The Galaxy Note 9 is about polishing and refining the Note series and it is a more confident return to form after the Galaxy Note 7
The Galaxy Note 9 is now official and it’s everything that weeks and months of leaks and rumors have told us. There’s little that’s surprising here. The phone keeps true to the “Note” tradition by bringing a large display and a stylus, and also looks really similar to the Galaxy Note 8. It brings most of the same design language while keeping the internals very 2018. It’s safe to say that the Galaxy Note 9 brings the best of the Galaxy Note 8 of last year and the Galaxy S9+ from earlier this year. And that doesn’t sound too bad.
The unveiling of the Galaxy Note 9 on Thursday may not have been as surprising or exciting compared to say the Galaxy Home smart speaker or Galaxy Watch, the latter two having been quite mysterious prior to launch. Samsung fans may even feel a little disappointed that the Galaxy Note 9 doesn’t seem to bring anything new to the table, at least on the face of it. But here’s why that’s not entirely true. Samsung may not have introduced a revolutionary new feature, but the Galaxy Note 9 is not about that. It’s about polishing and refining the Note series and it is a more confident return to form after the Galaxy Note 7.
While the Galaxy Note 9 is a direct successor to the Galaxy Note 8, it really looks like Samsung is trying to push this as a reformed Galaxy Note 7 that met an unfortunate end in 2016. The Galaxy Note 7 was a gorgeous piece of machinery that was lauded for its design, display and performance. It was a shame the flagship had to be discontinued due to battery-related issues that caused a number of units to combust. Following this, Samsung took a step back with the Galaxy Note 8.
The Galaxy Note 8 had a compromise – it came with a smaller battery which was questionable for a phone of that size. Everything about the Galaxy Note 8 was perhaps pretty great, but the battery was a downgrade, which was understandable but hard to overlook.
This brings us to 2018 where it seems Samsung isn’t too bothered about changing the look of what is already a pretty attractive series of phones. It’s totally alright that the Galaxy S9 and Note 9 don’t have a notch like every other Android phone this year. Samsung’s 2018 flagships are about perfecting things that worked last year. So Samsung focussed on improving the cameras on the Galaxy S9 duo by bringing a variable aperture feature that made the camera some of the best ever on a mobile phone. The Galaxy Note 9 gets that as well.
Samsung deciding to go with similar Galaxy S9+ sensors isn’t a wrong move by any stretch of imagination. If it worked wonders on that phone, it should work wonders on this one as well, right? This also allowed Samsung to spend some time improving things on the AI front. So, the Galaxy Note 9’s cameras now get the ability to recognise scenes and adjust the setting to produce the best photo. This theoretically means that the cameras on the Note 9 should work slightly better if not the same as the Galaxy S9+, which sounds great to my ears.
We have talked about the design that while it remains largely unchanged, it’s a design that Samsung is comfortable with and a design that looks attractive even today. We have also discussed how Samsung has crammed all of 2018’s best hardware inside, making this a true premium flagship device. But perhaps the icing on this cake is the battery, which now matches the Note expectation.
With a 4,000mAh battery, Samsung seems confident to shrug off the ghost of Galaxy Note 7. This is Samsung telling us that it has spent the past two years making sure the battery will not catch on fire and will not put your Galaxy Note 9 at risk. Of course, we will still have to wait and see whether things are different this time around once the phone reaches some hands. But just the fact that you’re now getting a bigger battery for a bigger phone seems reassuring that Samsung has fixed what was the Galaxy Note 8’s biggest problem.
Not only does the Galaxy Note 9 get a big battery, it also comes with a water cooling system under-the-hood that will make sure the device doesn’t heat up and give any reasons for consumer to worry. Again, it’s a feature that needs to be tested before passing a judgement. But Samsung’s announcement on Thursday raised some hope that the Galaxy Note 9 is going to be a gaming and performance beast with a battery that will not give up on you. And if you’re going to pay roughly Rs 68,000 for the Galaxy Note 9 in India, you will expect that the phone ticks all the boxes. The Galaxy Note 9 sounds like it does tick those boxes, perhaps more so than the Galaxy Note 8, and definitely more so than the Galaxy Note 7.
