Samsung Galaxy Note 9 Review: In Praise of Incrementalism By Android Authority

The original Galaxy Note completely changed what a smartphone should be and the Galaxy Note 9 doesn't do that. What it does do is take the best of what made the Galaxy Note line great and make it bigger and better than ever actually I just wanted to take a second and give a big shout out to the moment for sponsoring this video the moment makes really cool smartphone cases and lenses that can really take your smartphone photography game to the next level. You can check them out on Shop, moment comm and tell them. We sent you all right now back to the video buddy of the Galaxy Note.9 is really similar to the Galaxy Note 8, but they've added a few refinements that just make it a little better. You've got flatter sides, so it's easier to grip in your hand, they've added some chambered edges where the glass meets the metal, and they've actually repositioned the fingerprint reader, which I really personally like because it's right below the camera lens now, which makes it a lot easier to press without accidentally putting your finger directly on top of that lens. The screen on to gussy no.9 is big, bright and beautiful, just like we're used to seeing on Samsung phones, but if point one inches bigger than the Galaxy Note 8, which is nice because it just kind of adds to that whole refinement thing. It's really saturated and punchy.

And honestly, this is one of the best displays that I've seen on a smartphone and if you use the Samsung phone before it, you won't be disappointed and, of course, like on any galaxy no device. You're going to find all the essentials like speaker, grille, the USB, type-c port, the s-pen and yes, the headphone jack is still here, and I just want to iterate this to other manufacturers. If Samsung can fit an S Pen in this phone, which is like three quarters of the length of the entire phone, then you other guys can fit a headphone jack in your phone. Do better on the inside. You've got pretty much everything you've come to expect from an Android flagship.

You've got welcome latest snapdragon 845, a ton of RAM, but honestly, there's not a lot to say about performance on this phone. Furthermore, you can run pretty much any game on it. Furthermore, you can multitask like crazy and I, didn't really notice any stuttering between apps or anything else. The biggest things we really need to talk about here are the storage and battery capacity. So the baseline model, this phone comes with 128 gigabytes of storage.

You could actually get another model with 512 gigabytes of storage and that's a ton of storage. Don't get me wrong, but we are using our phones as more of our daily pocket. Computers and I do like to put a lot of Netflix, shows and music on my phone to use that places like the gym and when I don't have service and I really appreciate the fact that Samsung is giving people this option. I mean it is a note device. After all, you shouldn't have to make compromises.

There's a new battery in the Galaxy Note 9, and it's actually way better than it was last year. It's 4,000 William hours this time, which is a lot more than the no-date and I got about 7 hours of screen on time out of this phone on any given day. Now that is perfect, because not a lot of other Android phones really hit that mark on a daily basis. Now those are some insane specs, but if you want it, all you're going to have to pay for it. The no 9 starts at a fallacy bucks, and that is a lot of money, but you have to consider that your phone is the computer that you use multiple times day now, when I'm not reviewing phone I use the one plus 6, and I love that phone.

It's nice, it's fast, it's clean, but it does skimp on some things that make the note 9 great, like the fast wireless charging, IP 60, water resistance, expandable storage and, of course, the S Pen. Now the S Pen has definitely the most defining feature of the Gulf's and no line, and I've got to admit: I've, never actually owned. A Galaxy Notes one before they're using after the last week or so I've really come to enjoy using them. Our selection screen right features this year, Samsung's added low-power Bluetooth functionality to the s-pen. It allows you to do things like using it as a remote shutter for the camera, changing songs and apps like Spotify or even switching slides in a PowerPoint presentation, and it's fine.

It's not a make or break feature for me, but I am really glad to see that Samsung is iterating on a most defining feature of the note series. Also, the ocean blue model comes with this really bright, highlighter color, S Pen and doesn't really do anything but dictate the color of the ink on your display. If you want to get a different color, you can always just buy a different color resume whenever anyone asks me for a smartphone recommendation, I always start with asking them what's important to them in their phone and overwhelmingly. They always tell me it's. The camera I usually use my phone's camera just for basic information transfer, but a lot of people use their smartphone camera as their primary camera every single day and Samsung's not skimping on any of the features here.

They've got the optical image stabilization in the dual aperture lens system, from the galaxy s 9, but they've actually added a couple. Extra features that should theoretically make this phone's camera just a little better. It's got a new scene, recognition mode kind of similar to what you'd see in like a Huawei phone and in theory it's supposed to be able to take like a landscape or plants or food and just make the image look better, but in my testing it just kind of saturated the colors and didn't necessarily make them. Look that good I took a picture of food here, and it just made the image look a little over saturated, which might be good enough for Instagram, but personally I'm, not really digging it. The other new feature here is called the flaw detection.

Essentially, what this is supposed to do is recognize when someone in your image is blinking or if the picture is slightly ahead of focus now. This is great when it works, but I found that it was pretty inconsistent. This is machine learning base, so we can hope that would get better over time. But for now it's not all that great. Overall.

The quality of this camera is perfect. It's pretty natural unless you turn on that AIC recognition mode, though it is a little warm, but I, think most people will really enjoy this camera. The selfie camera is a little soft, but it actually does perfect in low-light circumstances, which I think a lot of people are going to appreciate. So we have to talk about software. The Galaxy Note 9 is running Android 8.1 Oreo, which is not the latest Android Pi update from Google, but Samsung isn't perfect at updating their devices, so I wouldn't necessarily expect either a guy to come to the no 9 anytime. Soon, probably the biggest software update here is the addition of big suite 2.0, and what this update is supposed to do is allow the virtual assistant to understand contextual conversations, but it really doesn't work that way. Let me show you what I mean who was the 15th President of the United States? When did he die? What are some good Chinese restaurants around here? What about Mexican that was close, but I wanted Mexican restaurants, not recipe.

If you use the sampling phone in the last couple of years, you'll be used to this UI, it's pretty clean, and it's not really that different from stock Android. Besides obvious Samsung, any type of vibe that it's got going on, but the one thing that really did annoy me was the fact that I had Facebook pre-installed, and you can't actually uninstall this. Just hide it now, if you're paying it that was in bucks for a smartphone, you shouldn't have to deal with blow air like this, and I would like to see Samsung and remove that next year, you're, probably wondering if I would actually recommend this song and I really like it. It's probably in my top 5 Android phones of 2018 lists so far, but look I get it. A thousand.

Bucks is a lot of money for a smartphone, and if you don't need those note, 9 specific features, you probably get 90% of the power of this phone and something like the 1 + 6 or a galaxy s 9 for about 50% of the cost. But the note 9 was defined by refinement and with the note 9 you're going back to the power user phone, that the note series was always meant to be.

Source : Android Authority