The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 Review: A Comprehensive Analysis

The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is an Android smartphone that was released in 2017 as a successor to the Note 7, which was infamous for its battery issues. However, the Note 8 has proven to be a reliable and high-performance device that offers several features that set it apart from other smartphones.

One of the standout features of the Galaxy Note 8 is its inclusion of an S-Pen stylus. This feature was not available on the S8 Plus, which made it a more attractive option for those who want to use a stylus with their phone. The S-Pen is a great tool for taking notes, creating art, and even using as a remote control for the phone's camera.

In addition to the S-Pen, the Galaxy Note 8 also features dual cameras that offer excellent image quality. These cameras are capable of capturing stunning photos and videos, and the phone's large screen makes it easy to review and edit them on the go. The camera app is also very user-friendly, with a range of modes and settings available for adjusting exposure, color balance, and more.

Another notable feature of the Galaxy Note 8 is its battery life. While it may not be as long-lasting as some other smartphones, the phone's 3300mAh battery still provides several hours of use on a single charge. This is especially useful for those who are always on the go or need to stay connected throughout the day.

The Galaxy Note 8 also features a large screen with a Quad HD+ display resolution. The screen is bright and vibrant, making it easy to see in various lighting conditions. However, some users have noted that the design of the phone's back can be a bit ugly, with an all-glass back that may not appeal to everyone.

In terms of performance, the Galaxy Note 8 is powered by a large 3000mAh battery and is equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor. This provides fast performance and smooth operation, making it easy to switch between apps and multitask. However, some users have noted that the phone can be a bit slow when running multiple apps at once.

The Galaxy Note 8 also features IP68 water resistance, which means it can withstand being submerged in water for short periods of time. This is especially useful for those who enjoy using their phone near water or in humid environments.

Overall, the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is a high-performance smartphone that offers several features that set it apart from other devices. While it may not be perfect, its inclusion of an S-Pen stylus, dual cameras, and large screen make it a great option for those who want a reliable and feature-rich phone.

The Shopping Cart: A Feature Review

One feature that the Galaxy Note 8 includes is live focus, which allows users to capture a blurred background with their photos. This feature works wonders in portrait mode, where it can create a beautiful bokeh effect with the subject. The standard lens also takes a backup photo just in case, which is much appreciated.

For those who want to test out this feature, there's a "Propst" setting that allows you to crop the image and see how well the camera does at stabilization. When using the wide-angle lens, it crops in the x2 setting and shows what exactly it can do. The results are pretty impressive, with the camera doing a good job of stabilizing the image.

However, battery life was unfortunately inconsistent for me during testing. I don't have a scientific method to prove how long the battery would last, but my usage patterns suggest that the phone could provide around 5-6 hours of screen time initially, but then drop down to around 4-3.5 hours after a few weeks of use. This may be due to various factors, such as Twitter browsing, YouTube watching, and messaging.

To mitigate this issue, users can consider using backup power solutions like the Anker PowerCore 20,000mAh battery pack. This device features two USB ports that come with PowerIQ 2.0 technology, which intelligently identifies your device and delivers the fastest possible charge. The Galaxy Note 8 supports Quick Charge 2.0, so it can expect to benefit from this fast charging capability.

The Studio: Testing the Galaxy Note 8

In the studio, I tested the Galaxy Note 8's image stabilization capabilities using the wide-angle lens. It did a pretty good job of stabilizing the image, and even allowed me to crop in by 2x and see what it could do. The results were impressive, and I was really happy with how well the camera performed.

To compare the Galaxy Note 8's performance with other devices, I pre-ordered my own phone (Note: This may not be the case when you read this article) as part of a review package. Comparing the specs, pros, and cons of both phones will provide an in-depth analysis of their respective features.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is an excellent smartphone that offers several features that set it apart from other devices. Its inclusion of an S-Pen stylus, dual cameras, and large screen make it a great option for those who want a reliable and feature-rich phone. While battery life may be inconsistent, the phone's fast charging capabilities and backup power solutions can help mitigate this issue.

Overall, I would highly recommend the Galaxy Note 8 to anyone looking for a high-performance smartphone that offers a range of features and benefits.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso it's been six weeks since I got myhands on the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 andjust like every other smartphone reviewI swapped my sim card from my previousdevice which was the Moto Z to play andif you haven't watched our review youcan check it out right over here butyeah I swapped the sim card from thatdevice to the note 8 and tested it outthoroughly to see what sort of animprovement does it bring to the tablewhen compared to the Galaxy S8 pluswhich fortunately I was also able toreview so I'll be talking about thedesign the screen s-pen bigsby yes Iwill be talking about bixby are thecameras software experience performanceand battery life so feel free to grab acup of coffee and enjoy the rest of thevideo but first a quick message from oursponsor creativity is fueled by the bestinstruments it doesn't always come easyand in the process you often realize howimportant quality is the Rd 400 by OCCgives you quality and speed with M de tuinterface the Shiban and flash and a PCIbracket making it possible to focus onwhat mattersinvest in storage that makes adifference with a 5 year advancedwarranty let's be honest here for asecond Samsung grabbed everyone'sattention when they announced the galaxyS8 and the S8 plus it was a revolutionarystep in modern smartphone engineering infact the competition started to catch upwith that design language a good exampleof that would be the new iPhone X or theiPhone 10 anyways the note 8 shares asimilar DNA from its younger siblingsand that's not a bad thingin fact we all knew it was going toresemble the S8 plus in some way and itkind of is except for that slightlysharper edges which by the way enhancesthe grip a little bit over the S8 plusthe front and the back are covered inGorilla Glass 5 and you know what I'mtired of complaining about glass backson smartphone these days because it isan annoying factor to considerespecially when you're purchasing asmartphone and it really questions thedurability especially since you knowit's so much prone to cracks and ofcourse it picks up grease and smudges itreally is annoying but I guess a quickfix to this would be to pick up a skina case for added protection but thatagain is another investment on top ofthe one thousand dollar price tag forthis device now there isn't a lot totalk about the display on the note 8 itresembles the exact same screen to bodyratio as galaxy S8 plus with that edgeto edge design it spends at six pointthree inches which is just point oneinches bigger than the S8 plus so Ididn't notice a significant differencewhile using this device it's got thesame 29 60 by 1440 resolution AMOLEDtechnology that produces colors that aresuper vibrant with deeper blacks but Iprefer something a bit more natural likewhat IPS LCD panels offer like somethingyou know found on the LG G six althoughjust like the s8 in the S8 plus Samsungdoes include options for different colorprofiles I ended up choosing the basicmode so the end user does have somecontrol as to how they'd like to viewcontent speaking of watching content Ireally enjoyed my time with a node 8watching YouTube videos and catching upon a few TV shows on Netflix do notethat native 16 by 9 videos exhibit theseblack bars around the edges which mightbe concerning for some of you out therebut given the fantastic black levelsproduced by the AMOLED panel you won'tnotice it in darker environments itseriously pitch black Samsung hasimplemented a cropped to fit featurethat pops up every time when you startwatching a video in full-screen modethis essentially crops the video inorder to fit the entire screen whichthen eliminates the black bars but theproblem is that it crops the video whichcuts the detail at the top in the bottomso I would recommend staying away fromthis feature however native 21 by 9content spans across the entire screenautomatically and it's seriouslybreathtaking to watch videos in thatformat and you know what it's actuallynot that different from the galaxy S8and the S8 Plus both of those phonesresemble the exact same features I justmentioned so if you own either of thosedevices it's a similar experiencewith every purchase of the note 8 theuser receives a pair of headphones tunedby AKG it also comes with 3 months ofGoogle Play Music so that's prettyawesome let's talk about s-pen becauseit's what defines 2 Note 8 from the restof the galaxy phones when you date backto the original Note smartphone theAspen was Samsung's key selling featureand people loved it it's a great tool toenhance productivity if you're someonewho's constantly working on the go surea laptop or tablet can get the job donebut if you physically need to interactwith confidential documents and in somecases sign them this guy can definitelycome in handySamsung has pre-loaded some awesometools that users can take advantage ofwhen they start using the s-pen forinstance when you pull out the pen whenthe phone is idle you can quickly jotdown anything you'd like whether that'syour grocery list to-do lists etc andwhen you insert the pen backit saves the memo to the notes tab andthe phone turns off automaticallyyou can also take a screenshot and startwriting on it immediately if you want toemphasize things and quickly share it toanyoneI've used this a lot while communicatingwith in team members there's a smartselect tool that allows you to select acertain portion of an image and extractthe text from that image which I thoughtwas pretty awesome and I've used it afew times to extract tracking numbersbecause I receive a lot of packages herein the studio if you want to get alittle creative with messaging there isa live message feature that can be usedto create animated texts which thensaves as a Jif or gif anyways thetranslate tool basically translateswords phrases or sentences betweenEnglish and other languages which arelimited by the way all you have to do isjust hover the S pin around the text andit'll work its magic just fine I can seemyself using this feature whiletraveling so that's pretty awesome youcan also add shortcuts to apps andcustomize it the way you like and Ithink these are some of the things thatyou'll be missing with the Galaxy s8 onthe s8 plus or even any other smartphoneso I'd like to hear your thoughts on thes-pen and the features that it offersplus do you see yourself using thesefeatures on a regular basis if youdecide to go for the note 8 let meknow in the comments down belownext up Bix P and interestingly enough Idecided to give it a chance after myterrible experience with the S8 plus ithas definitely maturedover time and I noticed that right awayafter I started using voice commands toperform a few actions like calculatingsomething sending a message which kindof works now talk about that a momentopening up recent photos making a phonecalletc you know but I thought to myselfgoogle assistant does the exact samething in a much more simplified mannerand it's a lot faster than bixby a goodexample of that would be if I want tosend a message to someone on whatsappbigsby literally opens the app finds thecontact and it struggles to compose themessage so that I found to be was alittle odd it works sometimes but inother cases it just fails completelywhereas with Google assistant it createsthis unique UI and composes the messageinstantly and it requests your approvalthat's a lot faster than bixby and Iprefer that and I guess part of that hasto do with the maturity of Googleassistant over the past few yearsbecause big speed was just recentlyannounced with the s8 and the si+ soit's still catching up to that level butI would much rather prefer Googleassistant and I'm glad that we have twooptions on the note 8 Google assistantand Bigsby so ultimately you can chooseyour own personal voice assistant nowrecently Samsung did roll out an updatewhere a users of the note 8 canphysically disabled the Bigsby buttonwhich still doesn't make any sense to mehonestly now there are third-partyapplications that can remap the Bigsbybutton for instance I've downloaded thisbig speed button remap her app thatessentially lets you assign variousfunctions including the ability tolaunch the camera app Google assistanttoggle the flashlight and much more youjust need to make sure that you'veenabled the base B button within the bigspeech settings in order for the app totake control however it's a little bitbuggy so I've assigned this button totoggle the vibrate mode so when I pressthat it opens the Bigsby app for asecond and then activates the vibratemode not a big deal to be honest but dotake note of that you also have toremember that if Samsung rolls out anupdate in the near future thisthird-party application would turn intono good use performance was rock-solidthroughout my testing period I've gotthe model with the Exynos 88-90 vocta-core CPU clocked at 2.3 gigahertzwith 6 gigabytes of RAM and it blazedthrough multitasking I guess it is anexpectation to implement high-end specson a flagship smartphone that costs$1000 so if you need the absolutefastest Android phoneon the planet the note 8 won'tdisappoint but just be aware thatSamsung smartphones have been well knownto slow down over time now over thecourse of my testing period I haven'texperienced any weird app crashes orjust slowdowns in general but that couldchange so take note of that now ifyou're an existing S8 or an S8 plusowner how was the performance holding upas of right now you know are youexperiencing slowdowns app crashes weirdbugs and have you received updates overtime that sort of improves the stabilityof the Android or the phone in generallet me know in the comments down belownow for storage the note 8 only comes inone capacity and that's 64 gigabytes itis expandable via microSD so that's apositive thing and I appreciate thatbecause some other phones haven'timplemented that feature Google I'mlooking at you pixel to excel what's thedeal with that anyway so the softwareexperience out of the box is prettyclean I'll be if Samsung has pre-loadedtheir own set of apps which some of themcan be uninstalled this could varydepending on where you get your deviceif you get it through a carrier you cancertainly expect a lot more bloatware sokeep that in mind I prefer a morecleaner and subtle look on Android andjust like every other smartphone I wasable to customize it to my liking and Iwas pretty happy with the end result thesame applies to the s8 in the s8 plus oreven any other smartphone you cancustomize it to the way you like andthat's awesomewhy Dmitri he actually uses an iPhone soif that's something that you werewondering yeah now in terms of softwareupdates Samsung phones are typicallyslower to receive them unlike Googledevices as we're making this video andcurrently rockin version 7.1.1 andawaiting the oreo update we shouldexpect that sometime later hopefully bythe end of the year and i guess that'sone of the downsides with samsungsmartphones they're just very late whenit comes to updating the operatingsystem fixing bugs --is and whatnotactually LG is the worst my g6 is stillrockin android 7.0 so I guess with rodwith with in that regards Samsung'sprobably a lot of superior than LG butdefinitely not over Google okay herecomes my favorite feature off the GalaxyNote 8 the cameras and let me tell youthis before I move into the results ifyou're looking for a smart phone for thebest camera and versatility the GalaxyNote 8 is my best pick i've never beenthis impressed with theirelse coming out of the smartphone guyslet me walk you through what exactly isgoing on so the node a features two 12megapixel sensors that vary in focallengths the standard lens comes at 26millimeters with an F 1.7 aperture andthe telephoto lens comes at 52millimeters with an F 2.4 aperture bothof them are optically stabilized so itshould play out really well withlow-light photography and video speakingof which both sensors can shoot up to 4kat 30 frames per second 240 frames persecond at 720p and 120 frames per secondin 1080 I left all the settings in automode with HDR turned on and the resultswere absolutely stunning there'sfantastic dynamic range and the sensordoes a really good job exposing thehighlights but at the same time alsomaintaining the detail in the shadowstake this picture for instance this wastaken with the telephoto lens and it'simmaculate here are a few more samplesnow just like the newer iPhones the 1+5or any other smartphone that featuresthe portrait mode that takes advantagesof dual lenses Samsung has implementedtheir own live focus feature thatbasically takes portrait like picturesand it works pretty wellyou'd have to maintain a certaindistance to take it into full effectonce you capture say a subject and youhave the option to adjust the backgroundblur which is just lighter I'm glad thatit doesn't over process the image plusit does a really good job isolating theedges from the background although itcan get very tricky to get with extremelow-light conditions and evencomplicated objects like the shoppingcart for instance I was unsuccessfulwith that so be aware of yourlimitations but honestly for portraitsthis feature works wonders in fact everytime when you take live focus picturethe standard lens takes a backup photojust in case so that's much appreciatedall right guys so I'm gonna pre busyenvironment here I'm just walking aroundto see how well the camera does a goodjob with 4k image stabilization I'musing the wide-angle lens so I'm gonnacrop in so if I hit the x2 it's gonnacrop in and show you what exactly itdoes Propst and then there's a prettygood job with stabilization I'm reallyimpressed with what what it can dobattery life was unfortunatelyinconsistent for me and I think part ofthat had to do with my usage I don'thave a scientific method to prove howlong this would last but for the firstfew weeks I was getting roughly five tofive and a half hours of screen on timebut a few weeks after I was only gettingabout four hours and in some cases threeand a half not really sure why this isthe case and just to let you know -which involves checking Twitter browsingthe web watching YouTube videos andmessaging the normal drill if you're anexisting note 8 owner feel free to letus know your thoughts on battery life inthe comments down below and if you're astudent or someone who's constantlytraveling you may not be satisfied witha battery life on the note 8 and did youknow that the battery capacity and thenote 8 is actually smaller than the s 8plus and we're talking roughly 200million powers either way you can alwaysrely on backup power solutions like thisanchor Power Core to 20,000 milliamphour battery it features two USB portsthat comes with the power IQ 2.0technology that intelligently identifiesyour device to deliver the fastestpossible charge and given that the note8 supports quick charge 2.0 you canexpect these same fast chargingcapabilities but now without having torely on a power outlet every time sothat's awesomeok so I think it's about time to wrap upthis review the Galaxy Note 8 isSamsung's best Android smartphone as of2017 it's basically an S8 plus with theinclusion of s-pen and the dual camerasI don't see any other features thatseems outstanding compared to those toother phones because I was fortunateenough to test out the S8 plus now ifyou see yourself using the s-pen on aregular basis and especially takingadvantage of those features that Imentioned above you should consider thenote 8 it's honestly a seamlessexperience just having a s pen in handpretty much all the time it's insidethat it's it's literally inside thesmart phone if you need it you can justget it out and you can start doing yourthing which is great the dual camerasare absolutely fantastic I don't thinkthere are any other smartphones as ofright now that could compete with a note8 perhaps the pixel to excel could givethe note 8 a run for its money I neverknow I actually pre-ordered my time soI'm still waiting for that to get herein the studio so hopefully I'll be ableto do a comparison between the camerassometime in the near future but ifactually interested in a quickcomparison between those two devices youcheck it out right over here I quicklygo over the specs the pros and the consof both devices let's be honest here fora second there is no such thing as aperfect smartphone with the Galaxy Note8 some of the Cork's are obviously thedesign this is my personal opinion Idon't like an all-glass back thefingerprint sensor location isabsolutely horrible just like the siplus the software is oh right I wish itwas running Google's stock Android butthat's that's I can only ask for so muchand hopefully you know they'll update itover time perhaps as performance wouldactually stay up to date probably forthe next couple years because this is anexpensive investment you want to investon a smart phone that will last you fora relatively long time and hopefully wewon't experience that with a note 8especially with the slowdowns that we'veexperienced with previous Samsungdevices with that being said I'd like tohear your thoughts on the Samsung GalaxyNote 8 what do you guys think of thisdevice is it really worth a thousanddollars are you willing to spend thatamount of money for an all-roundersmartphone given the Cork's that youhave to work around with let me know thecomments down below I'm Eva with HarukaKnox thank you so much for watching makesure to subscribe for most of ourcontent and we'll see you in the nextone\n"