Samsung Galaxy Note 8 First Look

After the Galaxy Note 7 debacle, Samsung is looking to regain the trust of the Galaxy Note devotees. Since Samsung confirmed back in January that a Galaxy Note 8 would indeed be released, there has been plenty of rumors and leaks. Last month, Samsung officially confirmed its Unpacked event where they will unveil the newest smartphone in the Galaxy Note line on August 23rd. Until then, let’s look at everything we know so far about the upcoming Galaxy Note 8.

Earlier this year, noted leaker Evan Blass reported that the Note 8 will sport a 6.3-inch Super AMOLED display with the same edge to edge design and 18.5:9 aspect ratio as the Galaxy S8. The Note 8 will also come in black, blue, and gold. On the outside, the Note 8 will have a dual camera setup like the LG G6, iPhone 7 Plus, and recently released OnePlus 5. Both cameras will be 12-megapixels with optical image stabilization. They will be positioned horizontally to the left of the heart rate sensor and flash.

Owners of the Galaxy S8 have bemoaned the placement of the fingerprint sensor next to the camera as it often causes unintended smudges to the camera lens. Unfortunately, a recent leak seems to confirm the final design of the Note 8 with the fingerprint sensor indeed next to the camera.

Obviously, the battery will be a major point of focus for the Note 8 as not to repeat the mistakes of the Note 7. To that end, Blass reports that the battery will be a “relatively conservative” 3300mAh battery. Clearly, Samsung is not trying to take any risks with this iteration.

Internally, the Note 8 will be powered by either a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 or Exynos 8895 which is on par with the current S8/S8+. It will also have a generous 6GB of RAM which should make general usage and multitasking snappy.

As far as software, Samsung has apparently improved the ease-of-use of split-screen multitasking, gave the S Pen more capabilities (such as full-sentence language translation and currency conversion), and added the ability to pin handwritten notes to the always-on display. The Note 8 will also have the same DeX capability as the S8/S8+.

Finally, the retail price of the Note 8 will be closer to $1,000 which isn’t surprising considering the unlocked Galaxy S8+ sold for $825 at launch.