Is S Pen the Only Reason to Buy Galaxy Note 8 Instead of S8?

Samsung Galaxy Note 8's launch gave us a great excuse to talk about this smartphone on our weekly podcast - Orbital. Android enthusiasts Aditya Shenoy and Gagan Gupta join host Pranay Parab to talk about Samsung's latest flagship smartphone. We start by talking about the event and how much time Samsung spent addressing last year's Galaxy Note 7 fiasco. Does the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 have enough new features to differentiate itself from the Galaxy S8 and S8+? We discuss that and many more things on this episode.

We start by looking at the shrinking differences between the Galaxy S8+ and Note 8 and what that means for the future of Samsung smartphones. The S Pen forms the backbone of the Galaxy Note 8 experience but is there much more than that to differentiate it from the S8 and the S8+? We're not too sure. Gagan and Aditya talk about the specifications of the Galaxy Note 8 and wonder whether it's an incremental update or a full-fledged new smartphone.

The discussion moves towards Samsung's software, where we bring up some of the new features of the Galaxy Note 8 such as Live Focus and the way it has implemented the dual cameras. We talk about the dual OIS feature of the camera and how that impacts the way you click photographs. Bixby is another big part of the discussion as we wonder whether the voice assistant can be as good as Google Assistant.

Finally, we talk about the competition as the iPhone 8 and Pixel 2 launches loom in the horizon. This is the part of the show where we give some simple buying advice for anyone who's in the market for a smartphone right now. We speculate on the Samsung Galaxy Note 8's price as well.

That's all for this week's episode of Orbital, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts or RSS, or just hit the play button below.