Gadgetory

Samsung's Galaxy Note phones have always been about more more screen more battery more specs more power more features and the new note 9 is the most more of them all it has the biggest screen fastest processor the biggest battery the most storage and the most features of any note phone and also is the biggest price this thing costs $1000 and up and it's way more than any prior mainstream Samsung phone so is all of this more stuff worth it well if you're a note fan or someone that's owned a prior model yeah totally this is the device you've been asking for and wanting you don't even really need me to tell you that you probably already know you want this thing but for the rest of us it's a much tougher sell especially since Samsung's other big phone this year the Samsung Galaxy S 9 plus can be had for hundreds of dollars less and offer many of the same features the note 9 doesn't look much different from last year's Note 8 it has the same basic design of the past few note models there's lots of screen curved glass on the front and back and a metal frame this time there's a six point four inch screen which is just barely basically indistinguishably bigger than the screen on the note 8 but in a cool twist the note 9 isn't really bigger as a phone it's still the same size as the node 8 though it's still a massive phone and then the other thing is Samsung moved the fingerprint scanner on the back to a much easier position to reach so it is easier to hold now I don't really have much to say about the note 9 displays just like the S 9 plus it's a big bright colorful OLED screen that's about the best you can get in the smartphone world right now and if you hate the trend of notches that cut into the screen the note 9 is 18 by 9 panel has no notch whatsoever now in terms of performance and specs the note 9 is basically the same as the S 9 plus it has the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor that every other Android flagship phone is using this year and it's paired with 6 or 8 gigabytes of RAM now the no tonight's performance is smooth and fast never did I really run into an issue where there was choppy performance or lag or even an app not being ready for me as soon as I expected it and one of the more things that you get with the note is more storage the base model has 128 gigabytes but you can get one with up to 512 gigabytes if you're ok with spending 1,250 bucks for it either of those models also have a micro SD card slot so you can max this thing out with up to one terabyte of storage if you really want to but the most more that you get with the note 9 is more battery Samsung put a four thousand milliamp hour battery in this phone that's 500 milliamp hours more than the s9 plus and a full 700 million hours more than the note 8 that really makes it an all-day device even if you're a really heavy user that's always looking at your phone if you're not as heavy of a user you might even get two or three days of use without much trouble and of course because this is a note phone the other difference between it and every other Samsung phone is its S Pen Stylus now the S Pen has been around for years and it can be used for all the same things that you do before you can jot down notes or doodle or just use it to navigate the interface but this year it's got a couple more tricks it has bluetooth added to it so you can use as a wireless remote to snap photos pause music or page through a presentation now personally that really doesn't make the s-pen all that much more usable to me but for you you probably already know whether the s-pen is something you're interested in using at this point or not no ties camera is also exactly the same as what we saw in the s9 plus earlier this year the rear camera has a dual 12 megapixel system with switching aperture wide angle lens plus a telephoto lens for portrait effects and then the front cameras 8 megapixels and autofocus the pictures that the nolan produces are therefore very similar to what you get from the SI and they're sharp and colorful and low-light performance is great but they still look like Samsung photos so they're gonna be warmer and brighter than what you get from a pixel or an iPhone so if you didn't like the way that Samsung photos looked before you probably won't like the note nines either one thing that's new in the camera app is it's a bit smarter it has an automatic scene optimization system that of course uses AI to determine what you're taking a picture of and then change the camera settings for the best results there's like 20 different things that can recognize and it's pretty neat to watch it do it but if I'm really being honest I didn't know it's much of a difference between this optimized ones and then not nice ones but one thing that is new and useful is it can tell us someone that you're taking a photo of has blinked or moved and the image is kind of ruined and it will alert you to take that photo again that's something that's actually useful when it shows up for software the note 9 is running Android 8.1 Oreo and it's got Samsung's user interface on top of it it's not really changed much from what we've seen from past few years from Samsung it looks fine but the biggest issue is and always has been Samsung's insistence on duplicating a bunch of googles apps with its own there's two browsers to email apps to mobile payment apps to gallery apps to assistants and so on and then of course Samsung's really bad with software updates I have no idea when this is getting Android 9pi and then there's Bixby's Samsung's universally panned virtual assistant which has been updated with a new interface and some deeper integrations with third-party services but it's still Bixby which means that it's slow and more cumbersome to use in Google's assistant and of course there's a dedicated button on the side of the note 9 that can't be used for anything else now the version of Bixby that's on my review unit is said to be non final so maybe update it before it hits stores but I honestly don't think it's gonna make much of a difference it's clear that Samsung has invested some time into this though and Bixby's not going anywhere and finally we have Dex Samsung's attempt to make your phone work as a computer and it's easier to get Dex up and running with the note 9 you basically just need a USB C to HDMI adapter but it's still just as clumsy to use as it was a year or so ago when Dex first came out it's slow it's limited there's many assets are still incompatible with it and to really make this work you need a keyboard mouse and display to do it all which at that point you might as well just use a laptop so there's the note 9 it's the most more phone from the line of phones it always gives you more than others it's really a great phone there's a very little complaint about here if you need more screen more storage and more battery life you can't go wrong so long as you're willing to spend more to get those things but Samsung's own Galaxy S 9 plus offers a lot of the same features as Dino for a lot less money which means that you really have to want the most for the note 9 to make sense that's 500 milliamp hours more than the s9 + battery and a full seven hundred milli amp hours more than no 8 that makes the note 9 a real all-day device even if you're a heavy user that's been listening to crickets all day long