Samsung Galaxy Note 8
Big, beautiful, bezel-less: the Galaxy Note 8 more than makes up for the Note 7’s premature demise
SCORE ✪✪✪✪✪ PRICE £690 (£828 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/278not
This time last year we were singing the praises of the fantastic, larger-than-life Galaxy Note 7. We awarded it top honours and, were it not for the small matter of a worldwide recall – following the emergence of a dangerous battery flaw – we’d probably still be recommending it now. The good news for phablet fans is that its successor, the Samsung Galaxy Note 8, is finally here. Samsung has fixed the battery problem, but that’s not the only improvement.
The first change is obvious as soon as you look at it: the Note 8 introduces a bezel-less design cribbed from the Galaxy S8. The screen is slightly larger at 6.3in across, and it dominates the entire front of the handset, with only the slimmest of strips at the top and the bottom of the screen to get in the way of your viewing pleasure.
It’s available in four colours, which Samsung has given rather silly names as usual: Midnight Black, Orchid Grey, Deep Sea Blue and Maple Gold. With similar predictability, Samsung employs its own Super AMOLED technology for incredibly deep black levels and vibrant colours. At this scale, it looks amazing: a 1,440 x 2,960 WQHD+ resolution equates to an impeccably sharp 522ppi.
Blazing screens
Last year, DisplayMate awarded the Samsung Galaxy S8’s display with the first-ever A+ grade and the Note 8’s screen is even better. DisplayMate says the screen on the Galaxy Note 8 is the best performing smartphone display it’s ever seen, awarding it the top grade. It performed just as well in our tests.
I measured maximum brightness at 331cd/m2 with auto-brightness disabled, which doesn’t sound all that impressive but is in line with what you’d expect from this type of display technology. Samsung phones have a trick up their sleeves when it comes to peak brightness, however, and go much brighter in auto-brightness mode. Here, the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 reached 514cd/m2 with the screen flooded in white pixels in bright ambient conditions and, when the screen is mostly dark, peak brightness rises even further. With a small patch of white displayed against a black background, I measured the screen at 991cd/m2.
The Galaxy S8, for reference, was able to reach 912cd/m2 in the same test, so this is an improvement of 9%. That’s phenomenal. It’s the brightest phone screen we’ve ever measured and it means it should be readable anytime, anywhere; even in the Sahara desert at midday in midsummer on a really hot day.
This is no one-trick pony of a screen, though. Further tests showed it was colour accurate and covered the sRGB colour gamut precisely – if you select the phone’s less in-your-face “Basic” colour profiles. If you stick to the default Adaptive mode, you’ll find it more pleasing to the eye, but some colours won’t reflect reality – important if you’re buying clothes online. Or paint.
“The first change is obvious: the Note 8 introduces a bezel-less design cribbed from the Samsung Galaxy S8”
Size-ist
If you found previous Note devices too large to pocket, be warned that the Note 8 is larger still, measuring 162.5 x 74.8mm versus the Note 7’s 153.5 x 73.9mm. It’s a bit thicker too, having swollen from 7.9mm to 8.6mm, and heavier at 195g. Despite its generous dimensions, it feels remarkably comfortable in the hand, with a design that tapers off at the sides and perfectly rounded edges that enable it to slide into a pocket without catching on the lining.
Other aspects of the Samsung Galaxy Note 8’s design are on par with the S8 and S8 Plus. There’s dust- and waterproofing to IP68, which means you can submerge it in up to 1.5m of water for up to 30 minutes. There’s also that rectangular panel at the rear housing the camera, flash, and the heart-rate and fingerprint sensors.
It’s a carbuncle and some people find the positioning of the fingerprint sensor right next to the camera irritating: it can be difficult to locate at first, and you run the risk of smearing the camera lens with your fingers. There’s also no dual-SIM capability, which in a phone that has every other feature known to mankind, is an
irritating omission. Those who travel frequently might want to bear this in mind.
Dual cameras
I have fewer complaints about the components housed in that ugly black panel: dual 12-megapixel cameras. This is hardly an original idea, but it’s a first for Samsung, and the company has gone to town with it, combining an f/1.7 wide-angle lens with an f/2.4 telephoto lens with up to 10x digital zoom, 2x optical zoom and optical image stabilisation on both.
As well as giving you a wider range of composition options, the two can create a simulated bokeh effect for lovely soft-focus backgrounds. Samsung calls this “Live Focus” and it produces much the same effect as the iPhone 8’s Portrait mode, the major difference being that here you can adjust the amount of blur both while taking the picture and in the gallery app, after you’ve taken the shot.
It’s a decent addition to the camera on the Galaxy S8 and the telephoto camera is a corker, producing shots that are both detailed and free from artefacts or noise. It isn’t as good in low light as the main f/1.7 snapper, producing slightly grainier pictures, but it’s a lot better than the OnePlus 5’s telephoto camera, which produces noisy snaps in marginal light.
The quality of the wide-angle camera is the same as with the regular S8 and S8 Plus, which is to say it’s still absolutely superb in all lighting conditions and only a smidge behind the Google Pixel.
I’m a huge fan of the Note 8’s video camera, too. It can, of course, capture in up to 4K resolution, but it’s the smoothness of the electronic stabilisation (EIS) that wins the day: footage looks like it’s come from a camera mounted on a Steadicam rig rather than a smartphone held in your hand.
For good measure, the front-facing camera has been upgraded from 5 to 7 megapixels, and the resulting shots are seriously impressive, packed with detail and decent colour, even in poor light.
Take note(s)
The Note 8’s third big improvement is less conspicuous, but still potentially useful. Samsung’s S Pen stylus – the handy pointing device that inspires the Note’s name – can now be used to jot things down even with the screen off, for the ultimate in quick-anddirty note-taking.
Handwriting and doodles can also now be automatically converted into text and emoji, and you can hover the S Pen over online text for translation and currency conversions, but the note-taking app still lacks the facility to record audio at the same time as your jottings.
Inside there are upgrades over the Note 7, although nothing particularly surprising. The CPU has been bumped up to the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor for US customers, while we Europeans get Samsung’s own Exynos 8895 – the same as inside the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus. RAM is up from 4GB to 6GB and, while storage remains at 64GB, the microSD slot hasn’t gone anywhere, so you can upgrade it to a total of 320GB.
It’s just as quick as its brethren as well ( see the graphs on p61). One interesting aspect of performance is that out of the box the phone is set to only render at FHD+ resolution (2,220 x 1,080), not the fully native WQHD+ (2,960 x 1,440).
This is a sensible move because it improves performance in games: it scored 42fps in the on-screen Manhattan test at WQHD+, but that jumped to 54fps at FHD+. Fewer pixels to light boosts battery life fractionally as well. That, and most people would never be able to tell the difference anyway. It’s slightly cheeky, however, that Samsung publicises the fact that the phone’s screen runs at a resolution of 2,960 x 1,440 when the default is so much lower.
I’m disappointed that the battery in the Note 8 has shrunk slightly compared to the Note 7: it’s now 3,300mAh compared to 3,500mAh. Hopefully, though, that will mean no flammability issues. And don’t think the reduced size means poor battery life: while it has slightly poorer stamina than the Galaxy S8 and the OnePlus 5, a time of 16hrs 38mins in our video rundown test is still strong.
Big decision
The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is a simply excellent smartphone, but then we expected no less. Samsung has taken the best plus-sized smartphone ever and made it even better with a slightly bigger display, a superb dual camera that sets a new standard for smartphones and an even better stylus implementation.
While battery life is slightly disappointing, the fattest fly in the ointment is the price. At £828 inc VAT SIM free from Amazon (£869 if you buy direct from Samsung), it’s a hefty investment – and you’ll get little change from £50 per month if you buy on contract. Good as it is, then, the Note 8 is a phone only for those who don’t care about the price and want the very best. For everyone else, there’s the 5.7in Samsung Galaxy S8 which is almost as good and now £300 cheaper. JONATHAN BRAY
SPECIFICATIONS Octa-core 2.3GHz/1.7GHz Samsung Exynos 8895 processor 6GB RAM Mali-G71 M20 ● ● graphics 6.3in AMOLED screen, 2,960 x ● 1,440 resolution 64GB storage microSD ● ● slot dual 12MP rear camera 8MP front ● ● camera 802.11ac Wi-Fi Bluetooth 5 NFC ● ● ● USB-C connector 3,300mAh battery ● ● ● Android 7 74.8 x 8.6 x 162.5mm (WDH) ● ● 195g 1yr warranty ●