Samsung’s Galaxy S8 is easily the most classic looking phone on the planet with its curved edge-to-edge screen, but the best has yet to come.
The Galaxy Note 8, the successor to last year’s unfortunate explosion-prone Note 7, is expected to launch sometime in September — just in time to rumble with Apple’s iPhone 8. And now, thanks to a new leak, we know just about everything there is to know about it.
Notorious phone leaker Evan Blass (better known as @evleaks) has a new report for VentureBeat that spills almost all of the beans on Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Note 8.
Blass says the phone will have a 6.3-inch curved edge-to-edge “infinity display” that’s just slightly larger than the Galaxy S8+’s 6.2-inch screen.
Along with the larger screen, the Note 8 will, of course, come with an S Pen stylus (it is a Note after all) with more advanced features, and dual cameras.
The latter would be a first for any of Samsung’s flagship Android phones, and would finally compete with the iPhone 7 Plus and recently released OnePlus 5’s dual cameras. The Note 8’s said to have dual 12-megapixel cameras (just like on iPhone 7 Plus) with optical image optical image stabilization.
The Note 8 will reportedly sport the same chip as the Galaxy S8/S8+ — Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 chip — with 6GB of RAM (two more than the S8).
These all sound great, if not expected, but now for some features that might disappoint fans.
Read also:Â Galaxy Note 8 pegged for late September launch
One thing Samsung won’t reportedly be repeating: cramming in a larger capacity. The report claims Samsung’s going with a 3,300 mAh battery, which would be smaller than the S8+’s 3,500 mAh battery. Last year Samsung gave the Note 7 its largest battery in a flagship ever, and well, that ended up with the phones exploding everywhere, and its eventual discontinuation.
The Note 8 might have a fingerprint sensor right next to the camera again.
The biggest flaw on the Galaxy S8 is the position of its fingerprint sensor: on the back, next to the camera. Not only is it difficult to reach, but you’ll almost always end up smudging up the camera instead because they feel so similar.
If Blass is right (and he almost always is), the Note 8 won’t have the fingerprint sensor embedded under the display (like rumored for the iPhone 8), but will be right next to the camera again. “Once again, Samsung has made the controversial choice of placing the fingerprint sensor on the same plane as the camera lenses — to the right of the flash and heart rate sensor — but at least this iteration sees them separated by a greater distance.” Ugh. Samsung is likely to rely on iris scanning, facial recognition, and the touch panel on the bottom of the screen, like on the S8/S8+, for security.
Even more heartbreaking could be the price. The Galaxy Note series is Samsung’s very best, with all of the best features possible, and that’s always reflected with steep pricing. The Note 8 will reportedly be no different, coming in at €999 (unlocked) according Blass, which translates to roughly $1,111 at the time of this writing.
But hey, at least it’s said to support the Samsung DeX docking station that turns the phone into a pseudo-desktop PC. And it might come in black, blue, and gold. That stuff matters, right?
Courtesy Newrep
