Samsung Note 8: It's Here! Unboxing and setup.

I wrote earlier about my order of a Samsung Note 8 which I plan to take along on my Steemfest trek. I am happy to say it arrived a couple of hours later.

As you can see by the small water bottle to the left, it was quite a large package. Too large for just a phone, even one as large as a Samsung Note.

A little bit of a surprise, as I didn't place the order myself. It came with a Gear VR headset complete with VR controller! W00t! Putting aside the toys for now, I set about unboxing the phone.

In the hand the phone does not feel as huge as one might expect.

Everything taken out of the box: top row are the USB C charging cable and a pair of AKG earphones which, surprisingly, are quite good for freebies. Second row we have a USB connector and a micro USB to USB C adapter, different sized silicon plugs for the earphones, spare tips and tip remover for the stylus and the fast charger.

Gone are the days of having to spend hours backing up your phone, installing the same apps, porting numbers over etc. With Samsung phones you connect the old one into the new one and select Smart Switch, which then gives you a choice of exactly what you want to transfer from your old phone onto the new one. This took around 10 minutes.

My final task before playing with my new phone was to wipe my Gear S3 Frontier smart watch and pair it with the new phone. 5 minutes later it was connected and restored from it's online backup, so now my watch and phone talk to each other. I discovered a surprising feature whereby if the phone detects I am wearing my watch, there is no need to unlock it. This may be good for around the home, but I think I will switch this off and go for the iris scanning technology when I am out and about.

With a glass front and back, I was prepared, and bought a Spigen Tough Armor case yesterday in readiness. It doesn't add too much bulk to the phone, yet protects the delicate camera assembly, while adding some grip to the phone.

Having played around with my new phone for the past few hours, these are my first impressions. The display is excellent; bright, colourful and very large. Despite this, the phone itself does not feel that big. Samsung achieved this by having a very thin bezel along the sides and a greatly reduced one along the top and bottom. I wasn't sure if I would enjoy not having a hardware home button, but very quickly grew accustomed to it. It is pressure sensitive too, which I wasn't expecting: tap and it acts as a normal hardware button, make a harder press and it takes you to the Google Assistant. The phone's performance was noticeably superior to my old S7 Edge. Multi tasking with several apps open didn't cause any slowdown at all, thanks, I suspect, to having 6GB of memory on board. There must be some magic inside the stylus, as it seems to recognise my handwriting even when I cannot read it myself.

I look forward to testing the dual camera system on the phone during my trek across Europe in a few days.

GIF from Giphy.com, Image from Amazon

---

Are you a writer or keen to learn? Do you wish to join a community of like-minded individuals who can help hone your writing skills in the fields of fiction, non-fiction, technical, poetry, songwriting or playwriting? Join us at The Writers' Block on Discord and follow our community account @thewritersblock.