Samsung’s all new Galaxy Note 9 is all set to step in India on August 22nd. It is already up for pre-order on Flipkart at price of around Rs. 68.000 with some freebies. Now, i must say Note9 is the best premium smartphone in the market so far from Samsung with stylish design, durable packaging and of course a powerhouse specifications. Let’s take a look at it in more detail in this short review.
Design:
Just like the Galaxy S9, the Note 9 retains the headphone jack at the bottom with USB-C port, primary microphone, speaker grill and the all new S-Pen. To the right there’s the power button, noise cancelling microphone on the top and a Hybrid Sim-Slot. Volume rocker and the Bixby key is on the left which cannot be remapped to other actions. On the back there’s similar dual-camera with dual-tone LED flash and the Heart rate-fingerprint scanner is moved a bit lower which is loved by all now. To the front we have notification light, sensors, earpiece and an 8-mp camera with the iris-scanner.
Hardware:
The 6.4” SUPERAMOLED (1440×2960) infinity panel display is amazing to look at which produces excellent colors, high brightness levels and perfect viewing angle with a whopping 516 ppi. This Phablet is powered by the high-end Snapdragon 845 chipset or Exynos 9810 for India, with 6GB RAM + 128GB storage and 8GB RAM + 512GB storage. This time Samsung has added water carbon cooling and also a heat-spreader to avoid throttling and sustained peak performance. Fast charging, wireless charging, stereo speaker, Gorilla Glass 5, ip68 water and dust resistance, a super high capacity 4000mAH battery, yes no compromise made here by Samsung. This Phablet will worth every penny invested.
Software:
Note 9 has got Samsung Experience 9.5 built on top of Android 8.1 Oreo. Most of the software features are familiar to anyone who’s used or even Galaxy S8 or S9. There’s Samsung Pay and the IRIS scanner which is slow but very accurate even under low light, the fingerprint scanner on its new location feels better too.
S-Pen:
This worth mentioning separately. This time the S-Pen has Bluetooth LE support so there’s a tiny battery in it. It lets you do things like launch the camera, swap cameras, take a pic and can be programmed to do a lot of other things with all the functionality of last year too.
Camera:
The Note 9 retains the same camera from S9+ i.e. two 12mp sensors, one with f/1.5 – 2.4 and other of f/2.4 aperture both with OIS. One is a regular lens but a larger aperture and other one is a telephoto lens to give you 2x optical zoom and that DSLR blur effect. What’s new here is the variable aperture on the primary lens which can switch between f/1.5 and f/2.4 depending on what the scene needs. The camera is AI powered with functions like scene detection and flaw detection that will give you a feedback if your eyes are closed or the image is shaky. The camera is amazing at recording videos in 4K @ 60fps with optical zoom and OIS to add to its beauty.
Box Content:
Fast Charger, hard case, OTG adapter, premium earphones, replaceable tips for the S-Pen and USB-C cable.
Conclusion:
Yes the device is a beast of a performer, great at multitasking, S-Pen is upgraded and it excels in the camera department too. The only let down will be the pricing, it is priced at 67,900/- for the 6GB RAM/ 128GB and 84,900/- for the 8GB/512GB variant, yes this is quite high for most of the people as the market has many options available at half this price of this. But someone to whom the price isn’t an issue and wants a high-end device which is future proof for at least 3 years than this is the device to go for.
