Please excuse typos.. This is long sorry .
I received my note 8 on September 5th as I'm coming out of my third note4 which I absolutely loved. I've had three Note 4s do to me dropping them however I had insurance so I was able to get a new one each time. best phone I've ever had by far. great quality pictures never any issue at all with the Note 4.
Note 8 came as I said on September 5th opened it up and it was beautiful. It was easy to set up with no issues at all. I used the Smart Switch and that worked like a dream. First, This is by far the fastest phone I have ever had. Anything that doesn't have to do with WiFi internally on this phone is again, the quickest I've ever experienced. I had 70,000+ messages in my Note 4 30,000 of which were my Ex-Wifes (which I need to keep lol)... before the transfer I wanted to clean out some of those messages (from the note 4) that I didn't need the only way to do that I found out is one by one. Before I did that I used an app called 'Smstoexcel' which I highly recommend as it is an incredible app and very helpful for exactly what I needed although it doesn't transfer pictures. Of course I tried deleting full threads of messages from business associates friends and family but the Note 4 would send an error message and stop running the message app. So I had to delete some 30000 text one by one. At first I tried two thousand at a time than 1,000 than 500 finally it would take up to three hundred at a time you do the math. To delete those three hundred at a time it would take the note for approximately 15 minutes each time. Bottom line I got down from 70,000 to 45,000 and did the smart switch for messages. Smart Switch is a great tool and really easy to use as it is quick, accurate and did everything I asked of it. After the 45,000 messages were on my Note 8 I wanted to do a little test so tried to delete 500 messages at once and that took about three seconds to complete I then try to do 3000 messages at once that took about three seconds I then took all 45,000 ish and deleted them in about 4 seconds if that.. again, just shows how fast internally this phone is.
Obviously the picture quality is incredible all screenshots any messages I get emails anything that on this screen is just impeccable and a pleasure to view and work with.
So far no bugs, no issues at all as it it is running perfect, smooth and performing top notch.
The few little things I notice is probably personal preference and that's the case itself is so smooth that it will fall out of my hands and no time. I bought a cover which is great and now that issue goes away but there's no way I'll be able to use this phone with no case on it.
The other thing is when you hold the phone horizontal to take pictures my fingers keep hitting the Bixby and/or volume controls which isn't fun at all.
After having many many smartphones over the last many years I can honestly say this is the best in its class by far. Very happy with it. My first impression (score) would be a 9.898 on the scale as there is no such thing as a perfect 10 (smartphone).