Samsung Galaxy Note 8 Review

Bigger is better.

I don't upgrade my phone every year, in fact I pretty much refuse to. Unless you're enrolled in some sort of phone plan in which you have the choice of upgrading every year, it's a colossal waste of money when your phone from a couple years ago is probably still good to go... that is if you didn't drunkenly attempt to flush it down the toilet after a night of live streaming too many tequila shots. I'm in the ballpark of trying to squeeze the most of my needs out of my old device until it becomes so shit that I can barely use it, and that's going to reflect in this review since this phone is my current upgrade. However this phone is also the forefront to an arguably difficult comeback after a disastrous launch just the other year so the stakes are high. Say hello to the Galaxy Note 8.

Several generations of not having big enough pockets.

As I said this phone is the next in a long drawn out line of Samsung devices I've owned since I first got a smartphone and I can say right off the bat, this one feels like the most substantial upgrade out of them all. For the sake of this review I'll largely be comparing it to my three year old device, the venerable Galaxy Note 4 which I'll be honest, is still a very solid phone at this day and age. I was still highly debating replacing it even as I walked into T-Mobile to pick the Note 8 up. This thing was going to have to be something special to truly top "old reliable".

Samsung's weight loss program seems to be paying off.

So first of all, let's talk about the feel of the new phone. The Note 8, compared to the Note 4 has grown a bit in height but it's also gotten a bit skinnier. That being said, it's still true to it's roots of being one colossal phone. The unit has Gorilla Glass 5 front and back and it all looks very nice, although it's a bit slippery and does attract fingerprints like crazy. The glass construction honestly leaves me more paranoid to cosmetic damage despite it being built to withstand some punishment so I'll probably throw a case on it anyways. Better to be safe than sorry.

Don't lose the key. Like, seriously.

With the glass backed construction Samsung has been pursuing since the S6, you also lose the ability to swap out batteries which might be a big deal for some. I was a fan of the feature on the Note 4 but I've ultimately decided it wasn't entirely necessary for my uses now. Luckily the expandable up to 256 GB mircoSD card slot returns which explains why the phone only comes in a single 64 GB model.

Grandpa showing Junior some old tricks.

The phone now packs a 3300 mAh battery which is pretty piddly upgrade from the Note 4's 3220 mAh swappable pack and actually a bit worse than that of the S8+ at 3500 mAh. Thankfully the phone easily gets me though a whole 18 hour day of sporadic use under various loads. I typically just throw it on the charger overnight which from 0 to 100 percent, takes a little over an hour and a half on an adaptive fast charger which is pretty damn good.

"It's the future dammit! Why isn't everyone using it yet!? "-every company who adopted Type-C too early

The charging port has now been updated to USB Type-C which sounds great because "future-proof" but in reality it's more like: "Goddammit, time to buy new cables." Luckily Samsung included a smattering of adapters for the Type-C port which is a helpful touch. Being a generally average smartphone user, I don't know any specifics about the port nor do I really care, all I know is that it plugs into the phone no matter how it's flipped and that makes me happy. The mono speaker unit is now located on the bottom of the phone instead of the back. A welcome change since it's noticeably louder but it tends it get muffled more easily in that position.

"Courage" can suck on my S-Pen.

Samsung being the stubborn bunch they are decided to flip the bird to the idea of getting rid of the headphone jack, at least for now but hey that's great! Now people who don't want an extra device to remember to charge can enjoy aural pleasure without using a stupid dongle. I'll be honest though, I can't think of the last time I used a wired pair of headphones with my phone, and when I do it's usually not at the same time I'm charging it. Getting rid of the jack still seems a bit like a silly " change for the sake of change" idea but now it's gone from being outright annoying to acceptable. On the other hand the IR blaster from the Note 4 is gone, but did anybody really use their phone as their TV remote?

We're not saying you should do that, we're just saying you can do that.

If you recall from my Galaxy S5 review, I was willing to put that phone through the test of dropping it into a full sink and then like an idiot, I killed it attempting to use it in a six foot deep swimming pool. The S5 only had an IP67 ingress rating which is impressive considering it had a removable back, so the Note 8 with it's nearly fully sealed body should do better right? Yes it does, even by a little bit at IP68 which means 1.5 meters of fresh water for up to 30 minutes but it's still vulnerable to high pressure. So no, I think this will only hold up a little bit better than the S5 in the pool and it will be an even bigger pain in the ass to take apart for an effective rice bath. You thought I was going to test that again didn't you? Nope, not doing that again, but it will probably survive a toilet drop.

Looking a little too real there...

So let's talk about this screen, this colossal, oh so glorious Infinity Display. A whopping 6.3 inches of 522 ppi AMOLED goodness, that somewhat unfortunately isn't that much better than the display on the Note 4 in terms of pixel density and clarity, however the Note 8 display does support HDR. That being said, the massive screen real estate is a welcome change and Samsung gives you options to adjust the resolution to save power. The curved edges now come standard and while they are still undoubtedly gimmicky, on the Note 8 they have a nice subtle feel to them. Regardless, this probably the best screen on a smartphone I've ever used.

Lost? Swipe up.

One caveat of the Infinity Display though is you lose the physical control buttons on the bottom of the phone which some people may or may not like but I found it relatively easy to get used to. To access the control buttons, you just swipe up from the bottom of the display. Interestingly enough the phone appears to support pressure sensitivity as you actually can physically press the on screen home button and trigger a vibration similar to the iPhone 7 but I haven't seen it implemented any further. It's honestly one of those thing's I'd probably only use once or twice and forget it even exists after long enough.

Something isn't quite right here,

Another side effect of this is the fingerprint sensor is now on the back of the phone. It's a very good fingerprint sensor but it's slightly annoying when the device is flat on a desk. I don't work for Samsung obviously so I don't know how they engineered this thing but with the little strip of bezel left on the bottom of the device, you couldn't squeeze the sensor in there? You could just use face or iris detection instead and it seems to work pretty well most of the time but if you change your appearance such as wearing glasses, it struggles to pick you up plus you can't store multiple scans as far I know.

Doodle away.

Now we talk about the Note's signature feature, the S-Pen. It's largely unchanged from the previous models, hell you can even use the Note 1's pen on the Note 8 and vice versa but they made the pen a little bit more responsive to differences in pressure so light and heavy strokes transition a bit better. It's actually very handy for quick OneNote additions or even little sketches. I would totally appreciate if Samsung somehow incorporated a built in eraser function like on the Surface Pen but the more I think about it, what's the point? The S-Pen was originally intended to promote productivity but the reality was the majority of people never really use it. It's always been kind of a forgotten feature and most people probably wouldn't notice if Samsung were to get rid of it. Samsung added another neat feature that allows you to draw your own animated GIFs and send them to friends which makes it a bit more appealing to the social crowd and that's totally cool. The S-Pen might not have a lot of reasons to stick around but I'm glad it's still here.

Y u no be useful Bixby?

Also heavily showcased is Bixby which is a replacement for S-Voice, and it's kind of interesting and slightly underwhelming. Bixby is basically Samsung's in house answer to to Siri, Cortana, and Google Assistant and I'll just say right off the bat, like any of these other assistant AIs, I certainly expect Bixby to struggle this early in the game. Bixby get's it's own dedicated button and basically absorbs the Flipboard Briefing feature from the older phones whist adding a plethora of new functions. The coolest is arguably Bixby Vision which can detect objects and locations, even translate text. It's a bit spotty right now but I can only expect it to improve over time along with the rest of it's features. Alternatively you can disable the button altogether,  which mind you is located right across from the power button so it's rather easy to accidentally trigger sometimes. Samsung hasn't given you the ability to remap the button for other uses so I'm sure they're determined in improving Bixby so people will actually use it.

"All the better to see you with my dear!"

But the one thing that overshadows both Bixby and the S-Pen is the camera, or should I say cameras. Smartphone companies are finally ditching the trend of "more megapixels = more better" and if the iPhone is any indication, that whole mentality was bullshit. Now the name of the game is dual-camera units and the Note 8 delivers with two 12 MP sensors on the back and it's seriously the most elaborate smartphone camera I've ever used. Apart from the usual loadout of camera and video modes(all the way up to 4K at 30 FPS), along with a slow motion mode that no longer sucks, I immediately gravitated towards Pro mode which gives you access to as many fine tuning settings as the average DSLR, and boy oh boy do the results show.

Oh man.

This camera is truly top notch and it's produced some of the best photos and video I've ever taken on a phone. The low light performance has been significantly improved over the Note 4's 16 MP sensor and that was arguably the worst part about that camera along with the drastic reduction in quality when zooming, although zoom on a phone has never really been that fantastic as far I know. This camera tied with the iPhone 8 Plus at a score of 94 by DxOMark before they both got beat by the Pixel 2 at 98 but I'm just nitpicking here, this camera is superb. The 8 MP front camera is no slouch either and selfie shots look sharp and detailed, so Snapchat away. Oh and one more important thing: there's no camera bump contrary to what loads of the speculation jackasses were spouting out. No more flat surface wobble, a slightly insignificant detail but that's totally okay.

But will you need it?

Now, how good is it as a smartphone? I won't dwell on the specs of the phone because, let's face it; nobody really gives a shit. As expected though the Note 8 comes with proper monster specs: and 8-core Snapdragon 835, Adreno 540 graphics, and 6 GB of RAM. Will most people ever utilize, let alone outright notice this? Probably not unless you happen to be upgrading from a RAZR V3. The specs of this thing are indeed partly just showing off how much stuff you can cram under the hood of something less than a centimeter thick but they are still a significant step up from the Note 4.

Nougat. Do not eat.

The Note 8 ships with Android 7.0 Nougat from the factory and the typical improvements are abound although Samsung has had it tailored a bit to suit the Infinity Display. Compared to 6.0 Marshmallow on the Note 4, the UI feels familiar yet simplified down enough to be a bit more pleasant to use. You can swipe left from the curved edge to open up a series of useful panels and app drawer's button has been replaced by a upward swipe gesture for a few examples but Android being Android, you can re-enable it alongside a million other options to customize the phone to your exact specifications. Yes, Nougat's settings menu is still a nightmare to navigate but the search feature greatly takes the headache of finding what you need out. Overall performance feels smoother than on the Note 4 which is expected and I'm a fan of the new, more clean aesthetic of Nougat.

The Galaxy Note 8 is bar none the best smartphone I've ever used and a solid step up from the Note 4. It's massively powerful across the board with one of the best screens and camera units on the market. This phone is so crammed full of so many neat little features that as I mentioned earlier, it feels like the most substantial update to the Galaxy Note line since, ever to be honest. However it's not without some quirks; Bixby is pretty half baked at the moment, the lack of removable battery can be a deal breaker for some, the fingerprint sensor is in a slightly awkward spot, and it's not a Note if it's not absolutely ginormous.

Oh and don't forget the cost: $930 bucks for a phone that if I'm honest, despite it's world shattering capabilities, still isn't enough to make it an absolute must upgrade over the Note 4 for the average user. Yes I sound like a hypocrite but Samsung really did something right with that phone. It did everything I needed it to and the Note 8 is well, going to end up doing the exact same things. If you're in the market for a new device and want the latest and greatest, you can't go wrong with the Note 8. It's a fantastic phone, if not a little bit excessive. However, not just pertaining to Note 4 users but if you've got something that just works, and does everything you want it to, it doesn't hurt to hold off.

The Galaxy Note 8 currently costs $929.99.

Summary

• This thing is gorgeous, albeit covered in fingerprints.
• Android officially no longer sucks. Nougat is clean and fast on this overpowered hardware.
• The camera is seriously top notch.
• The Infinity Display is jaw droppingly massive and sharp.
• You get a headphone jack! And the S-Pen! And a slightly dumbfounded AI assistant!
• The removable battery is still very much long gone, and the fingerprint scanner is in an awkward spot.
• It's still massive. Like, really possibly inconveniently massive.
• It costs so much damn money!

Is it Better Than?

Samsung Galaxy S8+- Depends, you might think the S8+ is pretty well inferior to the Note 8 on all fronts due it being the supposed run of the mill model. The reality is the S8+ and the Note are very similar as far as features and power. The only things that greatly differ between the two phones are the lack of the S-Pen and the dual cameras. Other than that, the S8+ is still an excellent phone and can be had for nearly $200 bucks less than the Note 8.

Apple iPhone 8 Plus- Depends, the iPhone/Galaxy debate is honestly a pretty dubious one as both phones fill a relatively different role. Obviously with the iPhone you get refined constancy and damn near bulletproof security but it lacks the Note 8's vast array of customization options which depending on the user, you may not even need. Both phones pack on-par cameras although the hardware in the Note 8 is more powerful and Android almost feels just as smooth as iOS now. Also the iPhone famously lacks a headphone jack whereas the Note doesn't. Still, for people who want a no nonsense phone, this one fits the bill. The iPhone 8's biggest issue however is just how unexciting it is, those that want something truly new might want to hold out for the iPhone X.

Samsung Galaxy Note 4- Depends, I've said it before but yes, this three year old phone can still hold up against the new wave of juggernauts getting churned out this year. The Note 4 many get smoked by the 8 in terms of sheer power, but it's still no slouch either. The screen is great, the camera is still acceptable, and it the long loved feature of a swappable battery. Note 4's can be had for dirt cheap now and if you need a phone that gets the job and then some, this is a solid choice.