If you’re looking for a phablet-sized smartphone, you’ll want to take a look at the Samsung Galaxy Note8, a device Wired calls ‘nearly-perfect.’ With a spectacular screen design, top-quality cameras, a smart stylus, and a powerful processor that supports cutting-edge applications, the Note8 boasts an array of features that can compete with any mobile device on the market. Here’s a look at four features of the Note8 that blow away the competition.
Stunning Screen Design
As TrustedReviews computing editor Michael Passingham emphasizes, one of the outstanding features of the Note8 is its stunning screen design. It has a huge 6.3-inch screen with 1440 p Super AMOLED display for fantastic graphics quality.
But despite the giant screen, the phone fits easily in hand due to its innovative Infinity Display design, which manages to make the entire unit still smaller to hold than the 5.5-inch iPhone 7 Plus. To achieve this engineering feat, it employs a curved surface that flows around its edges, while embedding the home button under the screen so that it can remain hidden when not needed. The overall effect translates into an 83 percent screen-to-body ratio, giving you more screen to use and less phone to hold. You can even activate one-handed mode by tapping the home button three times or swiping diagonally upwards from the phone’s bottom corners.
As for resolution, the Note8 provides stunning Wide Quad HD with 2960 x 1440 pixel capability. To conserve power, this defaults to 2220 x 1080 pixels in optimized power state and reduces to 1480 x 720 in power-saving mode. When turned up to full performance mode, it is four times brighter than a good laptop screen and even brighter than an HDR TV, for brightness and clarity, sharp text and rich photo quality.
Best-in-Class Cameras
The Note8’s top-notch graphics are designed to support its best-in-class cameras. It includes dual rear 12 MP cameras along with an 8 MP front camera, giving you the capability to take professional-looking photos. The dual cameras have different focal length lenses, allowing you to take a pair of wide-angle and zoom pictures at the same time or create a blurred background effect similar to a DSLR camera.
Another of the phone’s outstanding features is its superior optical image stabilization, which minimizes blurring caused by camera motion. Its optical image stabilization performance beat that of its chief rivals, the iPhone X and the Pixel 2, for the title of best smartphone camera in tests by BGR. It also features a wide array of other advanced camera features, including the ability to take panoramic and slow-motion videos and a Pro Mode that lets you control qualities like shutter speed and focus.
Superb Built-in Smart Stylus
One unique feature of the Note8 is its built-in smart stylus, the S Pen. The S Pen can sense over 4,000 pressure sensitivity points so that small adjustments in pressure will vary your pen output, providing the most natural digital writing experience available.
It can also recognize your handwriting so that what you write on your keyboard gets translated into text. Pressing the pen’s button brings up a shortcut wheel that lets you create new notes, take screenshots to write on, translate screen recordings, and start screen recordings to be used as animated GIF files.
The S Pen is stored in its own dedicated dock where you can pop it out when you need it. To keep you from losing your pen, an alarm will sound if you move before returning it to its dock. The S Pen doesn’t require an additional battery, so it’s always ready to use. You can take even take quick notes in standby mode without having to unlock your phone.
Super-powered Mobile Platform
Another outstanding feature of the Note8 is its use of a cutting edge Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 mobile platform. Designed to deliver top graphics capability, superior download speeds, and optimal battery life, the Snapdragon 835 represents one of the most powerful mobile platforms on the market today.
The Snapdragon’s X16 LTE modem can support peak download speeds of 1 gigabit per second, ten times as fast as first-generation 4G LTE. It renders graphics 25 percent faster than previous designs while delivering 60 times more display colors, providing support for its screen display and camera performance, as well as support for immersive VR and AR experiences. The 835 platform also supports on-device artificial intelligence applications such as facial recognition and natural language recognition. The platform is protected by the cutting-edge Haven security suite, and it uses 25 percent less power than previous designs for longer battery life.
The Note8’s superior screen design, cameras, stylus, and mobile platform make it one of the best phablet-style smartphones on the market. If you want a phone with great graphics display, top-of-the-line camera performance, a built-in digital pen, and a cutting-edge processing platform under the hood, you’ll want to give it a serious look.
