- [Mr. Mobile] Last year's Galaxy Note 7 was perhaps
the most famous Samsung smartphone in history,
for all the wrong reasons.
The company kicked off its recovery
with the excellent Galaxy S8 earlier this year,
and now it hopes to complete the comeback
with the mobile world's biggest do over.
I'm Mr. Mobile.
And I spent an afternoon with the new Galaxy Note 8.
This is a first look.
Brought to you by dbrand.
(upbeat music)
If you expected a big shift in strategy this year,
you won't find it on the Note 8.
It's ever so slightly bigger than its sibling,
The Galaxy S8 Plus,
with the tighter radius corners on its 6.3 inch display
giving it a more boxy silhouette.
That display is the biggest in the current
Galaxy smartphone family by just a hair,
and thanks to the stretched aspect ratio
it's still manageable with one hand, kinda.
Samsung talked a lot about user habits
during the Note 8 brief.
The company's data tell it that Galaxy S8 Plus owners
spend 40 more minutes per day on their phones
than owners of the smaller S8.
And it also says that Galaxy Note owners
are 40% more likely to multitask on their phones.
So, the display hardware is, very likely,
the best Samsung has ever put in a phone.
Quad HD Plus Super Amoled Infinity Edges all accounted for.
And the software now let's you jump right into split-screen
multitasking with a two-for-one app shortcut,
which you needed third-party app to accomplish until now.
Naturally, none of this matters
if your phone falls asleep before you do.
And here's my first concern:
the battery in the Galaxy Note 8
clocks in at 3300 milliamp hours.
Now, that's 5% smaller than the power pack on the Note 7,
which I found to be barely enough to get me through a day
during the brief time I had it.
Now, the Note 8 should should see some
added power efficiency thanks to
its newer Snapdragon 835 processor,
at least here in the States,
and the Note 8 also carries the added bonus of
probably not blowing up in your face.
Samsung went to the trouble of securing
UL safety certification this time around,
and every battery it ships is also
subjected to the company's new eight point safety check.
So, I'm not concerned about this phone
becoming a danger to consumers,
but I am dismayed at the capacity reduction.
I'm old enough to remember a time
when the Note was the king of every major specification.
And in my view,
there's no more important spec than battery capacity.
So, why not just buy an S8 Plus and be done with it?
Three reasons.
First, don't forget about the S Pen,
stowed away in its special silo in the lower right.
While there are other phones with styluses,
none of them even come close
to the capabilities of this one.
There's always some new ridiculousness on the software side,
this year it's animated handwriting
that you can send as a GIF,
but for me the S Pen is most useful as a surrogate mouse
for tapping tiny touch targets.
And in a noteworthy feat of engineering,
the pen and the phone are IP 68, dust and water resistant,
whether the pen is stowed or deployed.
The other two reasons the Note stands apart from the S8 Plus
are located side-by-side on the back plate.
This is the first Samsung phone to ship
with dual primary cameras,
and it's the first phone anywhere, that I know of,
to include honest to goodness
optical stabilization on both of them.
That means those long-distance shots
you take with a telephoto lens
are less likely to look like they came from Mr. Blurrycam.
And the added depth information
that comes from using two cameras,
makes it possible to do that portrait shooting
that everyone's crazy for these days.
Personally, I wish Samsung had gone the LG route
and included the super-wide angle for the secondary camera
instead of the telephoto,
but the company is very clearly targeting
Apple consumers with the Note 8,
and there's no denying that the iPhone 7 Plus Portrait Mode
has scored Apple a lot of buzz.
I'll be interested to see how this dual camera system
fairs in the real world during my review.
That review period will also give me the chance
to answer some questions my brief hands-on could not.
In particular, I'm eager to see whether the software
suffers from the periodic sluggishness most Samsung
phones exhibit relative to competitors like the Pixel.
I'm excited to see if the six gigs of RAM help out
when the phone is plugged into its DeX Dock
and acting as a desktop computer standup.
And I'm interested to see if I can ever train myself
to avoid hitting the pic speed button
when I'm just trying to turn down the volume.
Yep, Samsung is still trying to make
its own digital assistant happen,
but given everything I've seen so far,
I don't exactly have high hopes.
The Note 8 is available for pre-order August 24,
with shipments beginning September 15th.
Pricing wasn't yet public
when this video hit the upload queue,
so I'll drop the deets in the comments
when they go official.
You can expect it to be expensive though.
And if you live in the US,
you won't be getting the fancy
maple gold or deep sea blue color options, not yet.
That means fingerprints galore on the midnight black,
and to a lesser extent the orchid gray models.
And speaking of,
that fingerprint sensor is still terribly placed,
off center on the back.
If you don't want to keep
smudging up your camera by accident
you'll want to stick to retina scanning,
or give your finger some extra guidance
with a premium vinyl skin from dbrand,
who've made this video possible.
Whether you're looking to save your Note 8
from a serious smudge fest
or help your fingers find that fingerprint sensor
dbrand can help with the best skins in the business
that also help your phone stand out.
Hit up the link in the description
and let me know what questions you want answered
in the full Galaxy Note 8 review.
Drop a comment or ping me on
Twitter or Facebook @themrmobile.
Until next time, thanks for watching
and stay mobile, my friends.