kb9522

I didn't mean that owning one makes the owner obnoxious.

They take up way too much space, barely fit in a pocket and when they do, it doesn't leave space for anything else. It's difficult to use one handed because one key ends up being half a football field away from a key on the otherside of the keyboard. Just a complete mess.

I get why they do it. People want larger screens for media consumption.

Me? I'll use my laptop with a much nicer and larger display for movies and my phone for communicating, thanks.

Dodge DeBoulet

Those are highly subjective claims. I'm also a Note 8 owner and they're simply a non-issue for me.

The Note 8 has a "One Handed Mode" for just that reason. With the feature enabled, you swipe up from the lower left or right corner of the screen and get a display/keyboard well-sized for one-handed operation.

Ok. You be you

penner42

Besides better cameras, one of the biggest differences with flagship phones is performance. They're MUCH faster, with every new model that comes out. All the time waiting for apps to load or web pages to render adds up. Does it add up enough that spending $800-$1000 vs. $40 is worth it? That's up to you to decide for yourself. But it can be very significant.

I'm still on an "old" Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge. I kinda want the Note 8 (it's actually not that much bigger than my S6!) but mine still performs well enough that I haven't found the need, yet.

pinniped

This.

And once a new round of phones are out, developers start taking advantage of the latest performance. New apps often don't run as well on older phones.

My own personal sweet spot has settled on "last year's flagship". My current device is a GS7, a bought in fall 2016 when various promos dropped it down into the $300 range.

I went through a phase where I was experimenting with midrange-to-cheap phones. Bought my daughter and mom Moto G4's, and we had nothing but problems with them. They simply couldn't run a variety of different applications, even when they were brand new. Plus the camera performed poorly, which is one of the must-haves on any smartphone. My daughter has decided to go the iPhone route (kids these days... ), but she actually wanted the small phone so we got her a $75 iPhone 5 and she's been happy ever since. When it dies, we'll bump her up to the 6...

Kagehitokiri

a few of us dont have smartphones

while others push the smartphones to their capability limits

$75 iphone 5?

pinniped

Yes, approximately this:

https://swappa.com/listing/MWL772/view

Had a few minor nicks on the back and corners but a good screen and no functional issues. Bought it about 5 months ago. It is still working well.

chipmaster

What kind of car do you drive

ONe can make that argument about car, house/neighborhood, flying economy or business, Motel 6 or St Regis etc. etc.

For the record I have two iPhones a 7Plus and a 6Plus and will likely upgrade my family to iPhoneX but my last four car purchases have been 3 years + used and I shoot a D5/D810 ( oh, both bought used too )

PTravel

Well, all I can say is it fits in my pockets just fine.

Well, not my experience.

That's not why I want it. I never watch media on my phone, and I don't play games. I do read long email messages, review documents and, also, prefer not to have to pull out reading glasses every time I want to make a phone call.

[/quote]Me? I'll use my laptop with a much nicer and larger display for movies and my phone for communicating, thanks.[/QUOTE]My Note 8 makes a very serviceable computer with the Dex doc, a USB monitor, and a bluetooth mouse and keyboard.

nkedel

There still aren't many 6" plus phones, and the one 6"+ mainstream Samsung is longer rather than sticking to standard proportions (and I always found 16:10 more useful than 16:9.)

I think the term "phablet" peaked a couple of years ago. Although pushing to 6.3" may just be big enough to still qualify... I hope some other manufacturers decide to follow past the 6" size that seems to be the limit elsewhere.

I'm lucky enough not to have vision problems with smaller (ish) phones although having had 2.8" and 3.5" screens far enough back I'm glad that's inconceivably small now... I can't thumb type on smaller phones and even the difference between 5.7" to 5.9" is enough to help with my lack of dexterity.

Just depends on your pants. With loose casual slacks (khakhis or similar), I can get an 8" tablet in my pocket on most of my pants and still sometimes do for reading comics... or have my 6" phone in the same pocket as my wallet, and wearing casual button-up shirts, half the time my 6" phone fits in my pocket albeit with the top sticking out.

A lot of phones do. It's still not exactly common, but it's far from rare.

For that matter, LTE is the same on both, just different bands. Having bands for all of them is probably less common than having CDMA + GSM/HSPA for the 3G/2G fallback, and there are still a decent number of phone with enough bands to be usable.

Having used both PCs and Macs from the mid-1980s throug the mid-1990s before giving up on Mac, I find the present way the Mac GUI works pretty much intolerable and incomprehensible.

For that matter, having had to go back to Windows 3.x briefly for something recently (converting some really old documents in multiple steps) I realized just how little modern Windows has in common with the pre-Win95 GUI.

I don't have the thumb dexterity to try to use a phone one handed. For typing, I use two thumbs. For other stuff, hold with one hand, tap/drag with the index finger from the other works well. A bigger phone works much better for me for that.

And, as I said, it just depends on your pockets. Too big would be too big to hold one handed to read, which my 8" tablet kind of was but was just manageable, and too wide to read as a single column of text which my 8" tablet wasn't. So I'd totally just take one of those (especially a newer/lighter one than my now rather dated Tab3 8") with a proper phone/LTE modem in it... compared to that, my 6" phone is quite small.

WIRunner

I've used some cheap phones before. You definitely get what you pay for. They're good for basic things, but they're overall pretty much crap.

The bigger "suckers" would be upgrading to the newest flagship every year.

kb9522

Geez... and I thought a 5" screen was large.

nkedel

Because of the declining size of bezels, old 5" screen phones can easily be as big as 5.5" phones today, and the 6" phones I've owned (Nexus 6 and Huawei Mate 9 -- actually 5.9" but close enough) are both not effectively larger in footprint than Apple's first big screen phone (6 Plus, 5.5")

It looks like the 8 Plus is still rather porky relative to its screen size:
Huawei Mate 9 (5.9" 16:9 1920x1080) : 156.9 x 78.9 x 7.9 mm (6.18 x 3.11 x 0.31 in)
iPhone 8 Plus (5.5" 16:9 1920x1080) : 6.24 inches (158.4 mm) x 3.07 inches (78.1 mm) x 0.30 inch (7.5 mm)
Galaxy S8+ (6.2" 18.5:9 2960x1440) 159.5 x 73.4 x 8.1 mm (6.28 x 2.89 x 0.32 in)

The running trend with the newest phones is narrower and longer (2:1 or even 21:9, vs. the older 16:9 or even 16:10 or 4:3 on old enough phones... at the same time many Android tables have gone back to the 4:3 which iPad never left)... which isn't super for me but seems popular with a lot of people.

pinniped

I'm still in the small(er) screen camp, but I have to admit the Note 8 is a pretty glorious-looking device. I've never actually owned a phone that size so I'm not sure how I'd like it on a day-in-day-out basis. It does look a bit bulky for pockets...that'd be my main hesitation.

SRQ Guy

The DeX Station is a great piece of engineering. It does need some refinement still, and I hope they keep improving on the experience.

The Note 8 is an incredible device. Samsung seems to have finally worked out its UI lag with a combination of software tweaks and brute force (6 GB RAM). I have read that there are still frame drops in the UI, but I can't see them for whatever that's worth. I don't know if that's because I have imperfect vision of if using Nova Prime eliminates any of the frame drops.

PTravel

I agree on all points. Dex is infinitely better than Atrix, Motorola's attempt at the same thing a number of years ago.

The biggest improvement is the ability to run apps full-screen. Samsung's Galaxy store has a [small] number of Dex-compatible apps, but the biggest news is that the Dex software can run most Nougat-compatible apps in full-screen, even if they don't take advantage of the Dex APIs.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the availability of VPN (built into the Note 8, as it is with most contemporary Android phones), and VNC apps that will run full-screen under Dex, means I can easily access my remote computers and, if necessary, run my Windows apps from my Note 8. The availability of an Android Display Link driver means that I'm not tied to a bulky HDMI-equipped monitor, but can use my very light and portable Asus 15" USB monitor at 1920 x 1080.

I haven't used the Note 8 for media, but I've noticed that it is much faster and more responsive than the Note 3 that it replaced. If I get some time, I'll try running some videos on my Dex setup and report back.