Samsung Galaxy Note 9 review

                                   

OUR VERDICT

Bigger than previous Note phones in every way, the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 has a larger 6.4-inch screen, heftier 4,000mAh battery, and a massive 1TB of storage option. The already good camera is slightly better, the stereo speakers are a first for the Note, and the Bluetooth-connected S Pen can activate fun customizable shortcuts remotely. But its price matches (and even tops) what you’ll pay for an iPhone XS Max.

FOR

• Beautiful 6.4-inch Infinity Display
• Superb camera, even in low light
• Battery and storage last and last
• Bluetooth S Pen shortcuts are fun

AGAINST

• Expensive
• A lot of small upgrades
• No HDR video recording
• We hate the Bixby button

Exclusive to the Note 9 camera are automatic scene optimizer and flaw detection features that enhance photos (though, Samsung has a habit of rolling these features out to older phones later on). 

The S Pen is still a handy tool for jotting down notes, but it now has Bluetooth for remote-controlled shortcuts that are customizable (unlike the annoying Bixby button that you can't even turn off anymore). Want to pose for a photo 30 feet away? This S Pen can help you do that and more. It works great, but you may have trouble finding a spot to rest your precious and expensive Note 9 for full-body snapshots. We ended up with a lot of shots at bad camera angles, so it's a good idea on paper, but doesn't always work out like we first envisioned.

Bad news – the price feels much bigger. Get ready to pay-level prices for the entry-level 128GB and 6GB model. Ouch. It's meant for power users, according to Samsung – the physical size, storage size, price, and battery capacity all tell us that. It sees Note 9 buyers as people who spend a lot of time on their phone and want the best of the best – they buy the best AV receiver, the best TV, and so forth.

The Note 9 is our top smartphone recommendation – that is, if you want to own a giant, feature-filled phone with a stylus and hate saving money. Ongoing  deals are the biggest threat to this upgrade that, ironically, is all about going big in a variety of small ways.

Design and display

• Expansive, bright 6.4-inch display with minor dimension changes
• Includes fingerprint sensor, microSD slot and headphone jack
• Better-aligned rear fingerprint sensor could be bigger and the Bixby button should be smaller (read: eliminated)

Samsung’s Super AMOLED display doesn’t need to change much to look really great. It's consistently the best smartphone screen in the world until the next Samsung phone launches – every year.

Specs and performance

• Same chipset as the S9 Plus, but an upgrade for Note 8 users
• Doesn't offer the top clock speed among smartphones

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The Note 9 specs also include a chipset that's an upgrade over the Note 8, giving us what's at the heart of the S9 and S9 Plus: either the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 (US and China) or Samsung Exynos 9810 (everywhere else). It's country-dependent, just like the colors, so you have no choice here.

Luckily, we found the chip fast for 3D games like Fortnite on Android and for muti-tasking. Geekbench software gave us a multi-core score of 8,875, whereas last year's phone clocked in at 6,524 – those numbers are for the Qualcomm chip.

There's a bigger performance jump in the UK and elsewhere, due to the Exynos 9810 chip. We got an average multi-core score of 9,051 and single-core score of 3,698. We haven't noticed any performance lag in the US, though.

That said, the OnePlus 6 gave us a multi-core score of 9,100, and the iPhone X reigns supreme, hitting over 10,000 in all of our tests. Samsung doesn't have the fastest chip, but it's plenty fast, and keep in mind that we have the 6GB of RAM Note 9 – there may be a bit more to the 8GB version.

source: Tech Radar