New York: Samsung launched its most expensive smartphone yet – Note 8 – at a flashy LED walls-and-art-inspired event held in New York on August 23 in a bid to gain advantage before other makers launch their flagship devices.
In the pipeline are LG’s V30, Huawei Mate 10, Apple’s iPhone 8 and Google Pixel 2.
Features
The 6.3-inch edge-to-edge and bezel-free Super AMOLED [Infinity Display with 1440 x 2960 pixels resolution] screen has the same design as the Galaxy S8.
It also houses dual 12MP rear cameras, first time in a Samsung phone gear. One camera with a wide-angle with an f/1.7 aperture while the other will be a telephoto lens with an f/2.4 aperture.
The front will sport an 8MP camera with f/1.7 aperture.
It runs on latest Android Nougat OS.
It also houses iris, face and fingerprint scanners and the S-Pen stylus.
Powered by 2.3GHz Exynos 8895 processor in EMEA and 2.35GHz Snapdragon 835 in the US, Korea and China, it also packs 6GB of RAM with 64GB or 128GB storage capacity.
In certain markets, 256GB built-in storage capacity will be available.
Pre-orders in UAE
The device will be available for pre-order from August 24 to September 10 and will be available from September 15 for pre-booked customers, including the UAE, and likely to be priced at Dh3,299.
The international price is $899. It will be available at retail stores from September 22.
The S-Pen stylus with a tip diameter of 0.7mm is water and dust resistant and with 4,096 pressure sensitivity.
“We appreciate the relentless passion of the Note community. They’ve been a constant inspiration to us and we designed the new Note for them,” said Koh Dong Jin,, President of Samsung’s Mobile Communications.
With the Galaxy Note8, he said that the new ‘App Pair’ feature lets you create a custom pair of apps on the Edge Panel and simultaneously launch two apps with ease.
Users can pair two apps of their choice to work in multitasking mode where the screen splits into two sections and work simultaneously like watching YouTube and sending messages at the same time.
Samsung has added new features to its stylus such as Live Messages, writing off screen memos of up to 100 pages without unlocking the device, translate a text or convert a unit or currency in real time just by hovering over the sentence. Right now, it supports up to 71 languages.
In Dual Capture mode, Jin said that both rear cameras take two pictures simultaneously and allow you to save both images; one close-up shot from the telephoto lens and one wide-angle shot that shows the entire background.
Samsung has updated its artificial intelligence voice-assistant – Bixby – in more than 200 countries, including the UAE, on Tuesday.
It has a dedicated physical button for Bixby. It is officially compatible only with English and Korean voices.
Bixby consists of voice, home, vision and reminders.
The Voice facility can do actions with voice dictation like “turn off the WiFi or show me the latest photos or open WhatsApp.
Currently, it is working in sync with its native applications. However, the company is reportedly working to ensure that the Bixby Voice feature works on third-party apps as well.
