But the battery used here has gone through significant testing to ensure it’s up to scratch, and Samsung has also adjusted the Note 8’s design to help ensure things don’t get too hot. thicker than it was on the Note 7 – which in smartphone terms is actually rather a lot – and the battery’s capacity has been reduced from 3,500mAh to 3,300mAh. We pointed the camera at a bottle of Evian, for example, and it was able to show us photos of other bottles of water when we selected Images. Microsoft apps for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneDrive are preinstalled, along with various Google apps and some Samsung utilities. com is a leading authority on technology, delivering lab-based, independent reviews of the latest products and services.

Taking photos of kids at a Morris dance, for instance, I found that the wide-angle V30 encouraged me to see the whole scene as a group, while the zoom cameras encouraged me to focus on my own child. Samsung estimates about 22 hours of mixed usage on maximum settings, jumping to 27 hours with the screen resolution turned down and the always-on display setting off. You’re going to need a Note 8 case to confidently hold this unwieldy glass beast, and two hands to operate it. Testers note that Bixby has quite a lot of potential and is, in theory at least, smarter than other assistants.This is likely down to its inclusion of 6GB of LPDDR4 RAM, because in other respects performance is very much on par with the 4GB RAM Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+. With 6 GB RAM to work with and a Mali G71 MP20 GPU, it tears through any task you set it, from multi-tasking to multimedia, gaming to productivity apps.

Crammed with up-to-date internals, including Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 processor (or Samsung’s own Exynos 8895 if you aren’t Stateside), complete with 6GB of RAM and 64GB of expandable storage.

Its bezel-less display is on par with the dazzling beauty of the Galaxy S8, and with bang-up-to-date internals, new and improved S Pen features and fancy dual rear cameras, the Note 8 is the crème de la crème of smartphone flagships. Other Samsung phones that support dual window and edge swiping may get this feature in the future, the company said. Thanks to its extremely thin bezels, the Note 8 is actually very compact considering its screen size, but still measures in at a finger-stretching 162.

It’s not entirely bezel-less, but it’s close enough, with a screen-to-body ratio of 83 percent and an 18. Be warned that the camera will not shoot at the maximum resolution in Full-screen Capture mode, limiting your snaps to 7.With the screen active popping out the stylus will launch Screen Memo, which can now support up to 100 pages. The latter takes a little getting used to, but you can always wake up the phone using the power button (don’t get it confused with the dedicated Bixby button, as we often did) or popping out the S Pen stylus. In real terms, there’s about a centimetre of frame visible above and below the display, but the rest is all immaculately polished and largely fingerprint-free glass, with a load more space for enjoying media and games, and for working with multiple apps at once.