had to be pulled from the market, but because of that Samsung changed the way it makes batteries. So we shouldn't have to worry about that problem anymore, and now we're here to talk about the new Samsung Galaxy Note 8, which Samsung again hopes is the best big phone ever made. You probably already know what a note is and the note 8 has got it all. It's got a giant screen that stretches almost to the very edges of the phone's frame. It's got: Qualcomm's fastest, processor lots of RAM a big battery with both fast wired and wireless charging, and it's also Samsung's, first phone with a dual camera system that lets you do interest.

Portrait effects that let you blur the background like an iPhone can do and, of course, because it's a note. It comes with a stylus which has also gained a few new tricks now, you're, probably thinking to yourself. That sounds great. This sounds like a monster phone, and you know what you're right, there's actually very little to complain about with the note 8 aside from perhaps its starting price of nine hundred and thirty dollars. But, unlike the note seven last year, which was head and shoulders above everything else before it's falling from grace, the note 8 isn't actually that much different from Samsung's other perfect big phone, the galaxy s, 8, plus still there's a couple of reasons why you might want to pony up a couple extra hundred dollars for a note 8 instead of a galaxy s, 8 plus.

So, let's dive in this is Samsung's biggest premium phone, and it comes with a massive 6.3 inch display, just like the SA and the s8 plus it's what Samsung calls an infinity display. So the screen stretches almost to the very edges of the phone's frame, with just a little of bezel above and below. The screen is everything you expect from the Samsung bright and punchy great to look at and the sheer size of it. Just sucks you in when you're watching a video, the no DS build quality is also just what you'd expect from a high-end Samsung phone, it's metal and glass with a premium fit and finish just like the s8, and also just like the SI, its ip68 water-resistant. So you can get it wet without having to worry about it, then the note 8 does have a slightly different shape, it's more square than the rounded off corners of the SI or is plus, which makes it easier to use the S Pen with, but it also makes the Note II feel a lot bigger than the is plus, even though the two are almost the same size.

Just like all the note phones before it. The note 8 makes no apologies for being a big phone, and if you want to compare it to the iPhone 7 plus, it's a little taller. A little narrower but has a way bigger screen the note aids big size also makes it even harder to hit the fingerprint scanner on the back of the phone, which is still super clumsy to use, and I've been using an SI plus for a couple of months in I've gotten used to the fingerprint scanners placement, but you can basically get used to anything. It would be a lot easier for everyone if Samsung would just put the scanner below the camera like every other phone does and, of course, there's a dedicated button to launch Samsung's, Bixby voice assistant and, of course it can't be reprogrammed to do something more useful, because Samsung has committed itself to blocking all the apps that come out to do so now. Inside the note 8 has Qualcomm snapdragon, 835 processors and Six Sigma bytes of RAM.

This is the same processor. It's found in the s8, but with 2 gigabytes, more RAM, you don't wanna, see I, haven't seen a noticeable performance difference between the two. Both are fast and smooth and really performance isn't an issue here. Likewise, the notates 3300 William hour battery is big enough to last most people through a full day without having to recharge. In practical terms, it gets me about the same battery life as I experienced with the is+, despite its slightly smaller capacity.

You've probably picked up on a theme here, there's not a lot different between the note 8 and the s8 plus. So let's talk about those two things that are different. The first is the notes. Signature features the S Pen Stylus. The note 8 is basically the only phone on the market that you can buy, that comes with a stylus and unless you take notes, mark up screenshots, doodle or just navigate the software with a finer point than your finger and note diehards love this thing and according to Samsung, the stylus is the main reason that no buyers stick with the phone.

The Galaxy Note 8 has gained a couple of new features. It's got a finer point and a little more pressure sensitivity than the stylus. That's shipped with the note 5 two years ago, Samsung has also improved the note-taking software, and you can now take longer notes on the phone screen without even unlocking it, which is pretty cool. Well, my favorite new feature is live messages which lets you draw pictures or write messages and convert them to animated gives, which you can send to people or post to social networks. It's kind of like the iMessage handwritten note feature, except you can post them anywhere that supports a gift.

The other big difference of the note e is it's new. Dual camera system has two 12 megapixel cameras, both with optical image stabilization. This lets you zoom in closer on your subject or more interestingly, take pictures with a blurred background, like you can do with the DSLR or mirrorless camera. The portrait mode is a lot like the iPhone 7, plus s outdoors and good light. It can produce some interesting effects, but indoors aren't poor lighting.

It looks pretty bad, and it never quite fooled me into thinking the picture was taken with a bigger camera. Furthermore, it kind of has this cardboard cutout effect, and it messes up things like fine detail and hair, which is pretty important for a portrait. Furthermore, it's basically not any worse, nor any better than the iPhone 7 plus as portrait mode. Both of these feel like first-generation attempts at something there's a lot of headroom for improvement in later iterations. The one thing that Samsung is doing differently is allowing you to adjust the blur before or after you take the picture.

So if the blur effect is too strong, you can roll it back. A little. I found the best results where, when I had the blur effect, dial just a tad back from its maximum, and since there are two cameras you can actually take both the wide-angle and telephoto images at the same time. So, if the portrait quality sucks, you can always fall back to the wide-angle camera, which has a much higher quality sensor and a better lens I feel like there's a little of a safety net, but honestly I'm glad it's there. Otherwise, the wide-angle camera is exactly the same as the one you get on the SI.

It's fast, focusing as a wide aperture and takes really lovely photos. It's one of the best cameras you can get on a phone this year. There was once a point in time when, if you wanted a big phone, the note was the obvious king of the hill. It had the biggest screen and the best specs and then didn't really matter if its price was a little higher than other phones, but now there's a lot of really great big phones on the market, including ones made by Samsung itself. That offer a lot of the same experience of the note at a lower price.

So it really comes down to two things. If you want the note, do you care about the camera and do you care about the S Pen Stylus, since I feel like the camera, could still use work to truly be great? It basically comes down to this little piece of plastic and how much value you get out of it. If you're an S Pen diehard go for it, you're going to love the note 8, but the rest of us will probably be just as happy with any of the other big flagship phones, YouTube. com, slash, The, Verge I, can't remember. If it's, I can't remember it's YouTube.

com, slash, Burke or slash. That's why I was asking there's your red card by the way. Even we just recorded.

Source : The Verge