GEEKBEARD

While not quite on par with the champion of smartphone stamina, the Huawei P20 Pro, it’s a huge improvement on the Note 8, which puts it back in contention as the best big screen phone on the market.

Which brings me to the second big improvement, the S-pen. This trademark stylus and the plethora of features accompanying it have always set the Note line apart from other plus-sized phones, even from manufacturers who have tried to copy it. Samsung takes this to a whole new level with Note 9.

While power features from the Note 8, like the ability to take notes on the lock screen without having to unlock the device, annotating a screenshot, and hovering the stylus over a word to translate it are back, the S-pen now comes with Bluetooth Low Energy (LE), giving it a whole new repertoire of nifty tricks.

Selfie fans will love the ability to activate the camera shutter with a push of the S-pen’s side button, while the business minded road warriors will revel in the ability to use the stylus as a remote for presentations with their Note 9 connected to a screen or projector.

On the subject of the cameras, it’s pretty much the same set-up as on the Galaxy S9+, no bad thing given just how that was. The rear camera comprises twin 12-megapixel sensors with optical image stabilisation and variable aperture that switches mechanically from f1.5 to f2.4 depending on lighting conditions.

The aforementioned ability to use the S-pen as a camera remote adds an additional level of utility, as do some new artificial intelligence smarts which allow the Note 9 to detect up to 20 scenes and adjusts the good