On 20 July 2017, Samsung tweeted a teaser video showing a darkened device with a stylus, stating the date of its next "Unpacked" event as 23 August 2017.

[9] The Note 8 has a 6.3-inch 1440p Super AMOLED display with curved edges similar to the Galaxy S8, but with a slightly more flat surface area.

[5] It has support for Samsung DeX as well, letting Note 8 users connect their device to a dock and monitor to enable a PC-like computing environment with mouse and keyboard input.

[5][8] A limited edition version for the 2018 Winter Olympics was made, with a white back, gold accents, and themed wallpapers.

[5][8] The S Pen offers expanded software features, including "Live Message" for the creation of handwritten notes combined with emojis resulting in short animated GIFs.

A "Translate" feature now recognizes punctuation marks, letting users highlight entire sentences rather than single words, and supports 71 different languages.

[16][17] The software update brought enhancements and changes in the user interface with the menu options in the home screen and settings streamlined.

[20] Camera testing company DxOMark gave the Note 8 a rating of 94, the joint-highest score of any phone, shared with the iPhone 8 Plus.

[25] Like the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+, the Note 8 was heavily criticized for its placement of the fingerprint scanner, which unlike most other Android phones that have the fingerprint scanner placed underneath the rear camera, the S8, S8+ and Note 8 instead had it placed next to the camera, making it uncomfortable and forces many users to shift their hands upwards in order to reach it.