After two years South Africans finally have a new Samsung Note smartphone to buy. As you may recall the Note 7 never made it to South Africa due to a battery fault that caused many handsets to spontaneously catch fire.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 feels like a greatest hits for the Note series. It has every feature that made previous Notes worth buying and slams them into the new Samsung smartphone design ushered in by the Galaxy S8, but as a consequence doesn't feel particularly new or innovative compared to...

great battery; impressive screen; water resistant; great camera; great stylus; microSD card slot; wireless charging

only Android 7.0; no USB-PD; fingerprint scanner placement awkward; expensive; very big for pockets

With the Note 8, Samsung is indeed back with a bang (pun intended). The Galaxy Note 8 is the best Note the company has ever made.

S-Pen; Great camera; Beautiful design

Expensive; Just a work day's battery life; Fingerprint scanner placement can be frustrating

So we all know what happened to the Note 7 , but the past is the past and Samsung has moved on. The Korean electronics giant however, did have the guts to continue with the Note series and just a few days before IFA Berlin, announced the new Note 8, a smartphone series we once thought, we would...

A year ago, I wrote that the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 was the best big phone ever made. It had excellent performance, a great camera, and a refined design that was surprisingly manageable for a device with a large screen.

Lovely display; Fast performance; Reliable battery life; Excellent standard camera

It's enormous; It's expensive; Secondary camera is far inferior to main camera; Terrible fingerprint scanner placement

Being Samsung's flagship-tier device, the Galaxy Note8 is armed with an Exynos 8895 SoC, ARM Mali-G7 GPU, and 6GB of RAM. This combo should mean that the Note8 crunches numbers very well.

Inarguably beautiful; Powerful enough to run most tasks smoothly; Rear camera setup is good; IP68 S Pen allows for underwater doodling; Plenty of biometric locks

Fingerprint sensor is poorly positioned; Sets a new high for smartphone prices

The Galaxy Note 8 retakes the throne as the ultimate Android phone for now, but some intense competition is just over the horizon.

The Galaxy Note 8 tops Samsung's already excellent S8 and S8 Plus with dual cameras and a boatload of stylus tricks; It's the most feature-rich Android phone you can buy

An expensive phone, the Note 8 has more features than most people will need; Samsung's portrait mode can be finicky; The poorly placed fingerprint reader repeats the Galaxy S8's worst design flaw

With its exceptional screen, solid performance and an improved S Pen, it's no surprise that Samsung's Galaxy Note 8 is its best big phone ever. It also doesn't hurt that it has one of the best dual camera setups we've ever seen.

Huge; beautiful display; Excellent; water-resistant build; Great dual camera; S Pen is now more useful and fun

Very expensive; Bixby can be flaky; Not a huge improvement over the S8 Plus; US version gets less storage than other regions

You can't say Samsung's Galaxy Note brand isn't resilient: even explosions and costly recalls couldn't dampen enthusiasm for the new Note 8. Phablet fans are dedicated, though, especially those who demand stylus support too, which means the Note 8 arrives with an audience of eager buyers waiting to...

Huge; beautiful display; Genuinely useful stylus; Excellent camera; Solid battery life

Prodigious price; Fingerprint scanner is awkwardly-placed; Bixby button is annoying

The is an important product for Samsung. Not only because the Note 8 is the company's newest, flagship, large-screen smartphone, but because it also carries the additional burden of righting all of the wrongs associated with the company's snafu.