After months of rumours and weeks of leaks, the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 is finally official. And there’s plenty to get excited about ahead of its August 24 release date. It might not look a whole lot different, but the changes on the inside are impressive, to say the least. Screen, speakers, S-Pen and storage: all have been tweaked and improved, with big upgrades all-around over the already-fantastic Note 8. Here the things to know about the Samsung Galaxy Note 9.
It is the biggest note yet
As in previous years, the Note 9 is the megalodon of the Galaxy line-up. And this year it’s bigger than ever, offering a 6.4in screen that pips its predecessor by an all-important 0.1in. Other than that, the Note 9’s design is pretty familiar. It has a curved sheet of Gorilla Glass on the front, slightly less curved Gorilla Glass on the back and diamond-cut aluminium around the sides. Worried it’ll be too big for your pockets? The Note 9 measures 161.9 x 76.4 x 8.8mm, and weighs 201g. That’s only 0.2mm thicker and 1.6mm wider than the smaller Note 8. Compared to the 5.8in iPhone X though, its large size is a little more obvious, measuring in at 5.5mm wider than the iPhone X. Samsung has improved the positioning of the fingerprint scanner for this large phone, though. In the Note 8 it was off to the side of the camera, which just didn’t feel right. This time it sits centrally, below the camera. This should be a much more intuitive fit for your index finger, particularly in a giganto-phone like this.
Not notch insight
Samsung has gone against the grain with the Note 9 and shunned the popular trend for a notch. That means that, like the Note 8 display, the Note 9 has a sensible rectangular screen that curves just a little at the sides. Resolution is the same as last year too, with 2960 x 1440 pixels giving a screen ratio of 18.5:9. This means it can cram lots of screen inches into a phone that can still fit into your pocket. As ever, the Note 9 uses one of Samsung’s ultra-bright, mega-sharp Super AMOLED panels, which lets you choose between reserved, natural colour or tones so bold they barely look real.
The S-pen gets a Bluetooth
No Note phone is complete without an S-Pen. It has been the main feature of the range since it began in 2011. It still slots into the phone, so you’ll lose it on week two rather than day one, however, it now supports Bluetooth, letting you fire-off commands with the button on its side or its clicker up top. Perhaps its most useful feature is remote camera shutter control. This means you don’t have to set a timer or wave around madly to activate gesture control when taking a group shot.
It has an all-day battery
One of Samsung’s big boasts for the Note 9 is that it has the largest battery ever packed into a Note phone. The first Note? A puny (by today’s standards) 2500mAh. The Note 8? A more respectable 3500mAh. The Note 9, however, has a 4000mAh cell. Samsung hasn’t made any bold claims about it being able to last two or three days off a charge – because we all know it won’t for mobile addicts like us. However, this sort of capacity, matched with Samsung’s efficient OLED screens and good power management, should mean you can abuse it from wake-up to bedtime without it draining away completely.
It doubles up as a makeshift PC
The Note 9 has DeX built-in. A lot of you may not have heard of this before, because while it was available in the Galaxy S8 and S9, you needed a dock accessory to use it. And it wasn’t cheap. This time around, you just need a £30 HDMI adapter. But what is DeX?
Plug the Note 9 into a monitor or TV and you’ll see an interface that looks more like Windows 10 or MacOS than Android. Attach a Bluetooth keyboard or mouse and you’ll have something that feels quite a lot like a desktop PC.
Sure, it can’t suddenly use Windows applications, but Android already has Microsoft Word, Excel and loads of other apps you might run on a laptop. The Note 9 can also act as a giant touchpad for DeX when attached too.
