Gadgetory

okay so we have just returned from Samsung's launch event for the Galaxy Note 9 and we have a lot of opinions we've got the note 9 here in our hands sure what is your takeaway what do you think you know I think for a lot of people it's gonna look very similar to what we saw last year but there's some really good changes inside a lot more storage a bigger battery they really played played at cautious last year because of the note 7 problem so the note 8 they kind of went with a smaller battery then they could have now we're back to them promising you know all-day and more battery life yeah that's right we've got a four thousand milliamp your hour battery which is big that's it's huge actually so I am looking forward to seeing how long that battery lasts this phone also starts at 128 gigabytes of storage which is huge normally their phones start at 64 gigabytes then there's another option and that's 512 gigabytes that's that's insane what do you think about that yeah I mean you have to think about the fact that Samsung is the world's biggest flash memory maker so it's just like you know pull it off the shelf put it in the phone yeah I mean that's something like the note users are typically like power users it's people who like need to do a lot with it they want the stylus they want to like you know have everything the best basically and so like that's what Samsung was really trying to do with this but kind of on the flip side they also still had the expandable memory so they were saying there's no that's right in there yeah that they're soon gonna have the memory cards that make it so you could have a terabyte of storage basically on this phone you know it's interesting when you code like if you get the largest capacity and then you also get a 512 gigabyte memory card you're up to about a terabyte but yeah that's a lot that's a tremendous amount of videos and photos and I think that's what a lot of people want they want a lot of memory yeah but then it comes to the whole you know we're all playing paying for cloud services you know how much it's kind of I think a debate right now like how much do you actually need actually saved on your device versus how much that you can have on the Internet so right and then apart from that you know and if you if you take out the memory if you take out the battery we've got a lot of very similar features to last year and in fact you the Galaxy S 9 and s 9 plus we've got the exact same camera setup with dual 12 megapixel cameras on the back dual aperture which helps with low-light shots there's an 8 mega pick camera on the front you've got a fingerprint reader wireless charging waterproofing so I do think that the one thing that makes the note stick out is of course the oh there we go the stylus it's really crammed in there the stylus is a big deal and Samsung really this year has gone ahead and it's added a lot more features to this so you can still right navigate draw but now it's Bluetooth connected yes yeah so they're saying there's things like you can use it as a remote basically to turn the shutter on your camera so like if you're taking a group picture instead of having to like go over and push the button or use the self-timer I guess you can use that you know they used it they really like to say they used it for their PowerPoint presentations so the their presentations to go to the next slides they were actually using the notes you know be interesting to see how much you can actually do with it but yeah you know we got briefings we got demos on it and basically you just long press this button on the S Pen and right now it triggers a setup page for the S Pen remote there's a lot of customization that you can do I think we still really need to deep dive into what those use cases are definitely in the demo I use this to successfully launch the camera flip it over to selfie and take a selfie so I think that that could be really useful and it's really nice to see Samsung expanding beyond you know a lot of people have called for Oh make the tip into an eraser and let's do something else with this so this is something that Samsung has been long overdue for I am glad to see it here what does it justify the elephant in the room which is the price yeah yeah yeah so the price is more than what we saw from the note eight it's more than what we saw from the s9 plus which is interesting considering it's very similar actual specs right so the phone actually starts at $1000 for the 128 gigabyte version and then for the larger 512 gigabyte version that is $1,250 this is iPhone 10 territory yeah I mean it's iPhone center II I think there's kind of two sides to this where samsung devices are generally iPhone 10 quality you know they have good displays they have good materials you know I think it's could be hard to justify this in some ways because there aren't as many kind of noticeable changes but then on the flip side you also have more storage but storage is cheap like you can go buy a microSD card I was just doing some searches and like you know a 64 gig microSD card you can buy for literally like five or six dollars so you know it doesn't justify kind of this huge price to get more storage I don't know yeah we've been looking and talking about pricing for smartphones the prices have definitely crept up not just for Apple not just for Samsung but on high-end devices all across the board so this is a trend that we're seeing it's not gonna go away and the question is does it really justify it are the days of the $600 flagship phone behind us I mean I think that the answer is clearly yes and I think what that leaves us with is asking and answering the question who is this for and I mean my immediate thought is that this is a phone for somebody who has you know an earlier version of the note like the note 5 you know of course Samsung skipped the note six and then the seventh exploded and had to be taken at the shelves and then there was the note 8 so if you're left with the note 5 this is going to be a huge upgrade it's going to be fast it's gonna be you know future ready yeah and and so it could be good for that I mean it could also be great for a person who wants just like a very powerful device like the best that they can get you know power users who like the idea of using the stylus to write with yeah yeah I mean in like Samsung was saying you know I was talking to one of their executives and he was saying that most people who upgrade like their upgrade customers are people who will have had like the note 5 you know it's kind of those like huge ultra fans is kind of a smaller percentage of it and they're gonna buy it probably no matter what but like for this when they're thinking of upgrades they're thinking of those like note 5 customers so like for the note 5 customer or even note 4 like whatever it is you have this older you know they also compared it to like this of an edge like that it's a big step up for that it's just you know the note 8 users not so much and then competition is really fierce too right so we have the next iPhones coming up we've got the pixel 3 series probably coming up and the Samsung itself is gonna have another next big phone right next spring yeah yeah you know and like it also you know even with pricing it's almost just kind of a mental thing as well like if they had cut pricing on this or maybe even kept it the same you kind of mentally think well oh it must not be the best phone then because the best phone is gonna be really expensive you know so it's kind of almost counterintuitive because you don't want to pay more more for a phone but you know like oh I want the best phone so it's gonna be the most expensive phone well it certainly looks really good and this blue color is very striking with that contrasting S Pen that comes out of it we are gonna have a lot more details coming up we're gonna have a full review of this device so stick with us for all of your Galaxy Note 9 news