Friends+Design
- Comfortable to hold thanks to its curved sides
- Fairly quick, accurate fingerprint sensor and face unlock
- Made out of plastic, with a glossy finish at the back - a lot of phones in this price range now come with more premium metal and glass builds
- The glossy back also picks up fine scratches easily
Display
- Decent, tall display
- Somewhat thick top and bottom bezels, for a tall display phone
Software
- Coolpad sticks to close-to-stock Android here - which is a smart decision and keeps things nice and simple (there are a few preloaded apps though)
Performance
- Performance is a weak point with an aged MediaTek 6750 SoC - it feels out of place when running modern games like PUBG - and will tend to get warm pretty soon - most good phones in this price bracket do significantly better in terms of performance
Camera
- Below average rear (dual) and front cameras - even when shooting in daylight, the phone is slow to focus, struggles to get the exposure right, missed out on details, and the bokeh mode is average too
- Video recording maxes out at 1080p for the primary camera and 720p for the selfie camera - and with no stabilisation, footage is shaky
Battery
- Battery life is decent, and will last the day - though it's not quite as good as what you would expect with a 4000mAh battery pack (usually a 4000 mAh battery with well optimised software should give you 1 and a half days of battery)
Verdict
- Overall, the Note 8 is strictly average and pulled down most by it's dated hardware and below average cameras - it will find it too tough to stand up to competition in this price bracket - you will want to look at the likes of Redmi 6 and the ZenFone Max Pro M1 instead
