Samsung’s played its last hand in the 2017 smartphone battle. The Galaxy Note 8 has finally been unveiled, and in all fairness, it’s doesn’t look half-bad. But put it next to an iPhone 8, and you can immediately see why Samsung’s going to lose this round.
MacRumors has put its test Galaxy Note 8 up against an iPhone 8 dummy unit so that we can all see how the design differs. In a lot of ways, they’re similar phones: big screen, no bezel, no physical home button, and a glass-and-metal design. On paper, it should be a close fight.
But when you stack both phones up next to each other, you can see that the iPhone 8 design just makes a lot more sense. It’s cleaner, slicker, and more personable. There’s not a lot of consistency to Samsung’s design: it’s straight and boxy in some places, but then goes the full other direction with curved edges. Apple’s design harks back to iPhone designs from the past: we’ve got the same glass-and-metal construction as the iPhone 4, the camera module from the iPhone 7 Plus, and the gentle curviness of the original iPhone.
The iPhone 8 should also have a better screen-to-bezel ratio, which shouldn’t be overlooked. The Galaxy Note 8 has a massive 6.3-inch screen, plus a “chin” at the bottom. That’s going to be a truly massive phone to try and h0ld in your hands.
Now, the iPhone 8 isn’t some shrivelling waif of a device. The screen is rumored to be 5.8-inches, which is a massive step up from the 4.7-inch screen in the current iPhone. But the device won’t physically be all that much larger, thanks to the complete lack of bezel and Apple’s decision to axe the home button.
I’m also excited for the design of the edges. How good a phone feels to hold in your hand is something that gets overlooked a lot — you particularly don’t want to drop a $1,000 phone made mostly from glass. But it looks like the iPhone 8 will have edges much like those found on the iPhone 4, which is great news. That was one of the best phones in terms of grip that’s come along in the last decade, and one of the only iPhones I’ve ever used without a case.
