With Samsung's introduction of the Note 9, something critical about the Samsung Note phones hasn't been mentioned. It seems that every review of the recent Samsung Note phones--Note 7, Note 8, and Note 9--have omitted the core reason that the phone is the size and dimensions that it is. At its core, from a visual aspect, it's not a phone; it's a pocket movie theater, and it has the the exact aspect ratio of the new widescreen format: 64x27, also known as 2.35 to 1! (That's 4 cubed by 3 cubed, the third generation of aspect ratios: 4x3 of TV, and 16x9 (4 squared by 3 squared) for the prior widescreen format.)
Play a current movie from any of your favorite streaming services and you'll notice that:
There are a huge number of large or incremental improvements throughout the Note 8 hardware and software that collectively improve the phone dramatically over both the S7 Edge that I had most recently and the Note 7 from the year previous.
One of the most unexpected software changes (that couldn't exist without its matching hardware change) is that the bottom Android control buttons (apps list, home, and back) are in a button bar that can (and does) hide. Not only do we get more screen real estate as a result of the longer phone, but then we get an even higher percentage of it during full-screen activities (showing pictures or video, and I presume video games)!
It is massively unfair if it's only the guy that gets the new technology. After getting everything transferred to my wife's new Note 8, we started setting up the screen widgets. We discovered something about the huge screen that the Note 8 has. The home screens allow for lot of icons across. That means that a widget that was designed for a screen only four icons wide turns out too small to read. (We had to change the screen icon settings to fever icons wide to get the widget to display large enough to read.)
Color matters to the human eye, and the Android control button bar background color can be changed, just as the folder backgrounds can be (probably part of the core Android, but I'm not sure). A subtle yet beautiful touch.
Swiping on the screen is now a control aspect! Saving more space on the screen, allowing more of our stuff and removing the built-in cost of Android, the Apps button (show the list of all installed apps) is now a swipe up from the main button bar. Swiping up from lower on the screen allows you to get to the Samsung Pay credit card payment system (if you have it installed). The difference is where you start the swipe, and by just half an inch. Ya know what? I'm okay with that.
In the video player, swipe up and down on the left side of the screen controls the brightness; and on the right side it controls the volume.
The Edge panels, of which I became an enthusiastic fan with my Samsung S7 Edge, are another powerful software addition that can only be achieved because of the hardware. Very convenient, easy to use, configurable, and another usability improvement that Samsung got spot-on right! No matter the application or function that you are doing, those Edge panels enable a switching paradigm that is just wonderful.
My selection of Edge panels: applications, tasks, calendar, contacts, and weather, in that order. This order matches the screen layout pattern that I use of folders, frequent apps, calendar, and contacts; weather is only on the Edge.
Quite simply: shallow pockets! The phone sticks out the top of the pocket quite far. Especially with the short pockets in women's clothes, this means that the phone has a higher likelihood of falling out. Even with the deep cell phone pocket in the cargo pants that I wear, this is a bit of an issue.
It seems that there is a downside to having a phone that is this tall. because it's this tall, that means that the phone also has to be wide in order to keep the aspect ratio of the screen. But you know what, it's not really that bad. I still have the cellphone case for the note 7 from last year, I pulled it out, and it turns out that the Note 8 is not as wide as the Note 7 was even though the Note 8 is taller.
Compared to what remember about using the Pen with the Note 7, the new pen and the upgraded software is a massive improvement! I am able to write much faster with the Note 8 than I had been able to with the Note7. When I write standing up, holding the phone in one hand, I am able to write in the pen area at an angle and the phone does an excellent job of reading my handwriting!
Parts of this I've been doing using the S Pen, parts of this I've been doing by using the voice to text, and neither one of them is perfect. But both of them are excellent compared to trying to use thumbs to type text!
Obviously, speaking to the phone is much faster than trying to text, either using the thumbs or by using the pen. When you are doing dictation to the phone there's a keyboard that has some of the punctuation. However, using those punctuation marks stops your ability to dictate. What I would like to figure out, and maybe I will, is how to dictate punctuation to the phone without having to interrupt speaking.
Note 8 comes with lots of memory, and it also supports very large microSD cards (up to 256GB); excellent for storing the high resolution photos and videos that it shoots.
When you are in a place to write (like writing a text message), to the left of the comma (which is to the left of the space bar) is a capital T with the picture of a pen. That switches the keyboard into pen input mode.
The trick to using the stylus to write is to work in entire words at a time. Don't try to write a word a few letters at a time; instead, write the entire word. Make sure to leave a bit of space between the words.
When you pause for about half a second, the handwriting interpreter converts what you wrote. You can force it to be faster by tapping on the space bar.
If you want to practice writing, Google has a light-weight note taking application called Keep (yellow icon with a light bulb). Go to the Play Store, download it, and use it for practice! The keep application on the phone syncs with Google's site; you can see your Keep notes on the website keep.google.com.
Another note taking application that is much more capable is Microsoft OneNote. It's the phone version of the desktop application that comes with Microsoft Office. The phone version of the application lacks the ability to do some of the organizational things, but you can easily work around that by setting up a Microsoft account, keeping your notebook on Microsoft Drive, and opening the same notebook from both the PC version and the phone version. They automatically sync with each other.
