Samsung Galaxy Note 9 hands-on: Return of the 'true' Note flagship?

Samsung's latest flagship phone, the Galaxy Note nine, is like a sleeper agent. At the beginning, you can't really tell what is dissimilar hither compared to the Galaxy Note eight, but there are more than a scattering of upgrades under the hood, including the S Pen that resides in its slot at the right side of the phone. We recently went easily-on with the Galaxy Notation 9 in New York City, then let's talk well-nigh our early impressions of Samsung's new flagship.

Galaxy Notation 9 hands-on: Design and feel

Picking up the Galaxy Note nine, we noticed the increased width but not the higher thickness. The telephoneisthick thanks to the bigger battery (4,000 mAh), but it's hard to really tell the deviation in the hand. The aforementioned goes for the slightly bigger screen (0.1 inches more than the Note viii's). The phone has diamond-cut edges to make it announced slim and a matte finish for the metal frame, the same every bit the Milky way S9 and Galaxy S9+, and then it looks quite classy, especially the Metallic Copper model. There'southward a matching Due south Pen on all models except the Ocean Blue model, which has a yellow S Pen with a blueish tiptop.

The front, as nosotros said earlier, is quite similar to the Galaxy Note eight, but the back has 2 important changes. The first is the fingerprint sensor, which has been placed beneath the rear camera. Information technology's yet not the perfect position and is a fleck too high. The dual cameras, meanwhile, are prepare upward horizontally as they were on the Note 8, only Samsung has decided to make the area around the camera lenses match that of the residual of the dorsum, a small change that goes a long way in improving the phone'due south look. Overall, the Milky way Note 9 feels solid and every bit premium as we have come to look any Samsung flagship.

Productivity enhancements

The user interface on the Galaxy Note 9 didn't feel whatsoever different to u.s. compared to the Galaxy Notation viii. But information technology felt smooth in functioning and the changes should be apparent to the states equally we get to spend more time with the device. Even Bixby two.0 was nowhere to be seen. The one new feature on the software forepart is chosen Southward Pen Remote, which can be toggled on or off. The S Pen on the Galaxy Annotation 9 has a low-energy Bluetooth chip inside that lets you use the stylus to take pictures (or switch betwixt forepart and rear cameras), command presentations, and perform functions in apps like YouTube and Gallery (such every bit skipping a video or sifting through images).

Samsung volition offering an SDK so 3rd-party apps can accept advantage of the Bluetooth S Pen, allowing them to assign functions to single or double presses of the S Pen push. If you're worried about the S Pen's battery, you shouldn't be. Thanks to a capacitor that powers the Bluetooth scrap, the stylus can be charged for 200 clicks of usage in approximately xl seconds of charging when it's residing in the slot. Of form, you tin choose to not utilize the remote functions at all, in which case the S Pen works besides as it did on the Galaxy Note 8.

Samsung should too be proud of the new inbuilt DeX mode. The Note 9 can exist connected to an external monitor with a Type-C to HDMI adapter to enable DeX way, without needing the DeX Pad. The phone has a water cooling strip within to help it keep temperatures nether control in DeX mode. The best part well-nigh DeX mode? You lot can apply the Note 9's display as the second monitor and draw or write on information technology with the South Pen and see it all on a big screen, which would be your external monitor or Television.

A smarter camera

The rear camera on the Note 9 is exactly the aforementioned as the Galaxy S9+', but Samsung has congenital in artificial intelligence to recognize the type of scene and optimize pictures. The feature is called Scene Optimizer and it matches each scene with 20 different presets, and to our eyes the images came out way richer. However, the scene optimizer didn't always work, which may be due to unfinished software.

It would also be squeamish to accept the option to view both the regular and scene optimized motion picture in the gallery, simply the characteristic tin can only be turned on or off. Samsung will hopefully introduce such an option with a software update, especially since each Note ix has 128GB of storage on the base model. Oh, and earlier nosotros forget, Samsung has likewise added flaw detection to the camera app. We couldn't examination this out, but it'due south supposed to alert users if someone blinks, in that location's excessive backlight, the camera is smudged, or the subject area is blurry. It'south an interesting feature, and it should come in handy for the selfie fanatics.

All in all, Samsung seems to have nailed it with the Galaxy Note ix. What makes it extra special is that information technology's an excellent upgrade even for those who own the yr-old Note 8. The phones await similar, but at that place are plenty of differences in areas that matter. The S Pen is likewise much more useful now. It'southward odd how Samsung never thought of bringing Bluetooth functionality to the stylus on the Note smartphone lineup earlier this. Perhaps the company did it now because it was running out of ideas, simply we're not going to complain.

Of course, the overall user experience is something that we would only be able to comment on after living with the Galaxy Annotation 9 for a couple of weeks. If you are interested in the Notation 9 but aren't sure if you lot should buy it, you should wait for our official review, which will dive deeper into aspects such every bit functioning, battery life, and just how well some of the new software features work.