Gadgetory

phone reviews have honestly become kind of routine for me first I switched to the device entirely then I use it as my daily driver for anywhere from two to six weeks maintaining a Google Doc where I dot down anything about it that pissed me off finally when it's time to actually write the review I sit down with my list of annoyances cross off all the ones that were resolved either through software updates or experience and then create the script that I will eventually read to you like this well the Galaxy Note 9 is bunning up my formula here because this is all I got so let's see if we can pad that out into seven minutes or so pub G Mobile is a free-to-play battle royale game for Android and iOS join the over 100 million players currently play in club G mobile by downloading at the link in the video description I covered most of the surface level stuff about the note 9 in my unpacked video but now that I've spent some more time with it I have some thoughts to add economically the boxier shape of the note 9 compared to the s9 plus that I've been using as my daily driver has been an adjustment as has the additional weight but one of the most meaningful tweaks that Samsung made to the form factor was widening the bezels this results in a slightly worse screen to bezel ratio which is a risky move at a time when competitors like Oppo are going as far as to put in motorized camera mechanisms so they can keep pushing the envelope but from a usability standpoint it's been a noticeable improvement especially when reaching across the screen the other economic stand out to me is the Bixby button now I assumed that there would be first party support for disabling it again but for some reason Samsung as of the time we're recording this has removed that option overall though like I don't actually hate Bixby she runs locally on the device which means that on top of the additional functionality that other assistants can't handle like executing voice macros she is noticeably faster for transactional things like turn on the flashlight but that's a double-edged sword because compared to the Google assistant which runs in the cloud Bixby is still over a year later far less likely to understand me the fingerprint sensor has been moved into the center just like on the s9 series but I actually didn't notice it that much since I ended up using intelligent scan Samsung's unique combination of iris scanning and facial recognition most of the time anyway so now we're at the part of the video where usually I list out a bunch of specs but it's a little bit complicated this time which processor you get under the hood of your note 9 will actually depend on your region now the good news is that it doesn't actually matter too much we only got one so we couldn't do a head-to-head comparison but basically the snapdragon 845 Adreno GPU is stronger for your gamer while samsung's internal tuning of the Exynos 98 ten CPU seems to give it the edge on that side of things honestly though we're kind of splitting hairs at this point and Samsung knows it they hardly even talked about performance in their keynote because phones have basically succumbed to the same failing of Moore's Law that we've been dealing with on the PC side for the last five years now so whether you're running a note 9 or a 1 + 6 for literally half the price you can expect basically the same performance in your pocket at least from idle now the water cooling marketing nonsense aside the big heat pipe that Samsung is using in the note 9 does actually result in relatively little throttling even in CPU intensive tasks and that I think right there is the most remarkable thing about the note 9 not the heat pipe specifically but the fact that it's bigger than yours and they managed to squeeze that the s-pen the four thousand milliamp hour battery that's big enough that even with the weird battery drain bug that I get sometimes I still managed to make it through the day they crammed basically everything into this phone other notable inclusions up to 8 gigs of lpddr4 memory that's in the 512 gig storage version ip68 water resistance NFC high speed wireless charging microSD expansion a headphone jack and stereo speakers Samsung by the way with their spectacular HDR OLED displays and flexible audio connectivity continues to deliver hands-down the best mobile movie watching experience so here's the thing almost always when I'm working on a phone review because I actually switched to them as my only phone I wish that I you know had the form factor of phone X with the features of phone Y and the camera of film Z or something along those lines most recently I was actually working on my full review of the Oppo find X and I was crestfallen when I realized that it doesn't have NFC I mean that's apparently not a big deal in China but I use NFC for two-factor authentication on a very regular basis it was a real bummer for me and no.9 the camera hasn't changed much since the s9 series but that's not really a terrible thing it's low light performance is still outstanding and everything from well-lit indoor stills to more challenging scenarios like poorly lit video came out as well as I would expect from any flagship smartphone today as for the new Bluetooth enabled s-pen as a not really a stylist guy it's mostly a handy little bonus and you know you can write on the screen even when it's off I guess that's pretty cool but I mostly didn't find many occasions to use it even including the remote camera shutter functionality with that said I expect some really cool things to come out of the s-pen once the sdk lens until then assuming that you can afford one because it's not cheap the note 9 is gonna have to settle for being just the zero compromises smart phone a designation that I have never given to any other handheld thanks to pub G mobile for sponsoring today's video Pub t-mobile is the official mobile version of the player unknowns battlegrounds it's a free to play battle royale game available for Android and iOS or a hundred players parachute onto remote island for a winner-takes-all showdown it's powered by the Unreal Engine it features intuitive and customizable controls it's got HD audio and more so try out other pop G arcade modes like war mode mini zone and quick matches by downloading it today at the link in the video description so thanks for watching guys if you dislike this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get subscribed or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description that is assuming that you are a mad baller also down there is our merch store that's right that's down there which has a straight flake I think this one yep and our community forum and you should totally join that