samsung's galaxy note 7 was such an incredible step forward for Android
phone design as a whole that i like many people
couldn't help but get wrapped up in a whirlwind romance
but like the bad girl who lights your world on fire
then lights your house on fire our relationship was over as fast as it
began so is the note 8
a note 7 with the arsonist tendencies
removed and is that even enough a year
later let's find out
i buy power and MSI's new lineup of gaming laptops feature Intel 7th
generation core i7 processors check them out at the link below the most
immediately obvious feature of the note 8 is the same nearly bezel-less design
and 18 and a half by nine aspect ratio OLED screen is the galaxy s8 but
bigger indeed at 6.3 inches this is the
biggest screen they've ever crammed into a note device and i want to get this out
of the way very early in the video whether you prefer the default more
vivid color profile or the more true to the original content developer mode srgb
tweaked one content consumption on this device is an
unbelievable experience if you love scrolling vertically then whether
it's photos or text you'll be seeing more of it and bigger than ever before
and i'm not sure if they planned it this way
but the perfect black levels of the OLED screen makes 21x9 content appear as
though it has a perfectly even frame around it that's super small it's less
like watching a movie on your phone and more like holding a movie in your hand
unfortunately you'll also be holding the audio in your hand
even apple has finally implemented earpiece assisted stereo sound so what's
the excuse samsung is this just a courageous move to assume
that most users who give a crap about sound are using bluetooth or headphones
at this point that's possible but it still really
detracts from what could be what i would describe as the near
perfect mobile movie watching experience
let's talk about handling i praised the note 7's hold ability with my
fun-sized hands and some of the same ergonomic tweaks
return here notably the two-sided curved glass and
very similar 75 millimeter width with
nice flat sides that give you a little bit more edge to hold on to
but the taller screen comes at a cost here
the note 8 weighs so much more than its predecessor that even though i haven't
held one of those in months it was obvious to me the first time i touched
it and it hurts accessibility of both
top of the screen ui elements like the compose button in samsung's sms app and
the rear-facing fingerprint sensor from a natural holding position which is
another disappointment every note device has had something
noteworthy about it that has set it apart from the s line
a balls to the wall CPU epic expandability something
with the note 7 it was the iris scanner which is back and it's pretty handy when
i'm not outside and it works but what i was really hoping for was the
rumored under screen fingerprint sensor to bring that back to the front of the
device and instead of that i got
i don't know what did i get well compared to the s8 plus it's the
same 10 nanometer CPU same GPU uh we got
six gigs of RAM versus four on the micro sd expandable 64 gig storage version and
i guess we got a dual camera system so it better be a pretty amazing camera
then right well i'm not going to complain because
the s8 and iphone 7 are already as good as i feel is reasonable to ask of a cell
phone at this point anything else is icing and to be clear
it's better samsung's color science still isn't as
true to life as apple's but in a way that will probably appeal to lots of
mainstream folks and i definitely appreciate the easy configuration and
advanced control options available in their app finally as a daily samsung user their
lightning fast double tap camera launch continues to allow me to capture
precious moments with my kids and pets that i would otherwise miss
it's just that i'm not an artistic photo
taker meaning that their post-processing blur effect
on top of looking unnatural next to true bokeh
doesn't do much for me i super appreciate the 2x optical zoom and the
optical image stabilization on both of the 12 megapixel rear cameras
but overall a dual camera system wasn't enough to sell me on the iphone 7 plus
so it's not enough here and in samsung's case the photos from the zoom camera are
significantly softer than the wide so a fair bit of the difference can often be
made up with digital zoom anyway okay then what about the style
excuse me uh s pen well what to say about that it's cool
you can highlight text for translation uh sketch or jot down difficult to input
things like math formulas more accurately and with less latency than
ever before and they've added a whack of cool features for it including notably
the ability to jot down up to a hundred pages of memos
without ever turning your screen on thanks to the always-on OLED display
i just personally find that not all
but much of what it does can be easily accomplished with my fingers in the time
that it takes to remove the s pen from its holster adjust my grip and start
using it it's certainly not something that i
would personally give up 200 milliamp hours of battery life for it if given
the choice which is a drag because getting back to
our s8 plus versus note comparison that is one difference along with price
that favors the s8 plus battery life on
the phone that can do it all is just not
that impressive something samsung seems to be aware of given that it ships with
a battery saving resolution downscaling tweak enabled by default
raising the question of why they bother putting a
2960x1440 screen on it in the first place and speaking of things i wish they
hadn't included a non-reprogrammable dedicated button for
their digital assistant bixby let's say for a minute that i love bixby
let's say i was blown away by the way that you can basically execute macros on
your phone i would still understand the point of view of people who think that a
computer vision based shopping feature that can't recognize a bloody iphone
doesn't need a dedicated button and i would still lobby samsung to look past
their own arrogance to the demands of their customers a significant percentage
of which have gone out of their way to download some janky third-party app in
order to be able to remap the thing
so then nutshell time i still mostly like the tweaks in the
latest iteration of touchwiz screenshot and clipboard management is epic and
samsung's keyboard prediction is actually better than ever
but especially at this price i can't help but notice that samsung played it
really safe this time no squeeze input
no dolby atmos no built-in sundial no quantum leap forward
in industrial design the note 8 is not
bad it's arguably the most versatile phone
on the market it does everything
it just feels like for some reason when samsung removed the fire from the note 7
the spark of our love went out too
one thing i probably should have mentioned in the main video is how freaking slippery the back of the note 8
is without a sexy dbrand skin it's just
something that didn't really occur to me until i was shooting this dbrand
integration after the fact with dbrand you can not only protect your device
from incidental scuffs and scratches but you can make it look better and hold
better too i personally recommend their dragon skin but they've also got a wide
variety of different vibrant colors and textures that are all authentic 3m vinyl
the best part of dbrand's site is that it takes out the guesswork you just go
through their configurator pick out the skins that you like they ship it to you
affordably worldwide not to mention extremely quickly and the whole
installation process just takes a few minutes so go check them out at the link
in the video description and skin up your device today
or like in a couple days when it arrives
so thanks for watching guys if this video sucks you know what to do but if
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