Samsung Galaxy Note 8: Best and worst features of the new smartphone

It's an impressive handset, but has a few shortcomings you need to know about

The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is one of the most advanced phones ever created.

It's the big, bold successor the disastrous Note 7 needed, and has as complete a feature-set as any potential buyer could hope for.

However, there are good bits and well bad bits.

If you're considering buying the Note 8, here's what you need to know before parting with your money.

Samsung Galaxy Note 8: The good

Design

The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is, quite simply, one of the best-looking smartphones on the market. In terms of design, both the Note and the S8 are head and shoulders above the competition, and Apple has a lot of ground to make up.

The Note’s front face is almost entirely screen, and its sloped edges blend seamlessly with the handset’s glossy frame. It makes rival phones look outdated.

S-Pen

The S-Pen stylus is one of the Note brand’s trademark features, and the version that ships with the Note 8 is a fantastic little device.

It pops out of the phone with a click, and in doing so launches a range of handy phone apps tailored specifically to it. My favourite use for it is Screen-Off Memo, which lets you jot down notes you can pin to the lock screen – perfect for when you’re out shopping.

The S-Pen is also ideal for drawing – something that’s actually possible on the Note 8 because its screen is so big.

App Pair

App Pair lets you hook a pair of apps to each other and open them both at the same time, in a split-screen view, with a single tap of your finger.

Split-screen is available on a number of large-screened phones, but it can be a bit of a faff to use. App Pair is a real time-saver, and makes split-screen a little bit easier to get your head around.

Camera

Arguably the biggest difference between the Note 8 and the S8 Plus comes in the camera department. It uses a dual-camera setup, combining a 12-megapixel telephoto lens with a 12-megapixel wide-angle sensor.

Its key feature is Live Focus, which lets you blur the background of an image to make your subject really stand out. It’s pretty straightforward to use, requiring you to be no more than 1.2m away from your subject, and makes the camera a lot more fun to use.

You can adjust the bokeh to exactly the level you want, and the effect works impressively well, successfully identifying the bits you want to blur while keeping the main part of the shot in focus.

Samsung Galaxy Note 8: The bad

Fingerprint sensor

As feared, the Note 8’s fingerprint sensor is its worst feature. It’s terrible on the S8, and is almost just as bad here.

The Note 8’s fingerprint scanner sits ever-so-slightly further away from the camera than it does on the S8, but nowhere near far enough. It’s too small, too shallow, positioned far too high up on the back of the handset and too easy to mistake for one of the camera lenses.

Considering you need to unlock your phone tens of times per day, it’s an issue that significantly damages the user experience.

Battery life

Samsung’s decision to load the Note 8 with a much smaller battery than the Note 7 is understandable, given what happened to last year's handset. Unfortunately, that means the new Note has disappointing stamina.

Its enormous, 2,960 x 1,440 display is a lot of screen for the 3,300mAh battery to handle, and it struggles. In my time with the phone, the battery has come extremely close to running flat in the early evening, forcing me to either find a place to charge the phone or drastically limit my use of it.

You can try to extend battery life by lowering the screen resolution to 2,220 x 1,080 or 1,480 x 720, or activate Medium or Maximum Power Saving Mode (which decreases screen brightness and resolution, limits power and turns off background network usage), but we’d prefer it if the phone simply had a bigger – but safe – battery.

Price

Terrific as it is, the Note 8 doesn’t exactly offer the most value for money. £869 is a ludicrous amount to spend on a smartphone. For contrast, the excellent but undeniably plainer OnePlus 5 is available for £449, little more than half of the Note 8’s price.

Unfortunately, however, the price of high-end handsets appears to be creeping closer and closer to the £1,000 mark. It’s perfectly possible that next year’s flagships – or even the upcoming iPhone 8 – will cost even more.

If you really want a Note 8, it might be best to get it on contract. Here’s where to buy one.