It’s expensive, but Samsung’s heavyweight in the smartphone division boasts a wide range of tempting features. We were particularly impressed with the dual cameras, slick performance, and S Pen functionality in our Samsung Galaxy Note 8 review. As great as it is, Samsung’s biggest and best is not flawless. We’ve been digging around forums and comments to find the Galaxy Note 8 problems you need to know about and unearth advice on how to work around them or fix them.
We’ve seen a handful of reports at the Samsung forum and at the XDA developers forum about unresponsive screens and phantom touches. People are finding that they can’t swipe down the notification shade sometimes and at other times touches are registering without people touching the screen.
This is a common complaint with smartphones and there are a lot of possible causes. We found the Note 8 battery life to be good in our review, lasting us a full day between charges even with medium to heavy use, but not everyone has had the same experience. There are threads on XDA Developers forums and Android Central forums bemoaning the battery life.
There’s a slight risk with OLED smartphone displays that you’ll end up with permanent image outlines or patches on your screen, most commonly a faint ghost of the navigation buttons. The risk is increased if you have the same static icons on the screen for a long time and you crank your brightness up high. A few forum posts have popped up complaining about this issue on the Note 8. Don’t waste your time with apps that claim to fix screen burn-in, you need to contact Samsung about this one.
The Note 8 should charge wirelessly on any Qi wireless charging pad, and it will charge a bit faster on supported fast charging pads. For some people, however, it seems to be refusing to work. There are posts at the Samsung forum, the XDA Developers forum, and the Android Central forum.
Experiencing a frozen Samsung Galaxy Note 8? You’re not alone. Galaxy Note 8 users around the world are complaining of phones freezing up on Samsung’s community forums. These reports first appeared shortly after the release of the Note 8, but have been growing in numbers over the past few weeks. The problem does not appear to be tied to a specific model of the Samsung Galaxy Note 8, though Android Police reports that SM-N950U units on U.S. carriers, unlocked European (SM-N950F), and dual-SIM (SM-N950D) models have been listed in the forums.
An exact cause is not known, users have noticed the phones tend to freeze when using the Contacts app or other apps that pull information from the Contacts app, such as the dialer, messaging apps, and more. Several people suggest the issue stems from downloading the Google Contacts app, which may be conflicting with Samsung’s Contacts app, though this has not been confirmed.
Samsung has issued a statement and potential fix for the issue:
“We are aware of a limited number of reports about Note 8 devices experiencing an issue with some of their applications. Any consumer who experiences this issue should update their apps in the Samsung Galaxy Store and the Google Play Store. Any consumers with questions should contact us directly at 1-800-SAMSUNG so that we can help them.”
There is currently no solution to the problem, but the following two inconvenient workarounds can restore functionality, at least temporarily, to your phone:
For people who are experiencing frequent freeze-ups, Android Authority is reporting that you can contact Samsung support to arrange an “evaluation and repair.” Samsung’s U.S. support number is 800-726-7864. Users outside the United States can check out Samsung’s country-specific site to find relevant support options.
Two new highly requested iCloud plugins just got added to ChatGPT, giving people who rely on Apple’s Mail and Calendar services a way to search emails, check appointments, and manage their schedules directly through the chatbot.
The integration is rolling out to all ChatGPT plans, including the free tier. You can access it on the web, desktop, and iOS.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.
Samsung’s scandal over its Game Optimizing Service, or GOS, has returned with a bill attached. South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission has tentatively fined the company 20.1 billion won, or about $15.1 million, over gaming claims made for the Galaxy S21, Galaxy S22, and Tab S8.
The regulator says Samsung promoted the devices as gaming powerhouses without disclosing that GOS placed preset CPU and GPU limits on certain demanding games. Samsung disputes that conclusion, calling GOS a legitimate way to manage heat.