Samsung Galaxy Note 8, 64GB, Orchid Gray - Fully Unlocked (Renewed)

Best phone I ever had

Background: I've owned and loved dearly a Note 4, followed by an LG Stylo 4. While the Stylo was a bit of an upgrade over the Note 4, the Note 8 is leaps and bounds above that. So my comparisons will be against those two models.First off, i'm cheap. So there's no way I'd pay full price for the latest Note - it's just not worth that premium price. Thus I started with the Stylo 4 a few months ago - an excellent value phone in many ways.Now that Note 8s are "ancient", they're much more affordable so they're finally in my cheapskate price range.The Note 8 is *blazing* fast compared to the Note 4 or Stylo 4 (with the Stylo being considerably newer than the Note 4, it wasn't hardly any faster). The Note 8 does everything almost instantly: Open apps, switching between apps, loading web pages. Wowsers it's QUICK!Next, battery life. The Note 4 was terrible, even with a brand new battery. Between the Samsung and AT&T bloatware, and the fact that it's just older less power-efficient, I'd rarely get through a day on the Note 4. The Stylo 4 has unbelievable battery life - I could often go two days without charging even with moderate to high usage. The Note 8 is darn near that, amazingly, despite the fact that it performs MUCH better than the Stylo. I'm not in constant worry about using the GPS and wanting to plug it in at the same time. Or play Word with Friends and watch the battery go down a perctange point every few minutes, which it did on the Note 4.Of course the Note 8 has the venerable stylus which is great for note taking or precision taps on the screen. The Stylo 4's stylus is NOT precision the way the Note's is, but it's really good for lots of things including writing notes (that look like you wrote in crayon). The Note 8's is top notch.A number of people complain about the position of the Note 8's fingerprint sensor. I often unlock the phone with my left hand and then tap with my right. So the position seems fine to me. I also unlock it with my right hand and, while it's a little bit of a stretch, it's not that bad really once you get used to it. However, the Stylo 4's fingerprint sensor is really in a perfect spot, so kudos to LG on that one.The Note 8's screen is... amazeballs. It seems to be brighter than the Stylo's, but also has richer colors. It's a joy to look at.The Note 8's speaker is also louder and clearer than the Stylo's. It's what you'd expect from a premium phone.The curved screen is pretty pointless to me. It's gimicky and makes things hard to tap reliably when they're near the edge - even worse if you're using the stylus. I just don't see the point of it, other than it looks cool. Meh.I haven't used the camera much, so I can't comment on that. But I was excited to write this review and endorse the Note 8 so I figured I'd pass on that one.All that I've said is about the Note 8 in general. In particular, the one I bought was this refurbished one. The phone arrived in "near mint" condition. Screen was flawless. Popped my AT&T SIM chip and booted it. Absolutely no problems connecting to anything. It was completely as advertised. However, I did have to run about a thousand system updates over the course of several nights. Now it's up to Android 9, which seems to have battery life improvements and some very nice UI simplifications and streamlining.All things considered, buying this phone now that it's dropped in price so much over new is a really great deal. You won't be sorry upgrading from the Note 4, or the Stylo 4 which is still a current model (even though the Note 8 is older).

The refurbished phone is great. The refurbished s-pen ... not so much.The new s pen has multi-hardness sensitivity, which sounds great, but this one must be worn down or something because the thickness jumps from ─── to ████ randomly. Try to go lightly as to make the lines thin ─── and it only draws half the time, so if you try to draw a 5 point star, you'll just get a weird broken triangle. Pushing down hard to make it always thick ███ works, but who wants to do that all the time? I wonder if part of the reason was the stylus didn't actually fit inside the cardboard box it was crammed into with the phone.Now as far as the phone is concerned, it was in very good condition. No scratches or scuffs, nothing worn down (inside the phone anyway). And it runs just great. I don't think I ever ran anything on the Note 5 that was slow, so I can't really tell you if normal use is faster, but the VR doesn't shut down after 5 minutes from overheating like the Note 5 did. Glad I didn't bother making one of those DIY cooling units some Gear VR owners have. Also the bluetooth seems to work better because I no longer have to keep it in my right pocket to keep my headphones from dropping out. I'm saddened that they've done away with putting apps in a moveable window, a staple of the Note series. You can still go split screen, and the post-note-4 implementation of smart select still works great, but kiss windowed apps goodbye. The fancy "glitter scribble" feature seems annoying to me, but my Sailor Moon fangirl friends think it's amazing. The curved surface is idiotic, I don't know why they keep pushing it. It's just one more way to make you scream at your phone for accidentally doing something because part of your palm touched something. Also good luck finding a case that protects your phone if it falls on anything other than a completely flat surface. It uses USBC so no more trying to figure out which way the plug goes in. It still supports Qualcom QuickCharge 3, but no Power Delivery. I mean it recognizes it when it sees it, it just doesn't USE it. Considering this phone's ACTUAL predecessor, I think any sane person can understand why it won't accept more than 7 volts.Generally, the Note 8 is a welcome step up from the 5, and given that buying a new s pen from Samsung is only $25, it's still a better economic choice than paying 9 freaking hundred dollars for the thing.