Note 8 a sharp phone with few surprises
Samsung says it has learned from Note 7 ‘ stumbles,’ and it shows in new phone
Samsung wants to give customers another reason to love the Note.
On Wednesday, the South Korean electronics giant introduced the Galaxy Note 8, its latest flagship Note device and the successor to last year’s ill- fated and combustible Galaxy Note 7 smartphone.
And yes, Samsung says this year’s version will not blow up. Beyond putting the device through its own eight- point safety check process, the company is partnering with UL, an independent safety science company, to ensure its batteries are safe.
That said, the Note 8 is beautifully designed, comes with now- standard premium Galaxy features such as water resistance and throws in some new ones, such as two rear cameras.
But whereas past Note devices heralded futuristic ideas not otherwise common in the smartphone marketplace — from larger phablet displays and curved screens to iris and facial scanning — the Note 8 seems to be a slight refinement on what has worked for Samsung with the S8 line.
Samsung will start taking preorders Thursday and sell the phone Sept. 15 via its website and at all four major wireless carriers. It will cost $ 930 at T- Mobile, $ 950 at AT& T and $ 960 at Verizon and Sprint.
The phone’s sharp 6.3- inch Super AMOLED Quad HD edge- to- edge display looks vivid and crisp, an improved S- Pen stylus offers greater pressure sensitivity and a new set of dual, optical image- stabilized 12- megapixel rear cameras allow for sharper pictures and greater close- ups ( including a souped- up portrait mode that will allow you to control how blurred you want background subjects to appear, even after you take the picture).
It also comes packed with high- end Galaxy features including fast wireless charging, water and dust resistance, fingerprint, iris and facial recognition, 64GB of storage plus a speedy Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor with 6GB of RAM.
The Note 8 keeps the regular 3.5mm headphone jack so you’re not tied to only using Bluetooth headphones.
Support for Samsung’s Gear VR virtual reality system is also here, though you will need to buy a new headset designed for the Note 8 to take advantage of this feature ( the Galaxy S8’ s headset will not work with the Note 8).
All told, the Note 8 is a nicer, sharper and slightly bigger version of the company’s 6.2- inch Galaxy S8+ that was released earlier this year.