Galaxy Note 8 Adds Bigger Screen, Better Pen, Dual Cameras

Introducing its Galaxy Notation 8 today, Samsung emphasized the new features that will make the Note viii stand out in an increasingly crowded market, while acknowledging and trying to motility beyond the battery problems that led to the call back of last year's Note 7.

Samsung Mobile Communications Business President DJ Koh said the company will "never forget what happened last year" but expressed gratitude to the Note community for sticking with them.

This year'southward device takes nearly of the features from previous Notation phones and from the Galaxy S8 and S8+ phones introduced this spring, and puts them together in a new, somewhat larger packet with a few actress features, including a groovy-looking dual camera arrangement.

The device itself is somewhat larger than previous models at 162.v by 74.8 by eight.half dozen mm, in part so that it tin adapt a larger 6.3-inch Super AMOLED display at what Samsung calls Quad HD+ resolution (2960-past-1400, though the default is set to a 1080p width to save battery, again like the S8+). The screen looks great, pretty much just similar the S8, and has a xviii.5:ix ratio, making information technology long and narrow, like the S8. Considering of the "infinity display"—a curved brandish that wraps effectually the side of the phone, with about no bezel on the side and rather minor bezels on the peak and lesser—the phone isn't every bit wide as you lot might expect. I was surprised that it didn't feel all that much larger than the S8+.

I've been a big fan of large phones since the original Note came out 6 years ago. Non anybody likes large phones—PCMag'southward Sascha Segan and I have disagreed on this for years. I'm sure the width won't be a problem on this phone, but I'll try carrying i for a while to see if the height is an issue when in jeans' pockets.

The large screen is particularly skillful for multitasking, and I like a new feature that lets you set ii applications to go side-by-side when yous click on an icon on the border of the display.

Other than the large screen, the big defining feature of the Annotation series has been the "S-Pen," a stylus for drawing on the screen that hands fits within the device. This year's model doesn't look much different than concluding year's, and has the same theoretical 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity. Information technology remains great if y'all accept artistic talent or for writing in not-Western languages. It now offers a couple of new options that wait quite intriguing: the selection of writing on the screen when it is "off" and then yous tin can keep a to-practice list; and, more impressively, for selecting part of a web folio for automated translation.

The feature that got the nigh attending was called "Alive Bulletin," which captures your handwriting equally an animated GIF that yous tin can send via MMS or email—I doubt I'd use it much, but others might.

To me, the biggest improvement is the camera organisation. Samsung is the last of the big vendors to use two rear cameras instead of one, just its dual camera system looks quite proficient. Similar the LG G6, the Note 8 has both a wide-angle lens and a "telephoto" (2X optical) lines, both at 12 megapixels. Samsung did add together some important features such as including optical image stabilization for both cameras.

Samsung fabricated a big deal about what it calls "Live Focus" which uses the two cameras to produce a photo in which the subject of the photograph is in focus, while the background is out of focus. This isn't a new idea—Apple does a similar thing with the iPhone 7 Plus and I've been particularly impressed past the Huawei P10 in this regard. Live Focus lets you change the amount of background blur when you take the photo or after you've saved information technology, and in a quick test this seemed to work quite well when taking a moving-picture show of someone well-nigh three or iv feet away. It likewise should let yous salvage both the wide angle and telephoto photos taken at the same time.

In quick testing at the introduction event, the camera seemed to work quite well, with the wide-bending photographic camera taking most of the photos, and having a brighter F.17 aperture (and also having a slightly larger sensor). It also has an 8-megapixel front-facing camera for wide selfies, a characteristic I don't utilize much just that others practice.

On the hardware front, information technology appears to use the aforementioned processors as the S8 and S8+, which had the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 in U.Due south. models and the Samsung Exynos 8895—each are 10nm processors made by Samsung's foundry grouping. But the Annotation viii has 6GB of DRAM, compared with iv in the S8. The U.S. version has 64GB of flash storage (other models supposedly will have 128 and 256 available), plus support for a microSD bill of fare with additional storage. It has a 3300mAh bombardment, which is larger than the battery on the S8 merely not as large as the one that caused all the trouble on last yr's Note 7.

Samsung fabricated a large deal about how it has had features such as offering water resistance (IP68) and wireless charging (basically just touching the screen in a dock) for years, while other makers are just now rumored to be adding it. Not surprisingly, it didn't point out other areas where other vendors have been earlier- such as the dual rear camera fix.

On the software front, Samsung talked about its ain assistant Bixby and how it was getting new features, including the ability to set mutual phrases that set off a chain of events, such every bit taking a "food photo" or performing a change of settings when y'all are going to sleep.

The DeX docking capabilities look like they continue to improve as well, with more than software that takes advantage of the larger screen when it is plugged in to a dock; and then to a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. This was demoed with both the Zoom video conferencing software and with Adobe Lightroom.

Other features include the house's Knox security layer, and back up for a fingerprint reader, face recognition, and iris scanning. I proficient change from the S8 series is that the fingerprint reader is now positioned on the reverse side of the phone from the camera lens, and so you're less likely to smudge the lens every fourth dimension y'all endeavour to unlock the device.

Overall, the device looks nifty, and I'm really looking forward to getting a chance to try it out. For now, information technology looks like the acme-of-the-line smartphone in many ways—from the screen to the camera to the pen. Now the question is, can Samsung make people forget about last year'due south bombardment problems and move frontward? We will see.

For Sascha Segan's take, read his preview of the Milky way Note 8.

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Michael J. Miller is chief information officer at Ziff Brothers Investments, a private investment business firm. Miller, who was editor-in-master of PC Magazine from 1991 to 2005, authors this web log for PCMag.com to share his thoughts on PC-related products. No investment communication is offered in this blog. All duties are disclaimed. Miller works separately for a individual investment firm which may at any time invest in companies whose products are discussed in this blog, and no disclosure of securities transactions will be made.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/feature/17142/galaxy-note-8-adds-bigger-screen-better-pen-dual-cameras

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