It's the best camera phone I've used and it's everything a high-end phone should be. You can feel where the money's gone.
The fingerprint scanner is hard to reach and the face/iris scanning alternatives are unreliable.
I swore off ‘flagship’ phones this year, ditching my weary iPhone 6S and dropping £200 on a mid-range Android phone with a battery the size of a small moon. I’m delighted with it to an increasingly boring extent. I’ll happily explain my wise choice to anyone who wishes they hadn’t asked, and even people who haven't: like you.
But my newfound pragmatism isn’t immune to the curvy charms of the Samsung Galaxy Note 8. By any measure the £869 Galaxy Note 8 is a ludicrously expensive phone, especially considering how it’s similar to the S8 phones from earlier this year. But’s it’s still the best phone around. That might change when Apple announces the iPhone 8 next week, but I wouldn’t count on it.
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Samsung has perfected the black mirror. The Note 8 is almost all screen – a sheet of numbers shows a 83.2 per cent screen-to-body ratio, which is good news for ratio fans. The delightful curves and all-glass enclosure feel just right, inviting you to pick it up and gaze into it at every opportunity. That glass is liable to crack if dropped, but it’s a nice antidote to the swathes of generic aluminium slabs and glass is less slippery, too.
Bar an upgrade from 4GB to 6GB of memory, all the processor bits are identical to the Galaxy S8. That means the Note 8 ticks the same laundry list of essential flagship phone traits: it’s fast, has a stunning screen, lasts a day with enough to spare and has convenient features you’ll love, such as fast charging (wired and wireless) and Bluetooth 5.0, which supports dual audio so you can connect two Bluetooth speakers (or headphones) simultaneously. Neat.
That extra memory sounds trivial, but you’ll notice the difference. It means apps reload less often, so you won’t lose your place in an article or have to replan a journey as often. I missed it when I returned to my regular phone and its measly 4GB of memory... #firstworldproblems.
Despite its reputation as the big phone in Samsung’s range, the Note 8 is only 0.1-inch larger than the plus-size version of the S8. It’s little too large for my taste – even with the near bezel-less design – but as big phones go it’s easy to handle. And, while I rather glossed over it earlier, the 6.3-inch AMOLED screen is glorious. It supports HDR video and, unlike the S8 at present, Netflix supports HDR on the Note 8 too.
There are two more big differences. One is the built-in stylus from which the Note 8 gets its name; the second is the main reason to buy this phone: the cameras, which are outstanding.
This is Samsung’s first ‘dual camera’ phone, which means it has two primary cameras, along with the usual front-facing camera for selfies and video calls. Samsung’s not the first, but it’s done it better than anyone else.
Samsung’s approach is similar to Apple’s. There’s a standard lens, dubbed wide-angle, and a telephoto lens with an effective 2x optical zoom, albeit with a gap between the wide and tele lenses. Like Apple, Samsung uses the two cameras to create a background blur effect using a software algorithm, a mode Samsung calls Live Focus.
Photographers will recognise this effect as bokeh – one of those words no one really knows how to pronounce – where the subject of a photo remains in focus and the background is blurred. It’s great for portraits and because it’s a software effect, you can change the degree of blur after you’ve taken the photo: perfect for the casual photographer. The 52mm focal length is good for portraits, too.
As a result, the Note 8 takes brilliant portrait photos, and it has a key advantage over the iPhone 7s Plus: its telephoto lens has optical image stabilisation (OIS). This means the Note 8 can use slower shutter speeds to let more light into the sensor without causing unwanted motion blur in your photos, especially in low light.
Add this to the already excellent camera from the S8 and the Note 8 is the best camera phone by a margin. It excels in all conditions and is a cut above in low light, where it captures remarkable levels of colour and detail quickly and reliably.
The other key feature of the Note 8 is Marmite by comparison. You’ll either love the S-Pen stylus or be indifferent, but there are some nifty features in its favour. Popping out the stylus lets you instantly make a note, even when the phone is locked. And you can pin the note to your lock screen for up to ten minutes afterwards for quick additions.
The stylus is especially handy for taking screenshots and annotating them, or selecting specific portions of the screen to share on social media or in chats. I also found it useful for navigating spreadsheets on my phone. The Note 8 is a great phone for work.
You might not use these features, but they’re useful and intuitive. Earlier versions of the S-Pen had hard, unforgiving tips that slid across the screen like ice skates, but these days you get a nice sense of resistance, which makes writing on the screen rather pleasant.
I dislike only one thing about the Note 8: the fingerprint scanner is on the back. Actually, lots of phones have their finger scanners on the back, but this one is in a hard to reach spot to the side of the camera – most phones have the scanner in the middle where it’s easy to find.
Samsung has included face recognition and iris scanning as alternatives, but neither work well enough. Face recognition is a security joke – a photo of your face will fool it. Iris scanning is better for security, but both systems struggle in low light and don’t work with sunglasses. And you still need to press a button and wait for these systems to kick in, whereas a fingerprint is almost instant.
After a few days living with them, I reverted to using the fingerprint scanner and learnt to tolerate its stupid placement, but I did so begrudgingly. I’d take a smaller screen to have a scanner on the front, thanks.
The dual cameras make the Note 8. Without them, it’s a rehashed S8 with a pen. With them it’s a photographer's dream. Sure, it’s expensive, but if you’re spending big on a smartphone – especially an Android one – this is the one. Calmer heads will wait for the iPhone 8 and Pixel 2 reveals before deciding, but Apple and Google will do well to beat the Note 8.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
