So I got my Note 8 a few days ago. When I first held it in my hand the first thing I noticed was how heavy it was compared to the S7 I was currently using. It’s probably the heaviest smartphone I’ve ever held. The size of the Note 8 is large as well, but it wasn’t a surprise as my wife has the S8+ which I get to play with it once in awhile. Like the S8+, it’s fast and smooth. The camera is excellent. The bokeh effect with the dual camera is a nice feature. It makes regular looking shots look like I took it with an expensive DSLR. If you have an iPhone 7 Plus then you’ll understand what I mean.
The biggest concern about the Note 8 was the battery life since it has a 200mah small battery than the S8+. With my first full day of normal use (after installing all the apps and configuring all my settings the day before) the phone was at 71% from 6:30am to 430pm. This included Always-on-display, about 20-25 Hangout messages, about an hour of web browsing, a few minutes of videos, and about 20 emails. Typically my S7 would be around 40%. That’s not bad at all.
So far I’m totally digging the phone. I could have done without the curved edge screen, but it doesn’t bother me much as I have a Spigen Tough Armor case where I can hold the phone without touching the screen.