Introduction

Ease of Use

The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is one of the largest phones currently on the market, but as it’s quite narrow, it manages to stay just on the right side of ridiculously large. The design itself is also pretty classy, with a sleek finish and curved edges. Still, you’ll probably find two hands come in very handy when using the camera - especially if you want to change any settings. You’ll also probably find you need both hands when typing messages and so on.

There are a few different ways to unlock the phone. You can draw a pattern or enter a PIN on the home screen, use the fingerprint scanner on the back of the phone, or set up the phone to recognise your face and unlock it that way. Sometimes, unfortunately, the phone seems unable to recognise my face if I’m wearing my glasses - just something to be wary of. The fingerprint scanner is dangerously close to the camera lenses, so you might want to try and be careful not to touch the lenses when unlocking the phone.

Front

You don’t actually have to unlock the phone to access the camera. A double tap of the power button on the right hand side of the phone will automatically launch it, or you can swipe up from the bottom right hand corner of the screen from the lock screen. Note that if you launch the camera in either of these ways that you won’t be able to look at any older pictures until you unlock the phone.

The native camera app is very well featured. By default it will open in the fully automatic configuration, leaving you to concentrate on composition. You can tap around the screen to set the autofocus point and change the metering point to adjust exposure. You can switch between the two different lenses (wide angle and telephoto) by tapping 1x and 2x - which you’ll see either on the bottom of the screen or the right hand side, depending on how you’re holding the phone. If you would like to take more control, you can switch to a Pro mode, which is accessed by swiping left from the main camera screen. You’ll now see that you’re able to adjust parameters such as shutter speed and ISO - as is common for mobile phones, it’s not possible to set your own aperture value.

Rear

Other shooting modes are also available if you swipe left from the main screen. As well as Auto and Pro, there’s Panorama, Slow Motion (video), Hyperlapse (time-lapse), Food mode, and Virtual Shot. It’s also possible to download extra modes, such as Sports Shot and Rear-cam selfie.

Along the top of the screen you’ll see a few different options. The cog icon gives you access to various advanced settings, including changing the picture size, video resolution, timer and so on. If you tap the image size option, you’ll be able to switch on raw format shooting - which will give you a raw format version of each JPEG, but only if you’re shooting in “Pro” mode. The other options you’ll see at the top of the screen change depending on the shooting mode you’re in. So, for example, in Pro mode, you can change AF area and metering, but these options will not be displayed when shooting in Auto.

In-hand

In both modes, you’ll have the option to switch the flash on and off, or turn to “full view”. The latter is primarily aimed at those capturing shots to use with Instagram Stories or Snapchat, as it’ll make use of the 18:9 aspect ratio of the Note 8’s screen, rather than whatever aspect ratio you’ve already been shooting in.

At the bottom of the screen, you’ll see the option to switch “Live Focus” on. This mode makes use of both the lenses to create a shallow depth of field effect. You need to move the camera at least 1.2 metres away from your subject for it to work, and there are some other caveats - such as you can’t have too much light in the shot either. Once you’ve taken the shot, you can adjust the amount of background blur when you’re looking at the shot in playback too, lessening or adding the amount depending your tastes.

Camera Mode

In order to take a picture, you have a couple of options. There’s a virtual shutter release button found at the bottom of the screen (or to the right if you’re shooting in landscape format). Alternatively, you can use the volume up or down physical button on the left hand side of the camera. You can hold the phone so that these buttons are positioned on the top right hand corner of the device, making it a little more akin to shooting with a “normal” camera. If you want to record video, there’s a dedicated virtual video record button just next to the standard shutter button. As soon as you press this, video will start to record - this is a bit frustrating as it means you can’t frame up your video first. You can change video resolution from the settings menu, with resolutions up to 4K available.

Image Quality

In bright light, images produced by the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 are fantastic. Colours are very vivid - arguably straying into over saturation but producing a very pleasing result none-the-less. Detail is also well resolved, producing images which give a good overall impression of high detail. If you examine images at 100%, it’s possible to see a little image smoothing even at low ISOs, but certainly no more than we’d expect from a small sensor.

Thanks to a wide aperture lens (f/1.7), the Note 8 also copes pretty well in low light situations, helping you to keep the ISO as low as possible. Visible image smoothing is more obvious from ISO 400, but if you’re mainly sharing online or producing very small prints, it’s certainly acceptable. ISO 800 is available, too, but if you can keep to shooting below this, it’s certainly preferable.

The Note 8’s second camera is very useful in situations where you want to get closer to the subject. It’s not quite such a good performer in low light, thanks to it having a narrower aperture, but in bright light it performs very well. The “Live Photo” effect which utilises the second lens is also pretty reasonable - you can see some strange artefacts if you examine closely, but on the whole, the shallow depth of field effect is quite natural.

The Note 8 does a very good job of accurately assessing the scene to produce balanced exposures, but you may find exposures benefit from tapping around the screen to meter from different parts of it. Automatic white balance copes well with a variety of different lighting conditions, producing shots which are on the whole accurate in colour.

Noise

The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 has 5 manually-selectable ISO sensitivity settings available at full resolution, ranging between ISO 50 and ISO 800.

JPG	Raw
ISO 50 (100% Crop)	ISO 50 (100% Crop)
ISO 100 (100% Crop)	ISO 100 (100% Crop)
ISO 200 (100% Crop)	ISO 200 (100% Crop)
ISO 400 (100% Crop)	ISO 400 (100% Crop)
ISO 800 (100% Crop)	ISO 800 (100% Crop)

Focal Range

The Samsung Galaxy Note 8’s fixed focal length lens is equivalent to 28mm in 35mm camera terms. The telephoto lens also gives you a 2x optical zoom.

1x

2x

Macro

the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is able to focus as close as 5cm from a subject. We found this claim to be accurate, though autofocussing does occasionally struggle to lock on at this kind of range.

Macro

Flash

The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 uses an LED flash, and as usual for this technology, it gives a much weaker flash burst than a standard xenon camera flash. Shooting a white surface from a distance of 1.5 metres reveals the flash is unable to properly light the scene and there’s significant vignetting.

Flash Off

Flash On

Flash Selfie

 

Flash Wide Off	Flash Wide On
Flash Tele Off	Flash Tele On

Night

Thanks to optical image stabilisation and a wide f/1.7 maximum aperture, the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 performs well at night. This image was taken with a shutter speed of 10 seconds at the camera’s minimum ISO 50 sensitivity, and though there’s some noise and detail smoothing, the result is still comparable to what a typical compact camera would produce.

Night

Live Focus

Live Focus mode allows the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 to capture the background and the subject separately, so you can adjust the focus as you need.

Live Photo

Sample Images

This is a selection of sample images from the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 camera, which were all taken using the 12 megapixel JPEG setting. The thumbnails below link to the full-sized versions, which have not been altered in any way.

Sample RAW Images

The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 enables users to capture RAW and JPEG format files. We've provided some Samsung RAW (DNG) samples for you to download (thumbnail images shown below are not 100% representative).

Sample Movie & Video

Product Images

Conclusion

There’s lots of fantastic smartphones currently on the market, many of which offer something which is appealing to those with an interest in photography. 

The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is a good example of doing a lot of things right. The dual lens set up gives you the flexibility to get closer to the subject when you need to, while the shallow depth of field effect it helps to produce is also reasonably natural. A lot of current phones are offering this - in my opinion, it is best utilised right now on the Google Pixel 2 (which impressively does it with only one lens), but the Note 8 does a pretty decent job - and you can use that extra lens by itself too. 

Images are lovely and vibrant, showing a fantastic dynamic range, while also capturing a decent amount of detail. The camera copes well in low light, particularly if you stick to using the wider aperture wide-angle lens. 

Another thing which is also great about the Note 8 is that it offers both advanced shooting options via the Pro mode and the ability to shoot in raw format. Although the camera performs very well in Auto mode, having the option to tweak settings is great - and not something you get on every phone (a particular case in point being the iPhone X). 

This phone is one of the largest currently on the market, and while the huge screen is great for viewing your photos and videos, it can be a little unwieldy to use - especially one handed. Trying to tap the 2x zoom button when holding the phone in just one hand can be quite tricky - you get used to holding it in a certain way, but it’s certainly not the most comfortable experience. 

At the time of writing, the Note 8 retails for around £869 for the 64GB version. You can also purchase it as part of a contract deal, for various prices. That puts it towards the top end of pricing for smartphones, but it’s significantly cheaper than an iPhone X. 

Overall, the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is a great option for those who are interested in both a dual lens setup plus the ability to take a good degree of manual control. It also looks sleek and stylish, with a huge screen which really makes your images pop. 

Oh - and the phone hasn’t exploded so far either... 

Ratings (out of 5)
Design	4.5
Features	4.5
Ease-of-use	4
Image quality	4.5
Value for money	4

Main Rivals

Listed below are some of the rivals of the Samsung Galaxy Note 8.

Review Roundup

Reviews of the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 from around the web.

Specifications

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