As for the note itself... meh.. nothing it does seems to be particularly interesting. It’s more of a note 7.1. The s8 certainly had more wow factor.
Just because it's design came first -- I kind of see the Note line morphing from their absolute, premier flagship to more of a "Galaxy with Stylus" line. They may bump a few specs here and there, but I think we are to the point of them all being familiar and in the same family.
I'm not in the market for it, and wouldn't be really anyway due to price, but two things were a disappointment to me -- we knew it was coming but that fingerprint sensor is TERRIBLE. No way you can grab that out of your pocket and have it unlocked in one motion before you get it out like you can with other Android flagships. Second, it doesn't sound like they did anything to the main camera - not even better post processing enhancements. The zoom with OIS is cool, but isn't your normal shooter that you use all the time.
And as for Samsung’s screwup.. yeah all manufactures do.. but Samsung’s response was diabolical. The delays they had coulda killed people.
I could name others just as bad that had a similar response; perhaps not in the tech world but Ford's exploding gas tank a few years back comes to mind. I'm not a Samsung fan boy by any means (I think I have one, old Samsung TV and that is it) but I'm satisfied with the result.
if that’d been Apple the outcry would have been beyond imagination.
All tech companies seem to have what people bash them for... Samsung gets accused of copying Apple even when they bring out the technology first, for instance. For Apple, any technical flaw at all is bashed - hell, people seem to imagine technical flaws sometimes just for the sake of it. I don't think it is fair in the least, but I also think it is a testament to Apple's quality -- they have made such good hardware for so long, people basically demand perfection.