Samsung Unveils Galaxy Note 8

Samsung has unveiled their Galaxy Note 8 with dual camera and Bixby voice assistant in a return for the high end smartphone brand. The successor to the ill fated Note 7 will have the biggest screen yet with a 6.3-inch screen and 6GB RAM.

Undeterred by the total recall of their Note 7 due to a battery catastrophe, Samsung unveiled their brand new phone with the signature stylus, hoping to recover the reputation of the Note model. Speaking at the unveiling event held in Park Avenue Armory in New York, President of Mobile Communication, D.J. Koh kick started the event by thanking all those faithful users of Samsung for sticking with them through their tough times. He went on to introduce their latest device which will be released in stores on September 15th.

The Note 8 is built on the highly successful S8 and S8+ with slightly larger features including a bigger display with corners that are more squared off and less curvature to the front side edges.

Although this phone is slightly heftier than the S8 Plus, it will pack a Snapdragon 835 processor, 64GB of storage and 6GB of RAM. Similar to the recently unveiled OnePlus 5, the Note 8 will also carry two 12 megapixel cameras with a regular, wide angle with an aperture of f/1.7 while the telephoto lens will have an aperture of f/2.4. Both sensors will offer optical image stabilization, which Samsung claims is a first in the industry. Note 8 users will be able to utilize the telephoto camera more often instead of defaulting to the regular camera in low light conditions. The dual cameras allow the phone to have its own take on iPhone 7’s portrait mode and a “Dual Capture” mode which stitches together photos from both cameras and saves them individually.

Note 8 also showcases the challenger to Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant, Samsung’s Bixby voice assistant. Bixby, activated through voice control, responds to the phrase ‘Hi Bixby’  and the phone will also have the dedicated physical button for Samsung’s digital assistant. Note 8 will also have DeX which will allows users to connect their phones to a monitor, keyboard and mouse for a desktop experience powered by the phone.

The company has also stuck with their stylus S Pen which can now take up to 100 pages of notes in the Screen Off Memo mode. Samsung’s director of product strategy, Suzanne De Silva demonstrated the capabilities of the S Pen which will be able to highlight and translate text into 71 languages, will be available for use in messaging apps and allow users to create art. The new Live Message feature allows users to handwrite a message or picture with the S Pen, send it to someone in a message and play it back as an animation. The Live Messages will be saved as GIFs that can be shared easily across all social media.

The price for this latest smartphone has been revealed yet but President D.J. Koh did confirm that a speaker powered by the Samsung assistant may be coming soon. Samsung’s smart speaker will enter a crowded market, dominated by the Amazon Echo and Google Home, while the Note 8 will be competing against the iPhone 8 set to be revealed very soon.