Samsung Galaxy Note 9: Sort of new, quite improved — and what a screen!
I’ve always loved the concept (and the execution) of Samsung’s Galaxy Note phones.
Samsung already had its flagship Galaxy S phones, which were great, but the Note kicked things up a notch.
The Galaxy S phones had big screens, but the Note always seemed to have a bigger screen, a bigger battery, a faster processor, more storage — and a higher price. Oh, and it had the S Pen stylus. I’m pretty sure Apple had Note phones in mind last year when it introduced the iPhone X alongside the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus. It wanted to sell a phone that had “more.”
Who picks the Note?
There are two types of people who use Galaxy Note phones: those who want to use the stylus and those who just want a really big, top-of-the-line phone. It’s the flagship phone on steroids.
Samsung has always been a bit ahead of Apple when it comes to handset design.
Before the iPhone X, the Galaxy S 8’s screen went from edge to edge and very close to the top and bottom of the phone’s face.
This year, the Galaxy S 9 took its design cues from the S 8 and updated everything. Likewise with the Note 9: It doesn’t look much different from the Note 8, but everything is a step up.
There are only so many design changes you can make to a smartphone. Samsung’s and Apple’s handsets look pretty similar for a reason: They work.
Now that we have a design that’s becoming standardized (full screen, no front button), it’s natural to make improvements under the hood.
We all gravitate to the familiar, and we all love to own the latest and greatest. The Note 9 is both (and the most expensive).
Specs
I love a phone that has it all. The Galaxy Note 9 is built around a beautiful 6.4-inch AMOLED screen with a resolution of 1,440 by 2,960 pixels. The screen is made of Corning Gorilla Glass 5, and it’s HDR10 compliant. It’s about as big and bad as phones get these days.
A note: Out of the box, the resolution for the Note 9 is 1,080 by 2,220 pixels. If you want to see the screen in all its glory, go to the display settings and change the resolution. You’ll use more battery life, but, oh, is it worth it.
The phone has an always-on screen that uses very little power to keep the time, date and other notifications on the screen, even when the phone is sleeping.
It runs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 with configurations up to 8 gigabytes of RAM and 512 GB of internal storage. It has a microSD card slot for up to 512 GB of additional storage.
The operating system is Android 8.1 (Oreo).
Pricing and availability
Samsung is proud of the Galaxy Note 9. There are two configurations: 128 GB of storage with 6 GB of RAM for $1,000 or 512 GB and 8 GB of RAM for $1,250.
These prices are close to the iPhone X, which has two configurations at $999 and $1,149 but half the storage of the Note 9 and no microSD slot.
Sales began Aug. 24. You can buy a Note 9 unlocked from Samsung or retailers like Amazon, Best Buy, Costco, Target and Walmart.
Conclusions
The Note 9 is the best Android handset. Period.
Heck, for $1,000, it had better be the best. Is it worth the price? I think so.
It has a battery and screen that run circles around my iPhone 8 Plus. It has massive storage and RAM and a really great processor. Would I buy the Note 9?
I’m an iPhone user, so I’m waiting to see what Apple announces in a few weeks. I’m more than likely sticking with Apple, but if I wanted to switch to Android, or if I were a longtime Android user, I’d buy the Note 9 in a heartbeat — which, by the way, the Note 9 can measure with a built-in heart rate sensor along with a pulse oximeter.
Pros: The Note 9 has better features than the Note 8 in almost every way, although there’s not much new this year. Great screen, and the S Pen remote button is cool.
Cons: Expensive, and Bixby isn’t great.
Bottom line: It has more of everything people want in a phone while still keeping things familiar.