The high degree of unity of upstream suppliers has made mobile phones more similar than ever before. However, Samsung's Galaxy S and Note series, with their unique appearance design and photos, have always been the undisputed masters of Android. Even in recent years Note series is suspected of squeezing toothpaste. In addition to small changes in appearance, 6G memory starting, 256G version, S Pen and sub camera, most of Note8 is highly coincident with Galaxy S8+, but Note8 is still at the top of the Android camp, waiting for competitors to appear as the defending champion.
This time we are bringing a detailed evaluation of the US version of the mass production machine N950U (Snapdragon 835), focusing on the screen, optical anti shake sub camera, endurance and heat, hoping to help interested readers and users.
parameter
For the time being, the National Travel Agency has only three colors: Enigma Night Dark, Galaxy Blue and Desert Grey (the American version has gold), 162.5x74.8x8.6mm， 195g
6.3 inch Super AMOLED curved screen, 2960 x 1440 resolution
Snapdragon 835/Exynos 8895+ 6GB memory+ 64/128/256GB, supporting microSD card expansion
Main camera: 12 million pixels, Sony IMX333/S5K2L2, 1/2.55 inch, 1.4 μ m. F/1.7 aperture, full pixel dual core focusing and optical anti shake
Long focus 12 million pixels, Samsung S5K3M3, 1/3.6 inch, 1.0 μ m. F/2.4 aperture, 2 times focal length, optical anti shake
8 megapixel front, Sony IMX320/S5K3H1
3300mAh battery
IP68 waterproof and dustproof, wireless charging, NFC, Type-C interface, 3.5mm headset interface, Bluetooth 5
This time we got the American version (T-Mobile). The special change this year is that Samsung began to unify the model of the model. The Korean version was unified as SM-N950N, and the American version was unified as SM-N950U. However, their firmware and network standard support are still different.
Appearance and workmanship
Compared with the "pebble" round design of S8/S8+, the design language of Note8 should be obviously rigid and commercial, The corners and screen corners become smaller. The screen proportion is more impressive. When the screen increases, the width of the border, forehead, and chin does not change significantly, making the screen proportion higher 。
Note8's The rounded corners of the four corners of the curved screen become smaller, but the two sides of the screen are more curved, making the front visual effect of the border narrower. Yes After the real machine of Note8, the original S8/S8+with a shocking screen share was immediately defeated. In addition, the body of Note8 will become more slender in terms of visual experience and hand feel.
What we got is the color matching of wilderness grey, which is darker than the smoke crystal grey of S8/S8+, and the rear cover has a slightly pink purple wind direction. However, the change of coating makes it seem a little plastic, which is not very satisfactory.
The key layout is still left volume, Bixby and right power supply; Top sim card slot (dual nano SIM and or card slots) and sub microphone; Bottom headphone connector, Type-C connector (USB3.1 supported), main microphone, speaker, and S Pen.
Note8 inherits many details of S8/S8+, and even retains the design of "USB interface, microphone not in a straight line, vice microphone not in the axis". There is no chamfer or other edge processing on the edge of the speaker opening (most flagship ships will chamfer the edge of the opening), which will slightly cut the hand when crossing. The card slot of our mass production machine is slightly pushed out by the waterproof washer, but the front and back glass panels are closely combined with the metal frame.
Hand feeling&screen size&fingerprint identification
S8+, Note8 and iPhone 7 Plus
Like Note7, the top cover of Spin is made of plastic. The top cover protrudes out of the body, making it easier to press. The size and feel of Spin are not different from Note7.
feel: Note8 is obviously thicker, and its thickness is close to that of S8+with thin shell. Although the screen is only 0.1 inch larger, the result of "larger than larger" is that Note8 is more hands supporting than S8+, and the corners are square, so the feeling of single hand grip should not be too much expected, and it will also be more dangerously wobbly in single handheld occasions such as photographing;
size: The screen and body of Note8 are very long, but the body is not as wide as the iPhone 7 Plus. It feels like the S8+when placed in the pants pocket. Except for tight jeans, there is no "storage" pressure on most occasions;
Fingerprint identification: The position is still on the right side of the camera, and it is hard to reach both the left and right hand grips. However, the difference between the camera part on the back of Note8 and the fingerprint identification area is more obvious, and the possibility of touching the lens by mistake is much lower.
screen
Parameters: Note8 is equipped with a 6.3 inch rounded QHD+(2960 x 1440) Super AMOLED screen, with a 6.2 inch diagonal length, 521 PPI, and HDR support.
Visual perception: The color uniformity of the screen is high. The color deviation of the side screen in the factory state is much smaller than that of S8/S8+. The contrast is high and the visual impression is quite good.
Screen size and scale: If you use a mobile phone with a 5.7 inch screen or less, you will find that when you first start to use Note8, when you look at the lower part of the screen, the notice bar can no longer be seen by the afterglow. This trouble with a long scale giant screen is simply a blessing. The screenshots are always a bit longer than others (the other party has to slide down to see the bottom content when they see the WeChat screenshots), the horizontal view of the game, and the screen utilization rate of widescreen movies are all the advantages of this "belt fish screen".
Brightness: Under the strong light, the automatic brightness is completely white, and the maximum brightness is 517 nits. Under the strong light of the automatic mode, the local brightness extreme value can exceed 1300 nits, which breaks the record again. It is absolutely no problem to use in daylight. The minimum brightness of all white manual is 1.77 nits, which is close to other flagship of Samsung, and the black light will not be dazzling.
Note 8 still provides four modes to choose from. Except that the adaptive mode has no corresponding target gamut, other modes have corresponding gamut ranges. The color accuracy test is carried out at a brightness close to 100 nits in daily use:
For the most widely used sRGB color gamut content, Adaptive mode It has reached 140.8% sRGB color gamut, and the color is very bright; Color temperature 7513K, slightly cold; The average deltaE in the sRGB color gamut is 7.1, and the maximum deltaE reaches 12.6, with obvious color deviation, but it is a very pleasing model;
Basic mode (For traditional "screen scoring"), it only covers 69.3% of the sRGB color gamut, mainly because the green coverage is low, and the green content will fade; The color temperature is 6565K, which is very close to the sRGB standard, but it will turn yellow to the naked eye; The average deltaE is 3.6, and the maximum deltaE is 6.4, which also shows a certain degree of color deviation;
Cinema mode Corresponding to the DCI-P3 color gamut (in the direction where Apple is transiting), covering 97.5% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, there are also shortcomings in the green range; Color temperature 6546K; Under the DCI-P3 color gamut, the average deltaE is 3.4, and the maximum deltaE reaches 6.5;
Photo mode Corresponding to the Adobe RGB color gamut (picture industry and Adobe home standard), covering 90.1% of the Adobe RGB color gamut, or there is a weakness in the green range; Color temperature 6544K; Under the Adobe RGB color gamut, the average deltaE is 3.6, and the maximum deltaE reaches 6.7;
The color accuracy of Note8 is disappointing. This American version of Note8 in mass production is the Samsung flagship with the worst performance in color accuracy in recent years. I hope the firmware will improve it after it goes on sale. For comparison, in the sRGB color gamut, the average deltaE 3.6 of iPhone 7 is 1.6, Note5 is 1.8, S6 edge+is 2.6, S7 edge is 2.9, and S8 is 2.7. Even this generation of Magic Blue, Nuts, Red Rice and other 1000 yuan machines with Tianma and BOE IPS screens can achieve a color accuracy between 1.8-2.6. It's hard to say that the color accuracy of Note8 has regressed.
System and S Pen
Note8 is equipped with Samsung Experience 8.5 system based on Android 7.1.1. The baseband version is QH7, and the GPU driver is V207, which is newer than Galaxy S8/S8+.
The function of the new system has changed very little. In addition to becoming more smooth, the main changes are the addition of Spin related functions and the addition of split screen and double open shortcuts to the curved sidebar. The official name of the latter is Application Separation, and you can choose to open and split screen applications at the same time.
This function is very useful if the application scenario is selected. One click to open the browser and WeChat/QQ at the same time. You can check the data while blowing, or chat while watching video. However, even though the screen is as large as Note8, the default zoom ratio of the system is still too large (the content density is too low), and the application content density after screen splitting is too low, so the practicability is limited. You have to modify the DPI and cooperate with S Pen to achieve the effect similar to the tablet screen splitting.
This year's S Pen has not changed much. Its book parameters are close to those of Note7. It has a 4096 level pressure sense and also supports IP68 protection. The size, feel and touch of the pen are highly consistent with that of Note7, and it is easy to roll Note5 (the pens of the three Notes can be mixed with each other). The main improvements are that the friction of the pen tip is larger and closer to the paper, the pen tip is thinner, and the screen responds faster, especially the response speed of the screen to the pen tip. Only the new iPad Pro can compare with it.
Even if the information gif
In terms of functions, the number of pages supported by screen out fast writing is more (increased to 100 pages), and Bixby and handwritten gif (official name instant message) are added to the shortcut menu after the pen is pulled out. The handwritten gif is a purely interesting function, which makes the handwriting process into gif pictures and saves them independently, and most platforms can view them directly.
performance
The performance of Note8 is the same as that of S8/S8+. Both Exynos 8895 and Snapdragon 835 are in parallel. The National Bank and Hong Kong versions (N9500) and the U.S. version (N950N) are Snapdragon 835. The Korean version, Asia Pacific version and European version are Exynos 8895. The memory starts from 6G and there are 64/128/256G storage versions.
In the 835 version of Note8, the CPU frequency is still limited to 2.36G (the full frequency of the 835 is 2.46GHz, and most existing models can reach the highest frequency when the application is turned on or the camera is turned on). The GPU frequency has finally increased from 670MHz of S8/S8+to 710MHz of Snapdragon 835.
CPU computing performance
GPU graphics performance
Storage read/write performance
Details can be stamped Love to play computer games Running points library see. In terms of performance, although the maximum CPU frequency has not changed, the CPU performance of Note8 is slightly better than that of the 835 version of S8+, but it still lags behind the strongest Snapdragon 835 model and Exynos 8895 version of S8+. After the GPU is full, its performance is obviously better than that of the 835 version of S8+, which is close to the graphics performance of the domestic Android flagship. In addition, the GPU is actively regulated, and it can basically maintain 710MHz after two minutes of double baking.
In terms of storage, our US N950U uses Samsung 64G UFS2.1 flash memory that is consistent with the G955F (S8+), but the continuous read and random write speed of Note8 is far behind that of the G955F. I don't know whether it is the system version or the physical problem. The biggest good news about performance is that the Samsung Experience 8.5 system has improved its fluency to a certain extent.
photograph
Parameters: Note8 main camera parameters are consistent with S8/S8+, IMX333 (some may use Samsung S5K2L2), 1/2.55 inch, 1.4 μ m. Full pixel dual core focusing, F1.7 aperture, 26mm equivalent focal length, with optical anti shake. The secondary camera sensor is S5K3M3, also 12 million pixels, 1/3.6 inch, 1 μ M unit pixel size, F2.4 aperture, 52mm equivalent focal length, with optical anti shake. This camera sensor is close to the iPhone 7 Plus, but the latter aperture is only F2.8, and there is no optical anti shake. It is not difficult to understand why people have such high expectations for the Note8 camera.
Photo experience: The main camera of Note8 focuses quickly. Even if HDR is forced on, Note8 can shoot continuously. The HDR speed is impeccable. However, the shutter response and multi frame synthesis speed of the S8+and Note8 of the 835 version are slow in weak light, which is largely abandoned by the iPhone. In addition, the low light rate of Note8 has decreased significantly, much lower than that of S8+and iPhone. In terms of secondary photography, the focusing, shutter response and imaging speed are average, which is close to the speed of the current thousand yuan camera. The performance is average, and there is still much room for improvement.
Daytime Scenario 1
Daytime scene 1 central zoom in
Daytime scenario 2
Daytime scene 2 central zoom in
Light Scene 1
Light Scene 1 Center Enlarged
Light Scene 2
Light Scene 3
Light Scene 3 Center Enlarged
Weak light scene 1
Weak light scene 1 central amplification
Weak light scene 2 central amplification
Extremely weak light scene 1
Extremely weak light scene 1 central amplification
Imaging: The light measurement and white balance of Note8 main camera are close to those of S8+. However, it may be that the firmware of the current version has not been adjusted properly. The application of Note8 in version 835 is heavy, the sharpening is slightly light, and the picture details, contrast, and saturation are weaker than those of S8+. Many scenes are just smaller than the iPhone, and there is still room for improvement. The complete photo comparison will be completed later. Please wait and see.
Subphoto
Sub photography experience: Note8 sub camera is equipped with the first sub camera equipped with optical anti shake. The addition of dual optical anti shake makes the distance of dual camera slightly larger than that of other models. The camera interface is still in the right slide function mode and the left slide filter mode. The biggest change is the addition of a full screen preview (filled vertically, but trimmed horizontally), the addition of a 2x zoom switch and dynamic focus button, while the HDR mode switch is placed in the secondary menu (some users may not be accustomed to it).
Zoom: The zoom experience of dual camera is not very good. There are three zoom modes, but none of them are easy to use: the zoom mode of dragging the shutter button left and right (the focus change is not linear, and it is difficult to control), the double finger zoom (it needs to use one more hand), and the zoom bar directly dragged after the current two modes call out the zoom bar (it requires accurate clicking, and the probability of mis touch is high).
Virtualization: Samsung calls this function dynamic focusing, which can adjust the intensity of virtualization in the later stage, and can also enable two rear cameras to shoot at the same time. It is thoughtful in terms of functions, but the sample processing is slow, and the yield is much lower than that of the iPhone without optical anti shake. There are also many areas that need to be improved.
2x focus contrast
2 times focal length central amplification contrast
The Note8 subfocus section is 52mm, and the wide-angle equivalent 54mm is larger than the iPhone subfocus, but the better noise reduction and sharpening algorithm makes its ultimate discrimination better.
Scenario 1 Virtual contrast
Scene 1 central zoom in
Scenario 2 Virtual contrast
Object edge contrast
Scenario 3 Virtual contrast
Scene 2 Object Edge Comparison
Weak light virtualization contrast
Comparison of lighting portrait
Light portrait virtualization contrast detail amplification
The Note8 sub camera, like other sub cameras, cannot be triggered if the light is too weak. It can be forced to open through the virtualization mode (Samsung's is called dynamic focus). However, noise control, noise reduction smearing and sharpening in the virtualization mode are much worse than the normal 2 times focal length proof. In addition, the virtual mode has a certain tendency of light metering bias, so it will be popular to take portraits.
In the light and weak light scenes, the absolute quality of the Note8 sub camera is much better than that of the iPhone. Although ISO is very close to the iPhone, the picture brightness is closer to the naked eye, the shutter speed and the film rate are higher. Compared with the iPhone with full screen noise, the noise reduction and smearing of the Note8 sub camera are much better, but there will definitely be a significant gap with the main camera (after all, the gap between aperture and unit pixel is too large), And it may not meet everyone's expectations.
In terms of virtualization function, Note8 is highly available, but there is still a gap between the accuracy of matting and the level of virtualization and iPhone. If there is no accident, the secondary camera of Note8 is the one with the best application scope and picture quality, but the experience and performance of the main camera still have some setbacks. I hope the firmware update after the official launch will be improved.
Endurance&Charging&Heating
Although the body becomes thicker and larger, the Note8 battery is only 3300mAh, which is only the normal battery capacity of the 5.5 inch screen phone, because it needs to accommodate the S Pen. Battery capacity ratio S8+ （3500mAh） Smaller capacity, 0.1 inch increase screen Note8 The negative factor of battery life is that even though the power consumption per unit area of the new screen is lower, it still cannot fill the gap in battery capacity.
GFXBench endurance test
In the two level endurance tests of GFXBench, Note8 and S8+have each other's victory or defeat. In the actual test, after 30 minutes of large-scale games (NBA 2K15), 30 minutes of wifi Internet access and 30 minutes of local video playback, a total of 1.5 hours of endurance test, the remaining power is 84%. The endurance of Note8 is lower than that of S8/S8+, but it is still slightly better than most domestic flagship.
It should be noted that Samsung has different rendering resolutions to choose from. The highest resolution is used for testing. However, under the system's default 2220 * 1080 resolution, only the power consumption of the game part is reduced by 1%, which is not different. The highest resolution can be turned on all the time.
After Note7, Samsung has become very conservative about the battery and charging technology (the limit charging power of Note7 can reach 20W). Like S8/S8+, Note8 supports QC2.0, Samsung AFC and PD fast charging, but the charging power is much lower, and the peak value of Note8 fast charging is about 12W.
Charging node table
Charging node diagram - converted to mAh table
It takes 1 hour and 40 minutes to charge from 5% to 100%. The advantage is that the charging rate has not dropped before 90%, but the charging speed at each stage is quite ordinary. After converting into the actual charge, the gap will be more obvious. There is no doubt that Note8 is the model with the lowest charging speed among Android flagship models. Fortunately, the machine has a good endurance.
Note8 Front X-ray
In terms of fever, after 20 minutes of NBA 2K15, the highest temperature on the front of Note8 appeared in the center of the left edge, about 37.4 degrees; The highest temperature on the back is about 3.75 degrees at the right edge. This is where the Snapdragon 835 is located. The hotspot is very concentrated and close to the border.
In ordinary medium and large games, the GPU load of Snapdragon 835 is very low, so the NBA 2K15 in Note8 has a very low fever, but it basically represents the fever of ordinary medium and small games. While for large games and double grills, Note8 is still relatively hot, and the extreme temperature is not low. The peak internal temperature recorded by the software can reach 96 degrees. The authenticity of this extreme value needs to be discussed, but the position on the right edge is really hot under high load. In general, Note8 performs better, but the cost is that the heat is greater than S8/S8+, but it is acceptable.
summary
At the tenth anniversary of the iPhone, when everyone is waiting for the iPhone 8, Galaxy Note8 is not very sincere, especially when Samsung has launched the Galaxy S8+. Compared with S8+, the difference of Note8 is summarized as appearance, S Pen and sub camera (oh, there is another 5G). Apart from handwriting enthusiasts who have no choice, users who value other features of Note8 should carefully consider whether to choose S8+or Note8:
A more robust appearance, a higher screen share, and a modified camera have different views on beauty and ugliness, but they are also relatively big changes;
The screen is bigger and more shocking, but the color must have dropped significantly. Although it is insignificant to most people, it is also a small slot;
The ancestral S Pen is little different from the previous generation of Note7, and the new dual application shortcuts and handwritten gifs are not big innovations;
The availability of secondary photography is high, and the image quality performance and scope of application easily beat that of iPhone 7 Plus. The virtualization algorithm has good availability, but there is still a gap between it and iPhone. Even the experience of primary photography and photography has slightly regressed;
Compared with S8+, the endurance and heating control are slightly backward, but the performance output, especially the graphics performance, is stronger. Unfortunately, the charging is still extremely conservative.
My attitude towards Note8 ultimately depends on how much its price is higher than that of S8+(Samsung's price is still unknown as of September 8). However, the author's attitude towards Note8 now is more flattering than flattering, mainly due to Samsung's insufficient toothpaste squeezing efforts and its failure to meet the author's expectations. However, the absolute performance of Note8 is still unmatched on the Android platform. At least in the foreseeable half a year, Note8 is the only mobile phone that can take photos, has S Pen, extremely balanced comprehensive performance, has IP68 protection, and has its own cool giant screen and appearance.
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