Final design, UK price and specs leak for the Galaxy Note 8 ahead of today’s launch. Read the latest news and rumours on the Note 8 specifications, new features, price and UK launch date, and watch the Galaxy Unpacked live stream right here.
Samsung’s Galaxy Note 8 is due to be unveiled this afternoon at 4pm. It’s a phone that has been greatly hyped by fans who missed out on the explosive Note 7. Through leaks and tip-offs we have a very clear idea of what to expect, so read on for the answers to all your Galaxy Note 8 questions.
Carphone Warehouse isn’t the only one to leak the Note 8 ahead of its launch, accidentally confirming a SIM-free price of £869. Samsung has also ‘accidentally’ revealed the Galaxy Note 8 on its own website, as spotted by Android Police. Though it has now been removed, the brief showing confirmed suspicions that it would feature an Infinity Display, S-Pen stylus and Bixby Assistant (with Bixby Voice now available in the UK just in time for the launch) .
Mobile Fun has also leaked the final design just hours ahead of the launch, listing the full range of official Note 8 cases on its site.
Samsung is holding an UnPacked event in New York’s Park Avenue Armory on 23 August in which it will announce the Galaxy Note 8 and (probably) a new wearable device .
The event takes place at 4pm BST (UK time) , which is 8am PDT/11am EDT/5pm CEST/11pm HKT/midnight KST/1am 24 August AEST.
There will be a live stream of the event, and we will embed it at the top of this page as soon as it becomes available. You will also be able to watch live on Samsung’s UnPacked website and on its YouTube page.
Though the phone will be announced on 23 August, it is not expected to go on sale in Korea until 15 September, with global territories to follow. Rumours suggest it will be available to pre-order from 24 August.
EE has already posted a link on its site to pre-register your interest in Samsung’s new phone.
According to an accidental leak by the Carphone Warehouse the SIM-free price of the Galaxy Note 8 will be £869. It has quickly pulled down its product page, but not before it was spotted by The Inquirer.
This is in line with our estimate, following a tip from Evan Blass, writing for VentureBeat, that the Galaxy Note 8 is going to cost a colossal €999. That’s €100 more than the Galaxy S8 Plus, and €200 more than the Galaxy S8.
As we wrote at the time, this means in Sterling you can expect to pay £869, with the Galaxy S8 costing £689 and the Galaxy S8 Plus £779.
Previously the Note family has been differentiated from the S series through its larger screen, increased performance, longer battery life and S Pen stylus. In 2017 the Note 8 is not expected to be a great deal faster than the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus – it has the same processor but an extra 2GB of RAM – and battery life is unlikely to be much different given the problems with the Note 7.
However, the Note 8 will continue to be differentiated with the S Pen stylus, and though the screen won’t be much larger than the 6.2in Galaxy S8 Plus it should feel considerably larger than the 5.8in Galaxy S8 at 6.3in. It will look very slightly different with more square-ish corners, too.
Also new to the Galaxy Note 8 will be a dual-camera – and for the first time on a Samsung flagship phone.
Read more about the differences in the upcoming Note 8 and already available Galaxy S8 here .
Despite the Galaxy S8 Plus measuring a mighty 6.2in, the Galaxy Note 8 will measure only 6.3in.
We would expect the screen to have a Quad-HD+ or even 4K resolution, and there is talk that it could get the latter, making the Note 8 Samsung’s first 4K smartphone. It’s highly likely to be a Super AMOLED panel.
We expect to see the same design changes in the Note 8 as we did this year’s Galaxy S upgrades, which means a larger, taller, pressure-sensitive screen, with the new 18.5: 9 aspect ratio.
It’s a jump up from the 5.7in screen on the Note 7, sure, but there’s now very little difference to separate the two phablets.
Expect Samsung to go all out on improvements to the S Pen stylus and associated software in response.
The Note 8 is expected to feature a dual-lens camera at the back with OIS. It comprises one f/1.7 wide-angle lens and a second f/2.4 telephoto lens with 2x optical zoom. Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says it should be superior to that found in the iPhone 7 Plus.
Galaxy Club has unearthed the camera module it thinks the Note 8 will use. » We see, among other things, three times optical zoom, and greatly improved low-light performance. Also, there is a better HDR mode, and the ability to measure depth in 3D, » it reports.
It provides example shots of some of these features that you can see in the photo slideshow below. (Note that if you are using an ad blocker you won’t be able to see the controls to move to the next image.)
For selfies there will be an 8Mp f/1.7 camera at the front.
Many owners have complained about the positioning of the fingerprint scanner on the back of the Galaxy S8, but sadly this isn’t changing for the upcoming Note 8 if we are to believe the majority of leaked images and renders.
The Note 8 should be a tad faster than the Galaxy S8 thanks to its extra RAM – 6GB rather than 4GB. However, it will use the same processor – the Exynos 8895 in the UK, and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 elsewhere. Both are 10nm chips.
The Note 8 will have 64GB of storage as standard, in addition to support for microSD. That puts it in line with the OnePlus 5.
There is reportedly going to be a version of the Note 8 known as the Emperor Edition that comes with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage, though it’s unlikely to be sold outside Korea. The most storage we’ll see in the UK is expected to be 128GB.
The Galaxy Note 8 has been spotted on Geekbench 4 where it recorded 6066 points in the multi-core component. This is actually a tad lower (vs 6466 points) than the Galaxy S8 running an Exynos chip we tested.
It has also been seen on AnTuTu, again confirming the above specifications.
Samsung is being naturally cautious in the battery department following the disaster that was the Note 7, so we’ll see just a 3,300mAh battery inside. It will fast-charge wired or wirelessly, with the former operating over USB-C.
Having acquired Harman Kardon, Samsung says it will utilise Harman’s audio brands, which include AKG and JBL, to « deliver enhanced customer benefits and elevate user experiences across Samsung’s complete portfolio of consumer and professional products and systems ».
In a recent conference call the company reportedly claimed that « The Galaxy Note 8 will feature more advanced, richer multimedia functionalities. »
According to Galaxy Club, a Samsung support page that went up too early and has now been pulled confirms there will be a dual-SIM version of the Galaxy Note 8 in Europe.
