so it's been six weeks since I got my hands on the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 and
just like every other smartphone review I swapped my sim card from my previous
device which was the Moto Z to play and if you haven't watched our review you
can check it out right over here but yeah I swapped the sim card from that
device to the note 8 and tested it out thoroughly to see what sort of an
improvement does it bring to the table when compared to the Galaxy S8 plus
which fortunately I was also able to review so I'll be talking about the
design the screen s-pen bigsby yes I will be talking about bixby are the
cameras software experience performance and battery life so feel free to grab a
cup of coffee and enjoy the rest of the video but first a quick message from our
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invest in storage that makes a difference with a 5 year advanced
warranty let's be honest here for a second Samsung grabbed everyone's
attention when they announced the galaxy S8 and the S8 plus it was a revolutionary
step in modern smartphone engineering in fact the competition started to catch up
with that design language a good example of that would be the new iPhone X or the
iPhone 10 anyways the note 8 shares a similar DNA from its younger siblings
and that's not a bad thing in fact we all knew it was going to
resemble the S8 plus in some way and it kind of is except for that slightly
sharper edges which by the way enhances the grip a little bit over the S8 plus
the front and the back are covered in Gorilla Glass 5 and you know what I'm
tired of complaining about glass backs on smartphone these days because it is
an annoying factor to consider especially when you're purchasing a
smartphone and it really questions the durability especially since you know
it's so much prone to cracks and of course it picks up grease and smudges it
really is annoying but I guess a quick fix to this would be to pick up a skin
a case for added protection but that again is another investment on top of
the one thousand dollar price tag for this device now there isn't a lot to
talk about the display on the note 8 it resembles the exact same screen to body
ratio as galaxy S8 plus with that edge to edge design it spends at six point
three inches which is just point one inches bigger than the S8 plus so I
didn't notice a significant difference while using this device it's got the
same 29 60 by 1440 resolution AMOLED technology that produces colors that are
super vibrant with deeper blacks but I prefer something a bit more natural like
what IPS LCD panels offer like something you know found on the LG G six although
just like the s8 in the S8 plus Samsung does include options for different color
profiles I ended up choosing the basic mode so the end user does have some
control as to how they'd like to view content speaking of watching content I
really enjoyed my time with a node 8 watching YouTube videos and catching up
on a few TV shows on Netflix do note that native 16 by 9 videos exhibit these
black bars around the edges which might be concerning for some of you out there
but given the fantastic black levels produced by the AMOLED panel you won't
notice it in darker environments it seriously pitch black Samsung has
implemented a cropped to fit feature that pops up every time when you start
watching a video in full-screen mode this essentially crops the video in
order to fit the entire screen which then eliminates the black bars but the
problem is that it crops the video which cuts the detail at the top in the bottom
so I would recommend staying away from this feature however native 21 by 9
content spans across the entire screen automatically and it's seriously
breathtaking to watch videos in that format and you know what it's actually
not that different from the galaxy S8 and the S8 Plus both of those phones
resemble the exact same features I just mentioned so if you own either of those
devices it's a similar experience
with every purchase of the note 8 the user receives a pair of headphones tuned
by AKG it also comes with 3 months of Google Play Music so that's pretty
awesome let's talk about s-pen because it's what defines 2 Note 8 from the rest
of the galaxy phones when you date back to the original Note smartphone the
Aspen was Samsung's key selling feature and people loved it it's a great tool to
enhance productivity if you're someone who's constantly working on the go sure
a laptop or tablet can get the job done but if you physically need to interact
with confidential documents and in some cases sign them this guy can definitely
come in handy Samsung has pre-loaded some awesome
tools that users can take advantage of when they start using the s-pen for
instance when you pull out the pen when the phone is idle you can quickly jot
down anything you'd like whether that's your grocery list to-do lists etc and
when you insert the pen back it saves the memo to the notes tab and
the phone turns off automatically you can also take a screenshot and start
writing on it immediately if you want to emphasize things and quickly share it to
anyone I've used this a lot while communicating
with in team members there's a smart select tool that allows you to select a
certain portion of an image and extract the text from that image which I thought
was pretty awesome and I've used it a few times to extract tracking numbers
because I receive a lot of packages here in the studio if you want to get a
little creative with messaging there is a live message feature that can be used
to create animated texts which then saves as a Jif or gif anyways the
translate tool basically translates words phrases or sentences between
English and other languages which are limited by the way all you have to do is
just hover the S pin around the text and it'll work its magic just fine I can see
myself using this feature while traveling so that's pretty awesome you
can also add shortcuts to apps and customize it the way you like and I
think these are some of the things that you'll be missing with the Galaxy s8 on
the s8 plus or even any other smartphone so I'd like to hear your thoughts on the
s-pen and the features that it offers plus do you see yourself using these
features on a regular basis if you decide to go for the note 8 let me
know in the comments down below next up Bix P and interestingly enough I
decided to give it a chance after my terrible experience with the S8 plus it
has definitely matured over time and I noticed that right away
after I started using voice commands to perform a few actions like calculating
something sending a message which kind of works now talk about that a moment
opening up recent photos making a phone call
etc you know but I thought to myself google assistant does the exact same
thing in a much more simplified manner and it's a lot faster than bixby a good
example of that would be if I want to send a message to someone on whatsapp
bigsby literally opens the app finds the contact and it struggles to compose the
message so that I found to be was a little odd it works sometimes but in
other cases it just fails completely whereas with Google assistant it creates
this unique UI and composes the message instantly and it requests your approval
that's a lot faster than bixby and I prefer that and I guess part of that has
to do with the maturity of Google assistant over the past few years
because big speed was just recently announced with the s8 and the si+ so
it's still catching up to that level but I would much rather prefer Google
assistant and I'm glad that we have two options on the note 8 Google assistant
and Bigsby so ultimately you can choose your own personal voice assistant now
recently Samsung did roll out an update where a users of the note 8 can
physically disabled the Bigsby button which still doesn't make any sense to me
honestly now there are third-party applications that can remap the Bigsby
button for instance I've downloaded this big speed button remap her app that
essentially lets you assign various functions including the ability to
launch the camera app Google assistant toggle the flashlight and much more you
just need to make sure that you've enabled the base B button within the big
speech settings in order for the app to take control however it's a little bit
buggy so I've assigned this button to toggle the vibrate mode so when I press
that it opens the Bigsby app for a second and then activates the vibrate
mode not a big deal to be honest but do take note of that you also have to
remember that if Samsung rolls out an update in the near future this
third-party application would turn into no good use performance was rock-solid
throughout my testing period I've got the model with the Exynos 88-90 v
octa-core CPU clocked at 2.3 gigahertz with 6 gigabytes of RAM and it blazed
through multitasking I guess it is an expectation to implement high-end specs
on a flagship smartphone that costs $1000 so if you need the absolute
fastest Android phone on the planet the note 8 won't
disappoint but just be aware that Samsung smartphones have been well known
to slow down over time now over the course of my testing period I haven't
experienced any weird app crashes or just slowdowns in general but that could
change so take note of that now if you're an existing S8 or an S8 plus
owner how was the performance holding up as of right now you know are you
experiencing slowdowns app crashes weird bugs and have you received updates over
time that sort of improves the stability of the Android or the phone in general
let me know in the comments down below now for storage the note 8 only comes in
one capacity and that's 64 gigabytes it is expandable via microSD so that's a
positive thing and I appreciate that because some other phones haven't
implemented that feature Google I'm looking at you pixel to excel what's the
deal with that anyway so the software experience out of the box is pretty
clean I'll be if Samsung has pre-loaded their own set of apps which some of them
can be uninstalled this could vary depending on where you get your device
if you get it through a carrier you can certainly expect a lot more bloatware so
keep that in mind I prefer a more cleaner and subtle look on Android and
just like every other smartphone I was able to customize it to my liking and I
was pretty happy with the end result the same applies to the s8 in the s8 plus or
even any other smartphone you can customize it to the way you like and
that's awesome why Dmitri he actually uses an iPhone so
if that's something that you were wondering yeah now in terms of software
updates Samsung phones are typically slower to receive them unlike Google
devices as we're making this video and currently rockin version 7.1.1 and
awaiting the oreo update we should expect that sometime later hopefully by
the end of the year and i guess that's one of the downsides with samsung
smartphones they're just very late when it comes to updating the operating
system fixing bugs --is and whatnot actually LG is the worst my g6 is still
rockin android 7.0 so I guess with rod with with in that regards Samsung's
probably a lot of superior than LG but definitely not over Google okay here
comes my favorite feature off the Galaxy Note 8 the cameras and let me tell you
this before I move into the results if you're looking for a smart phone for the
best camera and versatility the Galaxy Note 8 is my best pick i've never been
this impressed with their else coming out of the smartphone guys
let me walk you through what exactly is going on so the node a features two 12
megapixel sensors that vary in focal lengths the standard lens comes at 26
millimeters with an F 1.7 aperture and the telephoto lens comes at 52
millimeters with an F 2.4 aperture both of them are optically stabilized so it
should play out really well with low-light photography and video speaking
of which both sensors can shoot up to 4k at 30 frames per second 240 frames per
second at 720p and 120 frames per second in 1080 I left all the settings in auto
mode with HDR turned on and the results were absolutely stunning there's
fantastic dynamic range and the sensor does a really good job exposing the
highlights but at the same time also maintaining the detail in the shadows
take this picture for instance this was taken with the telephoto lens and it's
immaculate here are a few more samples
now just like the newer iPhones the 1+5 or any other smartphone that features
the portrait mode that takes advantages of dual lenses Samsung has implemented
their own live focus feature that basically takes portrait like pictures
and it works pretty well you'd have to maintain a certain
distance to take it into full effect once you capture say a subject and you
have the option to adjust the background blur which is just lighter I'm glad that
it doesn't over process the image plus it does a really good job isolating the
edges from the background although it can get very tricky to get with extreme
low-light conditions and even complicated objects like the shopping
cart for instance I was unsuccessful with that so be aware of your
limitations but honestly for portraits this feature works wonders in fact every
time when you take live focus picture the standard lens takes a backup photo
just in case so that's much appreciated all right guys so I'm gonna pre busy
environment here I'm just walking around to see how well the camera does a good
job with 4k image stabilization I'm using the wide-angle lens so I'm gonna
crop in so if I hit the x2 it's gonna crop in and show you what exactly it
does Propst and then there's a pretty good job with stabilization I'm really
impressed with what what it can do
battery life was unfortunately inconsistent for me and I think part of
that had to do with my usage I don't have a scientific method to prove how
long this would last but for the first few weeks I was getting roughly five to
five and a half hours of screen on time but a few weeks after I was only getting
about four hours and in some cases three and a half not really sure why this is
the case and just to let you know - which involves checking Twitter browsing
the web watching YouTube videos and messaging the normal drill if you're an
existing note 8 owner feel free to let us know your thoughts on battery life in
the comments down below and if you're a student or someone who's constantly
traveling you may not be satisfied with a battery life on the note 8 and did you
know that the battery capacity and the note 8 is actually smaller than the s 8
plus and we're talking roughly 200 million powers either way you can always
rely on backup power solutions like this anchor Power Core to 20,000 milliamp
hour battery it features two USB ports that comes with the power IQ 2.0
technology that intelligently identifies your device to deliver the fastest
possible charge and given that the note 8 supports quick charge 2.0 you can
expect these same fast charging capabilities but now without having to
rely on a power outlet every time so that's awesome
ok so I think it's about time to wrap up this review the Galaxy Note 8 is
Samsung's best Android smartphone as of 2017 it's basically an S8 plus with the
inclusion of s-pen and the dual cameras I don't see any other features that
seems outstanding compared to those to other phones because I was fortunate
enough to test out the S8 plus now if you see yourself using the s-pen on a
regular basis and especially taking advantage of those features that I
mentioned above you should consider the note 8 it's honestly a seamless
experience just having a s pen in hand pretty much all the time it's inside
that it's it's literally inside the smart phone if you need it you can just
get it out and you can start doing your thing which is great the dual cameras
are absolutely fantastic I don't think there are any other smartphones as of
right now that could compete with a note 8 perhaps the pixel to excel could give
the note 8 a run for its money I never know I actually pre-ordered my time so
I'm still waiting for that to get here in the studio so hopefully I'll be able
to do a comparison between the cameras sometime in the near future but if
actually interested in a quick comparison between those two devices you
check it out right over here I quickly go over the specs the pros and the cons
of both devices let's be honest here for a second there is no such thing as a
perfect smartphone with the Galaxy Note 8 some of the Cork's are obviously the
design this is my personal opinion I don't like an all-glass back the
fingerprint sensor location is absolutely horrible just like the si
plus the software is oh right I wish it was running Google's stock Android but
that's that's I can only ask for so much and hopefully you know they'll update it
over time perhaps as performance would actually stay up to date probably for
the next couple years because this is an expensive investment you want to invest
on a smart phone that will last you for a relatively long time and hopefully we
won't experience that with a note 8 especially with the slowdowns that we've
experienced with previous Samsung devices with that being said I'd like to
hear your thoughts on the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 what do you guys think of this
device is it really worth a thousand dollars are you willing to spend that
amount of money for an all-rounder smartphone given the Cork's that you
have to work around with let me know the comments down below I'm Eva with Haruka
Knox thank you so much for watching make sure to subscribe for most of our
content and we'll see you in the next one