Hands on with the Samsung Galaxy Note 8

A few weeks ago, my Galaxy Note 4 began misbehaving. It would freeze for a few seconds. It would spontaneously reboot. After a day where it rebooted 14 times, I decided it was time to replace it. Of course the new Galaxy devices are coming out very soon, but if you take my usual approach and buy the previous generation to save money, this is a timely blog post.

Despite the recent flakiness, I’ve been generally impressed with Samsung’s phones. When I went to the T-Mobile store, I was trying to decide between the Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy Note 8. The Note 8 is bigger – bigger even than my Note 4 – and it has the S-Pen. I’ll admit that I don’t use the S-Pen often, but when I do, it’s really nice to have. So despite a price tag that’s about as close to $1,000 as you can get without being the iPhone X, I went for it. After almost a month, here’s what I think.

What I like

  • The size. I wish my thumbs were a bit larger, but I like the size of this phone. The extra real estate allows me to condense what had been five home screens down to 3. But the curved edges make it feel narrower than my Note 4, even though they’re the same width.
  • Wireless charging. Where has this been all my life? I have an aftermarket wireless charger on my night stand which makes getting up in the middle of the night much easier. And the model I keep on my desk flips up so that I can see and use my phone easily.
  • USB-C. I’m a firm believer in the rule that it takes three tries to correctly plug in a USB cable. USB-C destroys that rule and I love it.
  • The S-Pen. The Note 8’s S-Pen feels better to grip and it seems to have more pressure sensitivity. Sometimes I’ll just doodle on the screen for fun. It feels nicer to write with than most pens I’ve used.
  • Heart monitor. This is basically unchanged from the Note 4 as far as I can tell, but I really like this. Tracking my heart rate has been key to managing my mental and physical health during the last few turbulent months.
  • Smart Switch. This app made transferring apps and data from one phone to another pretty simple. Some settings, particularly with regard to notifications and third-party accounts, didn’t carry over. That may be more the fault of my old phone rebooting than a problem with the software.
  • Camera. I haven’t taken too many pictures yet, but the camera seems much improved. Picture quality at full zoom is particularly better.

What I’m indifferent to

  • The curved screen. I don’t (intentionally) use the little side tray. Stuff at the edges generally looks fine, but I’d be okay with a normal bezel.
  • Bixby. Bixby is limited. It doesn’t work with most apps I actually use. The voice recognition is decent, and it can at least tell the difference between my voice and my wife’s, which is nice. I played around with it for a few days just to see, but I’ve stopped since. I’m generally not interested in talking to my phone anyway.
  • USB-C. I like it, but I’m also indifferent to it. Mostly because I have a bunch of micro USB cables. As I begin to have more USB-C, my indifference will fade.
  • Waterproof. I haven’t put this to the test because I don’t want to break a thousand dollar phone. But if the specs are to be believed, I don’t have to worry about what happens if I accidentally give my phone a bath while I’m giving my kids a bath. (This is how my phone-2 was lost.)
  • Fingerprint sensor location. I know some people were upset about the fingerprint sensor moving to the back of the phone. I don’t use it, and I’m used to putting my finger on the back of the phone for heart monitoring.
  • Lack of physical buttons. It took a little getting used to not having a physical home button, or back and app switch buttons with a dedicated spot. Now that I’m used to it, I don’t care either way. It’s neither good nor bad. It just is.

What I dislike

  • The speaker location. The speaker is on the bottom of the phone when held vertically. When held horizontally, it’s on the side, which often means its inadvertently under my finger. This means I often muffle the sound.
  • The headphone jack location. I like that it has a headphone jack. I would prefer if it were on the top. It’s generally not a problem, but every once in a while, I’m holding the phone in just such a way that it’s annoying.
  • RF reception. I’ve noticed the Note 8 seems to have trouble getting signal in places my Note 4 didn’t. Specifically, it doesn’t get Wi-Fi in my bathroom very well. And I had no cellular signal in much of the terminal at SEA, which made trying to pull up my boarding pass a real adventure.

Thats where I am so far. The main thing I don’t have a good sense for is the battery life. It seems to burn up a little faster than I’d like, but since I usually keep it on a charger, it’s hard to tell. We’ll see what happens when I’ve had it for a year or so and the battery is well-aged.

FM receivers in smartphones

The makers of the NextRadio app recently announced that Samsung will be enabling the FM receiver chip on future smartphones. The phones already have the receiver, but they are generally not enabled. Enabling FM receivers on phones is great news.

As someone who has used a smartphone’s FM receiver, I want to be clear that it’s not a great experience. Headphone wires work as antennas, but not very well.

The main benefit is in emergency situations. In a widespread disaster, cellular service may be down or overwhelmed. Receiving FM broadcasts is a low-power way of receiving important information from officials. Indeed, I’d like to see the manufacturers go one step further and include receivers that receive All-Hazards Radio in addition to the commercial FM band.

Now, it’s possible that I’d use an FM receiver outside of emergency situations. I sometimes listen to Purdue sports on the radio if I’m doing yard work or otherwise unable to sit down and watch TV. The Purdue Sports Radio Network streams over TuneIn, which works pretty well. But there’s a delay, and if I’m moving in and out of Wi-Fi range, it becomes unreliable.

I guess I’ll see which models Samsung starts with before I figure out my phone upgrade plans. I don’t expect Apple to follow suit any time soon. Their embrace of wireless headphones means iPhones will have no antenna.

The first few weeks with the N900, part 2

This is part 2 of my review of the N900.  Part 1 includes “Unboxing”, “The screen”, “Connectivity”, “Web browsing”, and “The camera and other multimedia goodness.”  Part 2 includes “E-mail, calendar, contacts, and instant messaging”, “Other applications”, and “The phone.” Continue reading

The first few weeks with the N900, part 1

Three months to the day after I first wrote about the N900, Nokia’s newest smartphone ended up on my desk.  Since I’ve talked so much about it on Twitter (and since I had to lobby my wife aggressively to let me buy it), I think I owe the world my review.  I get the feeling that this review will end up focusing on a lot of the negatives, but don’t misunderstand me: I really like this phone.  The N900 is great phone with a lot of potential, but it is currently an early-adopter’s phone.  I’m generally not one to play the early adopter game, but this time around I couldn’t help myself. Continue reading

I may have found my next phone

I fully expect to be in the smartphone market in the not-so-distant future.  My BlackBerry 8700c has served most admirably these past few years, including untold drops onto various surfaces and a 9-hour nap in a snow bank.  Despite it’s faithfulness, it is not the phone it once was.  Aside from some cosmetic problems, it has a tendency to freeze up every so often, which requires me to remove the battery to shut it off.  Not to mention the lack of 3G capability.  That really hurts.

I’ve been eyeing the iPhone since it first came out, and the more I learned about the phone itself, the more I like it (especially the 3G S).  Unfortunately, the more I learn about the way Apple and AT&T rule the network, the more repulsed I am.  That, among other considerations, is a big reason why I still have yet to let the BlackBerry go.  Still, when I look at the features that I want out of a smartphone, the iPhone fares the best.  Until now.

There has been quite the buzz (or at least mild hum) on the Internets since Mobile-review.com did a preview of the Nokia N900.  Holy crap, this looks like my kind of phone.  From a hardware standpoint, it seems more like the G1, which is a solid-feeling phone.  What really sets it apart is the software side.  The phone runs Maemo, a Debian-derived Linux distro designed for mobiles and tablets.  My knowledge of Maemo is still pretty sketchy, but from the Slashdot discussion I’ve gathered that it is a full-featured Linux distro, capable of running just about anything you want.   Has freedom finally come to the cell phone market?

At the moment, it appears that most of the discussion on the Internet begins with the Mobile-review article, any other details are hard to find.  One site did suggest that it might be available in the US in September, and since Nokia World is scheduled for Sept 2-3, that’s not unreasonable.  The list price is supposed to be $780 (which compares well to the iPhone 3G S list price) and I expect the carrier (likely T-Mobile) will offer some nice subsidizing.

So for now I will wait and see what develops.  It looks like a great phone, the real deciding factors for me will be the release date, the price and the carrier.  For all the bad things that I’ve noted about AT&T, they’ve been my wireless carrier since back in the Cingular days and I’ve never had any problems.  Plus, they offer a discount because of my employer, which is always a nice incentive.  Will I end up switching carriers so that I can get the N900?  Will the price be such that I can just buy it and bring it onto my existing AT&T account?  Will I chicken out and just try to do everything on my Samsung Sync?  I guess we’ll find out soon.