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Galaxy Note 8's dual-camera system has some awesome features that make it stand out from the rest

By Milen Yanachkov

Updated: Aug 23, 2017, 10:36 AM

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The Galaxy Note 8 sports a trendy dual-cam setup with some nifty new tricks up its sleeve

Dual cameras are the hot new trend in the mobile world, and we've seen manufacturers combine all sorts of cameras on the back of their devices over the last year or so – wide plus even wider, color and monochrome, wide plus telephoto, you name it. So, we weren't the least bit surprised when we learned that Samsung's brand new Galaxy Note 8 would also prominently feature a dual-camera setup. We were also not surprised when Samsung told is it would consist of a regular camera backed up by a telephoto lens, iPhone 7 Plus-style, but boy, did Samsung have a bunch of sweet surprises in store for us!

Samsung is also using the dual cameras for a portrait mode feature that will let you blur the background behind your subject

First off, both cameras on the back of the Galaxy Note 8 will have optical image stabilization (OIS), whereas the iPhone 7 Plus uses OIS only for its primary camera, and we think that's a great decision on Samsung's part. Long story short, the longer the focal length of a lens is, the more problematic camera shake becomes. It isn't a big deal during the day, when you'll be generally shooting at a high

Dual OIS is the way to go and Samsung is paving it with the Note 8

shutter speed and low ISO, but becomes more problematic as the sun lowers, which is made all the worse by the fact that telephoto lenses have smaller apertures. In such situations, to compensate for shake, the camera needs to shoot at a higher shutter speed, but when there's not enough light, it also needs to up the ISO, which automatically means noisier photos. But anyway, since the Note 8 will have OIS in both cameras, which, aided by the fact that its telephoto shooter will have an f/2.4 aperture (a step up from the f/2.8 telephoto camera on the 7 Plus), will surely help Note 8 owners take sharper photos at 2x zoom, even after sundown.

READ MORE: Galaxy S8 vs $2000 mirrorless camera and DSLR: Ultimate camera face-off

But the Galaxy Note 8 boasts another cool new camera feature that we want to talk about, and it's much simpler than OIS. Imagine that you're taking a photo but you're on the fence on whether you should use the wide-angle camera or zoom in on something interesting that's further away. Well, the Galaxy Note 8 offers a very, very simple, yet very effective, solution to this problem. It simply takes two pictures at the same time—on with the primary shooter and one through the telephoto lens—leaving you with two shots taken at different focal lengths! You can opt out of this in settings, of course, but we think it's a pretty neat feature that may prove convenient for smartphone shutterbugs further down the line.