Galaxy Note 8 in Canada: Everything you need to know!

The Galaxy Note 8 is real, and the phone is enormous, both in physical size and expectations. The successor to the ill-fated Note 7 is one of iterative improvement over the Galaxy S8, sharing much of its DNA, while preserving many of the features that made the Note series one of Samsung's best, and most customer-loyal, since 2011.

While the Note 8 resembles the Galaxy S8, it retains the iconic boxiness of the Note line, with a 6.3-inch QHD display and some giant specs, including 6GB of RAM and a minimum of 64GB of internal storage — though other parts of the world get options with 128GB and 256GB —and a dual camera setup, the first for Samsung.

But what's specific to the Canadian launch? Here's what you need to know:

How much will it cost?

The obvious question is what the Galaxy Note 8 will cost, and it's not cheap: the phone will fetch a premium price of $1299 when purchased outright from Samsung or a carrier.

With the typical $500 subsidy, expect to pay roughly $799 for the phone at the time of purchase when signing a two-year contract, which would make it one of the most expensive phones to ever hit the Canadian shores.

Of course, the upfront price will be mitigated somewhat by the proliferation of what carriers refer to as tab — in addition to the subsidy, carriers now offer the option of amortizing a portion of the phone's price over the two-year life of the contract, which lowers the upfront price by up to $240. In this case, expect the lowest you'll pay for the Note 8 to be around $500.

Again, not cheap.

What colors will be available?

Here's something interesting: whereas the U.S. is getting Orchid Grey and Midnight Black, **Canadian audiences will only have the option of Midnight Black and Deep Sea Blue***.

In my opinion, Canadians get the better end of this deal: whereas the Galaxy S8's version of Orchid Grey is a little purple, and quite desirable, the Note 8 version is muted and more, well, grey. The Blue, however, is beautiful — it's deep and luscious and extremely attractive in person. I don't know which beautiful person is responsible for convincing the carriers to pick up this particular hue, but kudos to you, mystery hero.

When's it available?

The phone is going up for pre-order on August 23 — that's today if you're reading this on announcement day — with orders being delivered on September 15. That's a three-week lead time, but don't despair, you get some really good extras when you pre-order.

What do you get?!

Glad you asked! If you order between August 23 and September 14, you get a 128GB microSD and a Fast Wireless Charger. That's basically $200 of stuff for free!

Is the Canadian model the same as the U.S. one?

Yep, pretty much: both the U.S. and Canadian models run the Snapdragon 835 processor, whereas the rest of the world runs the Exynos 8895.

In real-world testing, the results are a wash.

What carriers are getting the Note 8?

All of them! More specifically: