Samsung Galaxy Note 8 Phone review: Galaxy Note 8 is powerful, pricey and soon-to-be-replaced

Update, 2018

Even when the Note 9 does eventually come out, the Note 8 will likely still be a good option, especially if you’re hoping for a stylus-toting phone that costs a little less. Samsung and retailers will almost certainly drop the Note 8’s price after the Note 9 goes on sale. LG is also readying a more basic stylus lineup, the LG Stylus Q family of phones.

Meanwhile, the Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus, which don’t have the embedded stylus, are now on sale.

Read the original Galaxy Note 8 review below.

After testing it from San Francisco to Los Angeles and up to Lake Tahoe, I can confidently say that the Galaxy Note 8 is without a doubt Samsung’s best, most feature-packed phone.

But it’s also deeply burdened. Does it scrub away the bad taste of last year’s disastrous Note 7 double-recall? Is the battery safe? Does it offer enough over the cheaper Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus to make it worth the sky-high price? (See prices below.)

Finally, we have answers. Samsung has amped up its safety testing and reduced the Note 8’s battery size to avoid repeating last year’s fatal battery mistake, though we won’t know if it’s truly safe until weeks have gone by without a reported incident.

Buyers of the Galaxy Note 7 – who had to relinquish their flame-prone phones – and 2015’s Galaxy Note 5 – until now, the “best” Note phone you could buy – will find the Note 8 to be the high-end handset they should have gotten last year, and then some. It largely merges the Note 7 with the S8 and S8 Plus. The upshot: It’s really good, but feels rehashed instead of truly fresh. Samsung played it safe.

One bright star is the presence of a dual camera setup on the Note 8’s back. Samsung’s first twin-lens phone can create pretty depth-effect portraits that finally catch it up to the hottest trend in phones. There’s also the Note 8’s vibrant 6.3-inch OLED screen, and a tall, slim design that goes lean on bezels. Battery life here goes on and on. You’ll find a welcome repeat of the Galaxy S8’s top-of-the-line processor, water resistance, expandable storage and wireless charging, plus fun ways to create animated GIFs that belong to the Note 8 alone. The S Pen stylus has some real efficiencies you don’t get on any other phone.

Everyone who saw me whip out the Note to write down numerous Starbucks orders on the lock screen, create cute animated GIFs of our silly photos, and take depth-effect portraits of wedding guests in their finest was immediately impressed. “Take our picture with the good camera,” one friend said. “That pen looks so useful,” said another. “I think I want that instead of the iPhone.”

Despite the Note 8’s undeniable excellence as an Android device, however, I’m split on whether or not it’s worth the hefty price, especially when it’s so similar to the single-lens Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus. Throw out the stylus, and your key benefit versus the S8 Plus is… portrait mode (which Samsung calls Live Focus). On its own, that’s not a very compelling reason to level up.

I need to also point out the Note 8’s most grating imperfection. The placement of the fingerprint reader off to the side of those two rear cameras drives me bananas. It’s plain inconvenient: too high and too off-centered. Even if muscle memory takes over and you get used to it, and even if you use the hit-or-miss iris scanner instead, there’s no good reason it shouldn’t be in the center of the Note’s back like it is on so many other phones. There’s no excuse for the world’s dominating Android brand to falter on something the rest of the industry has already mastered.

If you’re using a Note 5, feel good taking the Note 8 plunge. If you’ve never owned a Note but can truly make the S Pen part of your daily life, you won’t find any other phone that goes as far.

If you’re contemplating the Note 8 for the second camera alone, I say wait to see how the LG V30 and iPhone X perform; they both have dual cameras, too. And there’s the dual camera iPhone 8 Plus, whose photos and video performance are pretty evenly matched with the Note 8’s. The new Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL buck the trend with just one camera, but Google says it’s so good, a second lens is unnecessary. (We’ll fact-check that claim once we have a chance to fully review it.)

At the end of the day, dreamy portraits and a pressure-sensitive pen are niceties, not necessities. And that’s what the Note 8 is: a beautiful splurge for people who want to do everything they can on an Android phone, or at least have the option.

Everyone but Note die-hards should wait until we see how the forthcoming rival phones fare. The Pixel 2 is available now for preorder and ships Oct. 19. Apple will take preorders for the iPhone X starting Oct. 27 at 12:01 AM PST and make the first deliveries on Nov. 3 (though supplies are rumored to be severely limited). And, of course, the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus are available now. Once we’ve taken a close look at them all, we’ll revisit this review.

Read on for pricing and an in-depth look at the Galaxy Note 8’s key features. You’ll find a full specs list and a comparison with other top phones at the end.

Read also: iPhone X didn’t crush the Galaxy Note 8

This review originally posted September 5 and was updated September 15 to indicate that the phone is now on sale.

Galaxy Note 8 price

Preorders started Aug. 24, and the phone went on sale Sept. 15 in the US, UK, South Korea and other select countries. It’ll roll out globally through October.

Until Sept. 30, Samsung will grant original Note 7 owners a discount on the Note 8 as an apology for the hassle of having returned your last phone. The big catch? It’s only for US buyers so far and you can only get it through Samsung.com, not through your carrier. There’s plenty of fine print; I summarize it here.

All US buyers who preorder the phone will get a fast wireless charger and a 128GB microSD card or a Gear 360. This has nothing to do with being a Note 7 owner, it’s available to everyone. More details here.

You’ll be able to buy the phone through carriers, Samsung.com and other retailers. Samsung is also doing something different and immediately selling the Galaxy Note 8 unlocked rather than waiting weeks or months to offer an unlocked option.

In the US, you can pick up the Note 8 from Best Buy, Target and Walmart in addition to Samsung.com, where it sells unlocked for $930. As for carriers, AT&T will sell it for $950 and Verizon will sell it for $960. T-Mobile users can nab it for $930 while Sprint offers it for $960. The phone will also be available on US Cellular for the full retail price of $963 ($32 on 30-month plan) or for $900 prepaid.

Is the Note 8’s battery safe?

It’s too early to truly call the Note 8 a Note 7 redeemer until it’s survived weeks on the market without the phone overheating and catching fire. After all, CNET’s multiple Note 7 review units remained incident-free even while an unusually high number of handsets around the world charred within just a few weeks of that phone’s release.

To keep the Note 8 safe, Samsung has:

• Instituted an eight-point battery safety check
• Reduced battery size and capacity from 3,500mAh to 3,300mAh to leave more room in the phone’s cavity
• Partnered with UL, an independent certification organization, to endorse the Note 8

Read more about Samsung’s efforts to keep the Note 8 battery from overheating.

For the record, the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus batteries graduated from the same enhanced battery test without reports of widespread problems. However, if you’re wary, it doesn’t hurt to watch and wait.

During my testing, the phone got plenty warm, but not dangerously hot, and not hotter than other phones I’ve tested.

Despite having a smaller capacity than the Note 7, battery life was great. The Note 8 lasted a little over 17 hours in our looping video drain tests. (Compare that to 16 hours for the S8 and 18 for the S8 Plus). It also kept enough charge to get through a busy day, even when used for navigation and endless photos at back-to-back wedding weekends. Some activities and settings will drain the battery faster, like streaming music, navigating with Google Maps and setting the iris scanner to read your eyeballs without swiping first on the lock screen.

Dual cameras give portrait mode a boost

I used the two rear cameras to take beautiful, memorable portraits of two weddings and some gorgeous mountain scenery (see some in the gallery below).

Live Focus, what Samsung calls its portrait mode, does come with some rules. You have to be at least 4 feet (1.2 meters) away from your subject, and the lighting has to be right. If it’s not, the phone will say so, and won’t take the shot. Indoor Live Focus shots were sometimes (unintentionally) out of focus.

You can adjust the blur intensity before you take the photo, and even afterwards in edit mode, which is a great feature. In addition, the Note 8 automatically saves a wide-angle version of the picture as well as the artistic portrait, so you can hop back and forth between the two. Let’s say the portrait of you in front of forestry becomes your new profile pic and the wide-angle version goes into your photo book. You can easily turn this dual capture mode off with a tap.

Even with variable slider controls, the processing around edges can be harsh and imperfect, but that’s hardly unique to the Note 8. The same issues plague the iPhone 7 Plus, too. The technology will get better with each generation, but it might take some time.

Despite some clunkers, photos were excellent on the whole, with sharp detail and Samsung’s standard color reproduction that’s so vibrant, it borders on gaudy. Low-light and night shots can look brighter than you’d expect them to be; not entirely natural, but highly usable.

Samsung stuffed a ton of new tools into the camera app, which makes filters and menus harder to find. You have to swipe left and right to pull them up. It’s easy to forget which way to swipe, confusing to find controls for things like beauty mode, and easy to get stuck in the stickers menu. It’s good to see Samsung adding dual capture and portrait mode sliders, just not when it makes the camera app harder to use.

Note that Google says the new Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL can accomplish some of these dual-camera tricks, including Live Focus (also known as portrait mode on Apple phones), with just one camera and software. Stay tuned for a full photo shootout against the Pixels and the iPhone X in the coming days. For now, you can read a breakdown of how the Note 8 stacks up against the iPhone 8 Plus for video and photos, and a comparison of the Note 8’s camera specs versus those of the iPhone 7 Plus.

The S Pen is mightier than the tap alone

I’m so Type A, I practically write lists in my sleep. So the act of writing with a pen calls to me. It’s fun to whip out the stylus and chicken-scratch away, finding new hidden tricks and quietly raging at nitpicky problems when I can’t figure out how to do exactly what I want. The S Pen keeps the screen cleaner and helps relieve cramped hands. Naturally, I spent my review period writing notes on the Note.

There’s one other current phone you can buy today that has a stylus, and it costs a lot less than the Note 8: the LG Stylo 3. However, it’s every ounce a midrange device, so don’t expect it to match up to the monumentally more powerful Note 8.

Live message

Here’s something fun you can do: write a message with the S Pen in glowing or glittering text, turn it into an animated GIF in a few taps and share it with friends on any platform that accepts GIFs. I wrote my favorite Live Messages over photos for that personal touch.

Tools let you preview your GIF and undo a stroke if you’ve made a mistake, and you can save your finished masterpiece to use again later. I just wish you could easily go back in again to edit when genius strikes.

Write notes on the lock screen

Called Screen-off Memo, you can now write up to 100 pages in a single note (without unlocking your phone) and pin it to the lock screen. It’s useful, but would be better if Samsung made pages scroll smoothly instead of jerk, and if the Note 8 automatically repinned notes you edit. As it stands now, if you make changes to a pinned note, you have to save and pin again. If you don’t do that, you lose your changes. Not a big deal, but irksome nonetheless.

Notes app needs a refresh

The Notes app is pretty versatile: You can add text, your own handwriting and drawing, an image and a voice note. But a refresh is long overdue. The app just isn’t as intuitive as it should be for Samsung’s eighth Note phone (Notes 1, 2, 3, 4, Edge, 5, 7, 8). It isn’t always easy to figure out how to do exactly what you want, including how to get in and out of tools.

The S Pen can:

• Erase mistakes when you press the S Pen button (very convenient, except when you accidentally press it)
• Create two types of notes, which is especially confusing for novices; seems pointless
• Add a quick note from the Air Command navigation wheel, can minimize this to turn into an icon that floats around the screen. (You can also add a quick note by pressing the S Pen button and double-tapping the display)
• Write on the screen
• Take a screenshot of a small portion, not the whole screen (this keeps you from having to crop to the part you want)
• Annotate everything from images to screenshots
• Hover to preview and share or edit images and surface hidden menus

13 other things to know (not all of it new)

• Design: More squared-off corners than the Galaxy S8 phones
• 8-megapixel front-facing camera
• S Pen is water-resistant, too (we tested the IP68 rating by submerging the Note 8 in a bucket of water twice for almost 30 minutes, the maximum rated threshold)
• Bixby Voice button calls up Samsung’s digital assistant; you can’t reprogram this
• You can launch two apps for split-screen mode at once (called App Pair)
• Edge screen is like a speed dial for your favorite apps and people
• Translate complete sentences (not just one word at a time); this uses Google Translate
• Samsung Pay mobile payment works with NFC and any credit card reader; it’s pretty great
• Google Assistant on board
• Make an animated GIF from a video
• Launch the camera by double-pressing the power button
• OIS on both rear lenses helps keeps videos smoother than they otherwise would be when you’re walking, jogging and driving a car
• VR compatible with the addition of the Samsung Gear VR headset

Galaxy Note 8 versus…

Galaxy Note 5: If you’re rocking a Note 5, it’s time for an upgrade. Feel confident buying the Note 8. You’ll love the improved speed, sleek shape, doubled S Pen sensitivity and fun new stylus tricks.

Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus: The Note 8 is the Galaxy S8 with the S Pen and a second camera. Really, that’s it. The Note 8’s screen is only one-tenth of an inch larger than the Plus (6.3-inch versus 6.2), and the core hardware is exactly the same. If you want to save some cash, are iffy on the S Pen and can live with a single camera, the S8 Plus is your no-brainer choice. Save more by buying the slightly smaller S8 (a 5.8-inch screen).

iPhone X: Apple’s 10th anniversary iPhone is so expensive, it makes the Note 8 look like a bargain. It takes a number of design cues from Android phones like the Note 8, including a larger OLED screen and slimmer bezels. The iPhone X also won’t sell until November and comes with a controversial feature, an unproven Face ID that unlocks the phone; the Note 8 gives you a greater number of options if you don’t feel like raising the phone to your face. It could wind up being a great phone; we’ll let you know after our testing period is compete. The iPhone-curious should also look at the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus.

Google Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL: The new Pixels are nearly identical except for size, battery and price. Speaking of which, the $649 Pixel 2 is much less expensive than the Note 8. The 64GB Pixel 2 XL costs $849 – about $100 less than the Note 8 – and the 128GB version delivers twice the storage for the same price. Otherwise, the new Pixels have some interesting new features including squeezable sides and Google’s new Lens AR technology, which is similar to the Note 8’s Bixby Vision app, in addition to faster processors and an updated operating system. They lack dual cameras and headphone jacks, however. Check out how the phones’ specs stack up.

If you missed it: iPhone X didn’t crush the Galaxy Note 8

OnePlus 5: CNET’s Editors’ Choice phone earned its title for the sheer value it brings for a cost that slides in significantly lower than premium-priced phones like the S8. They share a top-of-the-line processor and portrait mode. The Note 8 overpowers the OnePlus 5 with wireless charging, water resistance and of course, the S Pen. If those things don’t matter much to you, consider the 5.5-inch OnePlus 5.

LG V30: LG’s heavy-hitter isn’t out yet, but we did get a good look at it and so far, so good. The dual-camera V30 bets it all on advanced audio and video features. You won’t find the Note 8’s S Pen and wireless charging skills, but it matches Samsung’s phone on water-resistance and the headphone jack. We don’t have an official price yet, but LG phones typically save you some dough compared to Samsung devices.