Take note, this Galaxy’s the best yet

BIGGER, bolder and more beautiful, the Galaxy Note 9 – which lands on South African stores later this week – marks a triumphant return to form for Samsung’s flagship phablet.

Don’t get me wrong, the Note 8 was an excellent smartphone, but it was hobbled by a number of niggling flaws, inevitable perhaps given that it was designed and built while the South Korean tech giant was still very much in recovery mode, following the fiery demise of its Note 7.

I’m thrilled to report that all of these issues have been addressed with the Note 9 which is better in every respect. It’s not perfect – but it comes close.

Let’s start with the biggest improvement: battery life. Given that the Note 7’s fatal, flammable flaw lay in its battery, Samsung erred on the side of caution and shipped the Note 8 with a safe – thanks to an eight-point check process – but indubitably underpowered 3300mah battery that had power users reaching for their chargers by mid-afternoon most days.

The Note 9, which sports a significantly beefier 4000mah fuel cell which Samsung is calling an “all day battery”. I’ve only had a few days with the review unit, but my initial impressions seem to bear that out, with the Note 9 easily lasting to 10pm and even midnight under moderate to heavy use. lighting and focus to capture the best shot — I’m betting the food and pets pre-sets will prove the most popular of these.

While the camera array is still located high on the rear of the phone, its now more centred, thanks to the fingerprint reader having been moved to just below it, rather than next to it as on the Note 8. On a device this size, though, it’s still a stretch, even with long fingers, to reach it holding the phone one handed and I really wish Samsung had placed it a little lower down.

This niggle aside, fingerprint unlocking is near instantaneous and combined with other biometric smarts like face recognition and iris scanning gives the Note 9 plenty of authentication options, both to unlock the device and for mobile payments – watch this space for full coverage of Samsung Pay, which is due for its official SA launch next week, following a successful limited trial run.

Storage is another department in which the Note 9 blows its predecessor and competing smartphones out of the water. The base model comes with a whopping 128GB of built-in storage and 6GB of RAM, while the top-of-the-range model boasts an astounding 512GB storage and 8GB of RAM. Bring an aftermarket 512GB microsd card to the party and you’ve got the first smartphone to break the 1TB barrier – more capacious than many laptops!

Throw in a beautiful, brilliant 6.4-inch Super AMOLED display with no notch, a blisteringly fast Exynos 9810 octa-core processor, a headphone jack, free protective cover, and IP68 water and dust resistance – even with the S-pen removed from its slot – and you’ve got what I’m predicting, based on early testing, will be the best smartphone of 2018.

The Galaxy Note 9 goes on sale locally on Friday, August 24, 2018, in three colours – Midnight Black, Metallic Copper, and Ocean Blue. Initially, only the 128GB model will be available at a recommended retail price of R18 999 or on monthly contracts starting at R799. The 512GB version of the Note 9 will follow later, priced at R23 999.

Follow Alan Cooper on Twitter @alanqcooper.