Soon after introducing the Galaxy C8 smartphone with dual rear camera setup in China, South Korean electronics company Samsung on Tuesday announced the launch of its latest flagship phablet and also the successor of the company’s previous “fire-prone” Galaxy Note 7, dubbed as the “Samsung Galaxy Note 8” at an event in New Delhi, India. Carried a price tag of Rs. 67,900, the new Samsung Galaxy Note 8 will be available for pre-order starting today and the same will be going on sale in India starting September 21 (Thursday) via Amazon.in, Samsung Shop online store as well as select Samsung retail stores in Midnight Black and Maple Gold colour options. Besides this, the company also announced that Bixby Voice assistant has been launched in India, and will be available from September 30 on the Samsung Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8+, and the Galaxy Note 8. If you don’t remember, the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 was first announced at the company’s Galaxy Unpacked 2017 event in New York.
As part of an introductory offer, the company is giving a best buying offer for the Galaxy Note 8 buyers. Those customers who pre-book a Samsung Galaxy Note 8, will get a free wireless charger bundled with the smartphone and a one-time free screen replacement. Further, HDFC Bank credit card holders will get Rs 4,000 cashback on the smartphone. The South Korean company has also announced its partnership with Reliance Jio to offer up to 448GB of additional data with Jio Prime membership, no daily limit and unlimited voice calling over 8 months.
Samsung Galaxy Note 8 Highlights:
Talking about its main highlights, the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is an IP68 certified smartphone, so it is absolutely water and dust resistance. The device can survive in up to 5 feet of water for 30 minutes or less. The smartphone also supports an improved S Pen stylus like the Microsoft Surface Pen. The S Pen allows for a precise and natural handwriting or drawing experience. In terms of specifications, the pen has 0.7mm tip, that can detect more than 4,000 levels of pressure and the impressive tilt technology helps you smoothly draw in the most comfortable position. It has a finer tip, improved pressure sensitivity and new Live Messages feature support. With the S Pen, users will now be able to handwrite a message or picture, add special effects and send it to someone in a message as an animated GIF on several popular messaging and social platforms. Live Messages are saved as GIFs, so you can easily share your animated texts or drawings across different apps and social media platforms that support animated GIFs. The S Pen also supports Translate feature that was introduced on the Note 7, that lets you highlight over text to instantly translate entire sentences in up to 71 languages, and even quickly convert units and foreign currencies. Apart from these high-end specs, the device also features a dedicated button for the company’s Bixby personal AI assistant. Like the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+, the Galaxy Note 8 also supports Samsung DeX technology that allows users to run supportive mobile apps on a full-scale monitor for enhanced productivity experience. For biometric security, the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 comes with a rear-mounted fingerprint recognition button, an iris scanner and facial recognition feature.
Samsung Galaxy Note 8 Specifications and Features:
Technically speaking, the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 comes equipped with a gigantic 6.3-inch QHD+ Super AMOLED display with a screen resolution of 1440 × 2960 pixels. Like the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+, the phablet also has the dual-edge curved Infinity display with an 18.5:9 aspect ratio and offers a pixel density of 522ppi. Further, the display is protected by a scratch resistance Corning Gorilla Glass 5 and certified by the UHD Alliance as Mobile HDR Premium. Under the hood, the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is powered by a Samsung Exynos 9 Series 8895 octa-core (four cores clocked at 2.3GHz and four cores clocked at 1.7GHz) processor paired with Mali-G71 MP20 GPU to handle the graphics. In terms of memory, the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is backed up by a 6GB of LPDDR4 RAM and 64GB of internal storage, which can be further expanded up to 256GB via a dedicated microSD card slot. Talking about its software fronts, the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 runs Samsung’s proprietary TouchWiz custom UI skin, based on Google’s Android 7.1.1 Nougat operating system.
In terms of photography, the Galaxy Note 8 houses a horizontally arranged dual rear camera setup that comes combined with one 12-megapixel primary sensor with an f/1.7 aperture and wide-angle lens, 77-degree field of view, and one 12-megapixel secondary sensor with an f/2.4 aperture and telephoto lens. The main camera features also include Dual Pixel technology, autofocus, optical image stabilization (OIS), 1.4µm pixel size, 2X lossless zoom, 10x digital zoom, and an LED flash module. On the front, the device features an 8-megapixel front-facing camera with smart autofocus, 80-degree wide-angle lens and an f/1.7 aperture. The rear camera also is capable of recording 4K UHD videos at 30 fps, 1080p Full-HD videos at 30 fps or 60 fps. The camera features also include Pro Mode, Panorama, Selective Focus, Virtual shot, Wide selfie, Hyperlapse, Food and Slow motion.
On the connectivity front, the Galaxy Note 8 is a dual-SIM smartphone that accepts two Nano-SIM cards. Apart from this, the smartphone also offers various connectivity options including 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac (2.4GHz, 5GHz), Bluetooth v5.0, GPS/A-GPS/GLONASS, NFC, a 3.5mm headphone jack and a USB 3.1 Type-C port for super-fast charging and other connectivity. Sensors on the phablet include an Ambient light sensor, Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Proximity sensor, Heart rate sensor, Barometer, Geomagnetic sensor, Fingerprint (rear-mounted), Hall Sensor, Iris sensor and a Pressure sensor. The Galaxy Note 8 also supports Samsung Pay and MST connectivity and comes with a fingerprint scanner, iris scanner and facial recognition for high-grade biometric security. On the battery front, the Galaxy Note 8 comes packed with a high-density and “secure” 3,300mAh battery with fast charging support both on wired as well as wireless charging. Dimensionally, the Galaxy Note 8 measures 162.5 x 74.8 x 8.6 mm and weighs 195 grams.
