TechTheDay

Finally, Samsung is ready. They missed out on Barcelona this year, they missed out on CES as well but now they’re ready. After that disastrous launch of the explosive Galaxy Note 7, ten months after Samsung performed the largest recall of smartphones from the market in the history of the industry, Samsung finally has unveiled their newest flagship smartphone: the Galaxy Note 8 this Wednesday.

A Blast From The Past

It was August of last year when Samsung introduced the Galaxy Note 7. Samsung wanted to make sure people won’t think that the Note smartphone is inferior to their Galaxy S product line. So even though the last Note was Note 5 they numbered the new Note as 7.

At first, there was no problem. People noted that the Note 7 was basically an improved version of the S7 and it wasn’t that much impressive. Then, bang! A report came out that a Note 7 caught fire. Then another. One after the other, reports came about how the Note 7 seemed prone to overheating. A recall by Samsung was made, then more problems were discovered. Then a second recall was issued globally and in two weeks Samsung announced that they would discontinue the manufacture of the Note 7.

Some speculated that the flaw came from the batteries itself and not from the phone. Regardless it was a huge blow to Samsung’s PR. It didn’t help that the company’s former president, Lee Jae-yong, was arrested for bribery and corruption just this year. They had spent the next whole year trying to rebuild their name and the public’s confidence in them as well as, probably, redesigning the new Note 8 to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

Dong Jin Koh, Samsung’s Mobile Communications business president, said: “None of us will ever forget what happened last year, I know I won’t.” He also thanked all the Galaxy Note fans during the event this Wednesday.

The New Galaxy Note 8

And now we have the new Galaxy Note 8. As the successor to the Note 7, the first thing you’ll notice is the larger screen, the largest of all phones currently on the market today, a whopping 6.3-inch, Infinity Display capable screen that reaches from edge to edge. The Note 8 also has dual cameras, a first from Samsung, both of which are 12 MPs. The cameras are different: one is a wide angle camera and the other one is a telephoto capable of twice the optical zoom. Both cameras are capable of Optical Image Stabilization. The Note 8 also features Live Focus, which lets the users control the depth of the field.

The new Note 8 comes with 6GB RAM, and 64GB of storage. It allows expandable memory to up to 256GB. It’s powered by a 10-nanometer processor. It also features iris and biometric scanning. It has Samsung’s Knox security technology in both hardware and software. And like other Note phones, the new Note 8 comes with an S Pen stylus as well.

As for the price, the new Note 8 is sold for almost $1,000 from Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile. Pre-orders are now open and the phone is expected to hit the shelves by September 15.

Samsung’s new phone will be the starting line of the company rebuilding the Note brand’s.  But let’s all hope that this time, they checked it thoroughly and unveiled it with 100% assurance that the fiasco last year will never happen again and not because they want to pull eyes away from Apple, who will be launching their iPhone 8 this September.  If successful the company may, yet again, be the one dominating the high-end smartphone market. But they have a good competition with Apple. In the end, we’ll have to wait this September to see the two mobile phone giants clash and find out who will win this battle.