The Galaxy Note 9 brings the best of 2018 hardware and some neat new S Pen functionalities that you just might use. Here’s our review.
Samsung’s flagship phones are among the most anticipated gadgets to come out every year. But with leaks revealing almost everything about them weeks ahead of launch, we’re kind of left unexcited by the time these devices are officially announced. That’s never been truer than with the Galaxy Note 9. When unveiled on August 9, it turned out to be everything we had heard weeks and months before its launch. The new Note is an iterative update that looks and feels like the Galaxy Note 8 from last year.
That is where similarities with the Note 8 end. While the design largely remains the same, the hardware has been upgraded to bring the best of 2018 and the stylus, that is the S Pen, gets a makeover as well. It won’t be wrong to call the Galaxy Note 9 a mix of the Galaxy Note 8 and the Galaxy S9+, which is interesting to see considering Samsung could very well bring these two lines together someday. Maybe it starts with the Galaxy Note 9. And after using the device for nearly a week I can say that it beginning on a right, ahem, note.
If you think the Galaxy Note 9 looks exactly like the Galaxy Note 8, you are right. Mostly. It ticks all the boxes that make up a Note device — a large, squarish frame, a tall Infinity Display with curved edges and Gorilla Glass 5 on the front and back, the S Pen and that professional feel. But if you look closer, you do notice some subtle changes compared to its predecessor. The display is now slightly bigger — 6.4-inch compared to 6.3-inch in Note 8 — and that means Samsung has reduced the bezels on the top and bottom ever so slightly while maintaining the old footprint.
On the back, the Galaxy Note 9 sports a familiar dual camera setup. The fingerprint sensor is now placed below the cameras rather than on the side as on the Galaxy Note 8, which is the biggest design change here. This does make it easier to reach the sensor and also prevents unnecessary lens smudging as well. Depending on how small or big your hand is, you can either reach the sensor comfortably or you’ll have to adjust your positioning a little.
The same goes for the buttons on the sides that manage volume, power and Bixby. My hands aren’t really big so reaching for the power and volume buttons required some adjustment. Funnily enough, I found the Bixby button to have the best placement, but it’s also the button that I’m least going to use just because Bixby is disappointing. But more on that later. The frame is a solid metal alloy and on the bottom you’ll find a speaker grille, 3.5mm headphone jack, USB Type-C port and the S Pen dock. The earpiece also doubles up as a speaker so you get a stereo sound effect tuned by AKG which gets pretty loud and clear. A hybrid dual SIM slot can be seen on the top and the device along with the S Pen are water resistant with an IP68 rating.
The curves on the front and back and a squarish frame make it easier to hold what is a pretty large phone. It’s slightly wider than the Note 8 and it’s also roughly 5 grams heavier, but that’s expected since it houses a bigger battery now.
The Note 9 is really all about that tall 6.4-inch QHD+ display which is the biggest yet on the top Note device. The SuperAMOLED display in the phone is more vibrant and crisp than ever. Colours on screen look bright and deep, especially the blacks, reds and blues with a fair bit of oversaturation. Brightness levels are great as well and so are the viewing angles.
The display’s white balance and contrast are on point and this makes for an extremely pleasurable viewing experience. Videos on YouTube or streaming platforms like Netflix and Prime Video on 1080p or higher look crispy and sharp. There’s also a Video Enhancer option, which can turn up brightness and vividness of videos in supported apps like YouTube and Netflix. Backed by a pretty loud and clear stereo sound, the experience is quite immersive. In a year full of notched phones, the Galaxy Note 9 looks classic now, and I reckon there are quite a few takers for that.
Arguably the biggest change to the Galaxy Note 9 is the new S Pen. Up until now, the S Pen has been used to perform basic tasks like opening or scrolling through apps, tapping on images, take screenshots and making notes and sketches. And its functionality hasn’t changed much over the years, which is odd considering the S Pen is one of the biggest reasons to buy a Note phone.
But nine generations later, the S Pen finally gets more useful thanks to Bluetooth LE (Low Energy) support. It’s a very logical step forward for the S Pen and opens the doors to a lot more creative uses for the stylus. With Bluetooth support, the S Pen can now act as a remote. You will be able to long pressing the button on the stylus to open a certain app like say the camera, double press the button to switch the camera, and single press to take a picture, all without having to touch the Note 9. I can see this come in handy especially when you want to take a group selfie from a distance.
You can map the button to any app that you would like to see open remotely by heading into the S Pen Remote option within Settings. There are a few apps like Camera, Powerpoint, Gallery, Media and Chrome that support contextual remote functionalities. So you can breeze through photos in the Gallery or change slides in a PPT presentation all by simply tapping the button on the stylus. I particularly liked the ability to pause and skip songs and it’s probably my most popular usage of the stylus. Samsung hopes more third-party app developers bring in S Pen support in the future as well.
To support Bluetooth connectivity, the S Pen also houses a supercapacitor that allows users keep the stylus detached for about 30 minutes before it drains out. That won’t be a problem though because the pen charges up extremely fast — like 100 per cent in 40 seconds. I feel adding Bluetooth support makes a lot of sense and is going to make owners use the S Pen a lot more than before, and I’m optimistic that Samsung will add more functionalities in the years to come.
The Galaxy Note 9 in India gets the Exynos 9810 chipset and the unit I am reviewing has 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage for the base variant. But if you’re feeling a need to spend a little more cash you can get the top-end variant with 512GB storage (that is 4X more than the size of hard disk in 13-inch MacBook Air). Combine this with a 512GB microSD card and you’re looking at 1TB of total storage in a smartphone. Ridiculous, right! In addition to that, it also comes with 8GB of RAM. The Note 9 comes with arguably the best hardware you’ll see in a 2018 Android flagship.
But does the hardware make the Note 9 a speedy phone? Yes, it does. The Note 9 handles multitasking expertly and runs swiftly almost always. While the Note series has been seen as a productivity-focused device, Samsung is also touting Note 9 as a gaming phone: Use it to play Fortnite or PUBG and marvel at the vivid and immersive display and lag-free performance. I played PUBG at its default max graphics settings for a good half an hour and I did not notice any drops in frame rate or lags. It was smooth and consistently fast, which I believe is also because of the new water-carbon cooling system inside that makes sure the device doesn’t overheat, something that can affect performance.
The Galaxy Note 9 runs Android Oreo out-of-the-box which is a bit of a bummer considering Android 9 Pie is now out, but I won’t say I’m surprised. It would have been truly shocking if Samsung managed to ship with the latest Android software. While Samsung does take its time to push out new updates, Galaxy phones running Oreo are compatible with Project Treble so the Note 9 could get Android 9 Pie sooner than expected.
The software itself has Samsung’s Experience UI on top which anyone familiar with Samsung will feel right at home. It does bring a few preloaded apps like Microsoft’s productivity suite, Facebook and some custom apps like Samsung’s own web browser. It’s not as bloated and heavy as some of the other skins I have seen — software in Chinese phones, for example — and there’s plenty of storage that you’ll still be left with.
The Note 9 not only offers a fingerprint sensor, but also gets facial recognition and iris scanning as well. The iris scanner is supposed to kick in when you’re in low-light conditions, but I’ve found it to be quite unreliable. In poor lighting, the biometric just wouldn’t work properly. Thankfully, the fingerprint sensor is pretty quick and accurate.
My other gripe with the device is that it doesn’t allow you to customise the Bixby button. The button is ideally located to act as a power button or for some action you’re likely to use a lot more than Bixby, but Samsung just won’t have it that way. It’s either Bixby or it isn’t.
