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That's the overwhelming feeling I got after a test drive with the Galaxy Note8. Samsung's earlier flagship for 2017, the Galaxy S8—specifically the Galaxy S8+—is so close to the Note8 I'm not sure why anyone would wait the five months of lag time between the two devices.

The Note line used to equal a big jump in screen size, but this year, you're getting a barely there, 0.1-inch increase. Realities of the SoC market mean that you're getting pretty much the same specs: a top-of-the-line Exynos 8895 or Snapdragon 835. Some will point to the 6GB of RAM in the Note8 as a differentiator, but versions of the Galaxy S8 were also available with 6GB of RAM. The big differences left then are the dual cameras, which offer the same 2×-zoom functionality as several other flagships, and the S-Pen.

All the good stuff from the Galaxy S8 is still here. The slim-bezel design is great looking, modern, and space efficient. The on-screen buttons are a great change, allowing you to change the default "Samsung order" to a button order that matches the rest of the Android ecosystem. The always-on "force press" home button is still here and still awesome, allowing you to just hard-press on the screen—at any time—to use the home button or wake the phone.

The sculpting on the sides still feels great, as all the surfaces meet together in a smooth, rounded shape. Samsung is one of the rare OEMs still shipping a headphone jack, and—as someone who is going to charge his Bluetooth headphones at least once today—the port is still very much appreciated. Samsung Pay is still the best and most compatible phone payment system around.

All the bad stuff is here, too. The body is entirely glass, making any single drop a heart-stopping affair and making the whole phone a fingerprint magnet. The one place you'll have trouble getting a fingerprint on is the fingerprint reader, which is still in a ridiculous spot, high on the back of the phone. The iris scanner is still a slow "aim it at your face" procedure that isn't a real replacement for the fingerprint reader. The hardware Bixby button is still here, and it's still not configurable to something more useful than Samsung's "me too" voice assistant. TouchWiz still Samsung-ifies the whole OS, and, remember, this is still an old version of Android with no hope of fast updates or ever catching up with Google's release cycle.

The fingerprint reader is a real poster child for questioning why the Note line exists. If the launches are so close together that you can't do anything about the Galaxy S8's biggest flaw, why are you bothering? It really stings that the fastest, easiest, best form of authentication might as well not exist on the Note8. I suspect that, like the S8, I'll end up ignoring both the fingerprint reader and the iris scanner and go back to the old-school PIN or pattern as my primary phone authentication.

Like past Note devices, the S-Pen stylus is here and works like it always has. Writing is fast, fluid, and pressure sensitive, without a hint of lag. Pulling out the stylus when the screen is on will launch a radial menu with common pen apps. Pulling the stylus out when the phone is off will open up a "quick notes" mode. This is a low-power, all-black screen that lets you immediately jot down notes right on the screen. New for the Note8 is the ability to write up to 100 pages in this mode. On the downside, the S-Pen still feels like the cheapest stylus money can buy. It's a hollow plastic tube that doesn't feel like it belongs on a $900 device.

The Note8 feels like an entirely marketing-driven exercise. The Galaxy S line launches when it does for engineering reasons: it's synced up with the SoC release cycle, allowing Samsung to ship a new device with a new chip as soon as possible. But by the time the holidays and a new iPhone come along, the Galaxy S line is several months old, and Samsung Marketing wants something new and shiny to put in front of consumers. Samsung Engineering doesn't really have a solid solution for Samsung Marketing's plan, though. It's the same device, with just a few tweaks here and there.