New York: Samsung launched its most expensive smartphone — the Note 8 — at a media event in New York on August 23 in a bid to gain advantage before other smartphone-makers launch their flagship devices.

In the pipeline are LG’s V30, Huawei Mate 10, Apple’s iPhone 8 and Google Pixel 2.

The Note 8 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 is likely to be priced at Dh3,299. The international price is $899. It will be available at retail stores from September 22.

“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 Note 8, 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, allowing one to watch YouTube and sending messages at the same time.

Samsung has added new features to its stylus such as Live Messages, while allowing it to write off screen memos of up to 100 pages without unlocking the device, and translate 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 being a close-up shot from the telephoto lens and one being a 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 now has a dedicated physical button for Bixby. Bixby is officially compatible only with English and Korean voices.

The voice facility can perform actions with voice dictation like “turn off 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.

Technical details

The 6.3-inch edge-to-edge and bezel-free Super AMOLED Infinity Display screen, with 1440 x 2960 pixel resolution, has the same design as the Galaxy S8.

The phone houses dual 12MP rear cameras, one with a wide-angle lens 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 houses iris, face and fingerprint scanners and the S-Pen stylus. It will be powered by 2.3GHz Exynos 8895 processor in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and 2.35GHz Snapdragon 835 in the US, Korea and China, 6GB of RAM with 64GB or 128GB storage capacity. In certain markets, 256GB storage capacity will be available.

The S-Pen stylus, with a tip diameter of 0.7mm, is water and dust resistant and has 4,096 pressure sensitivity.