Is the Note 9 Worth It? Samsung Galaxy Note 9 Review!

Samsung’s next big smartphone the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 is here now. For quite some time Samsung hasn’t had a major hit. The Samsung Galaxy S8 was a great smartphone but the S9 and S9 Plus got a lukewarm response from buyers.

In the world of almost bezel-less smartphones, a lot of Samsung smartphones look rather outdated. But now we have the Note 9. Read on for our full Samsung Galaxy Note 9 review.

It has been applauded by a lot of users for being a smartphone that doesn’t blindly copy the notch trend. Many reviewers who have used it for the last few weeks or so have already claimed that this phone comes with the best display on any smartphone right now.

Samsung Galaxy Note 9 Review: Specifications

Performance wise it’s rocking the current best chipset by Qualcomm i.e. the Snapdragon 845. India and a few other markets would get the Exynos variant which has been proven time and again to be slightly faster than the Qualcomm one.

This phone’s top variant would also come with a 512 GB storage option along with the option to increase storage up to 1 TB by adding one microSD card up to 512 GB!

Keeping the performance and high storage options aside let’s talk about the camera present on this device. Time and again the Note lineup features some of the best cameras and displays present on any device in the market.

Reading now- Samsung Galaxy Note 9 Review

The Note 9 comes with an AMOLED display and has Gorilla Glass 5 protection. It’s one of the newer smartphones which doesn’t come up with a notch.

This is one of those features of this smartphone that a lot of people like. While a lot of other people still would have preferred a smartphone with a notch as that’s something more of a 2018 approach.

The device boasts a 6.4-inch display with an 83.4% screen-to-body ratio and is IP 68 dust and waterproof. This means that you can take your phone up to a depth of 1.5 meters for up to 30 minutes.

One of the other unexpected features of this year’s Note 9 is the ability to control a lot of functions using the S Pen.

The Bluetooth-supporting S pen allows users to click selfies and this time around it features an internal battery that can be recharged pretty quickly when the pen is inside the smartphone.

What’s unique?

The Samsung Galaxy Note 9 also comes with a water carbon cooling system and overall that should make for a lot cooler experience while you are gaming for a long duration of time.

Right now Fortnite for Android is exclusive for this smartphone for 1 month and then it would be publicly released for all of the Android smartphones.

Reading now- Samsung Galaxy Note 9 Review

The Note 9 supports the flagship Samsung Dex experience and this time the implementation is a lot better as it’s easier to get this functionality just via a single USB type C cable.

This is also the first time for the Note lineup device to sport a 4000 mAh battery. On paper, this means that you can expect an all-day-long battery backup with this year’s Note 9.

Samsung has made sure to pack this phone up to the brim with features as it comes with an IRIS scanner, barometer, heart rate sensor, SpO2 sensor, and a lot more features.

This smartphone supports 32-bit 384 kHz audio via the 3.5 mm jack, which is still present even in 2018! And we personally applaud them for this decision.

The smartphone has support for dual-band wifi, and Bluetooth 5.0, and the display is HDR10 compliant, always on display.

More features:

The Note 9 sports a dual-sim hybrid setup and also has a single-sim variant for select markets. The Bixby natural language commands and voice dictation are still present and frankly, at this point in time, it just makes sense to use only the Google Assistant but still Samsung insists on keeping their own assistant on their flagship smartphone.

The camera sensors on this phone are a 12 MP primary snapper with a variable aperture ranging from f/1.5 up to f/2.4 and it has a pixel size of 1.4 uM.

There’s support for OIS and it boasts of dual-pixel phase detection autofocus technology. The secondary camera is also a 12 MP sensor with fixed f/2.4 aperture and a pixel size of 1 um. It boasts of 2x optical zoom.

The front camera is an 8 MP sensor with f/17 aperture and 1.22 um pixel size.
The front camera supports up to 2K video recording at 30 fps while the primary camera supports UHD 4K video recording at 60 fps.

The device supports Samsung Pay and overall feels like a solid device in the Note lineup. But there are not too many major upgrades to warrant an update to this one if someone already has a Note 8.

What we think?

Personally, we too believe that you would be better off waiting for the next-gen iPhone, Pixel, and even the next Samsung Galaxy S10 if you really want to buy a flagship device.

This might be one of the most polished smartphones out there in the market currently but still, it’s only an incremental upgrade and there are no jaw-dropping features present on the Note 9 which might incite someone who’s willing to spend close to $1000 on their new smartphone.

Conclusion

Feature-wise if someone wants a great camera, the best-in-class big display, and an overall stable smartphone experience with all the bells and whistles then this smartphone is a great candidate for that. But there are some cons too.

The custom skin that Samsung uses on top of Android is notoriously infamous for causing the device to lag after a prolonged duration of usage. Hence people even skip the top of the Samsung lineup and go for OnePlus or Pixel devices.

If you are someone who’s a fan of stock Android and not a big fan of what Samsung does to their phones in the software department then you should skip this phone.

Reading now- Samsung Galaxy Note 9 Review 

So, guys, if you want to buy the best that Android has to offer right now then you should go for the Note 9. But if you can just hold out for a little longer there are a lot more devices just around the corner.

This was it for our Samsung Galaxy Note 9 review and our Note 9 review video will come soon on the channel too, did you like it?

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Jayaditya Chakrabarty

An android fan who is often found playing Counter-Strike in his free time, wannabe photographer, Engineering Graduate!