Traditionally the Note family has been distinguished from the Galaxy series with an S Pen stylus, a larger screen, more battery power and extra performance. That extra juice is no longer something we can expect from the Galaxy Note, following the explosive tendencies of the Galaxy Note 7, and the Galaxy series just got a lot bigger. So where does that leave us? Key differences between the two are as follows. We’ve also listed the key specifications for the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus and Galaxy Note 8 in the table at the bottom of this page.
Price and availability
The Galaxy Note 8 is now available to buy at £869 inc VAT SIM-free, which is the cheapest way to buy the new Note. See where to find the best Note 8 deals.
Cameras
The Note 8 is be the first Samsung flagship to come with a dual-camera, which is all the rage in the smartphone market right now. While the Galaxy S8 has a 12Mp f/1.7 lens, the Note 8 has an additional f/2.4 telephoto lens with 2x optical zoom. Interestingly both cameras on the Note 8 have optical image stabilisation – that’s a first. Both S8 and Note 8 have an 8Mp selfie camera.
S Pen stylus
Only the Galaxy Note family comes with Samsung’s stylus, which has been enhanced for the Note 8 launch. We see the usual enhancements such as improved pressure sensitivity and a finer nib, but more exciting is the ability to interact with the Always-on display by creating, editing and pinning notes, and the ability to share animated text and images through Live Message. It can also translate entire sentences, and convert units and currency.
Screen
When Samsung announced the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus earlier this year, it bumped up the display sizes to 5.8- and 6.2in respectively. With the previous Note 7 donning a 5.7in screen, it seemed this would no longer be an area in which the Note family would shine. Samsung is increasing the display size of the Note 8, but to ‘just’ 6.3in. With the same Infinity Display (Quad-HD Super AMOLED, Always-On display, minimal bezels, dual curved edges) we see on the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus, the difference in screen size will be negligible. If you notice any difference in design, it will be the slightly squarer corners of the Note 8. Indeed, the Note 8 features the same design tweaks we see in the Galaxy S8, which means a dedicated Bixby key, USB-C support, and a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner. Thankfully the headphone jack is also staying put.
Core hardware
Performance is another area in which the Note 8 usually gets a boost, though leaked Geekbench 4 results suggest performance is no better than the Exynos 8895-powered Galaxy S8 we ran through our own tests. While our S8 scored 6466 points, the Note 8 allegedly scored 6066 (that’s with the Snapdragon 835). Take that with a pinch of salt though, because synthetic benchmarks routinely produce differing results. And both scores are evidence of crazy-fast performance. We’re looking forward to getting the opportunity to run the Note 8 through our own benchmarks. We’d expect similar performance to the Galaxy flagships given the near-identical hardware inside (they run the same CPUs and offer the same amount of storage), though the extra 2GB of RAM inside the Note 8 could give it the lead in some benchmarks.
Specification comparison
Read next: Best new phones Marie is Editor in Chief of Tech Advisor and Macworld. A Journalism graduate from the London College of Printing, she’s worked in tech media for more than 17 years, managing our English language, French and Spanish consumer editorial teams and leading on content strategy through Foundry’s transition from print, to digital, to online - and beyond.
