My colleague Anna said in her analysis of the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 that we could summarise the terminal as a vitaminized S9+ . Yes, it has more RAM, more battery life, and comes with the S Pen , but the gist is pretty much the same as its S-family sibling.
Nice, well finished, but uncomfortable with daily tasks of a certain duration
Record a horizontal video of more than two minutes. A 15-minute call? A half-hour game of ‘Fortnite’ or ‘Clash Royale’ ? uncomfortable in all cases. Maybe not with a bigger hand, but here I’m afraid the design should be judged by its behavior in most scenarios, and I don’t have an unusual hand to make it a problem.
On the other hand, although the fingerprint sensor has corrected its position on the back so as not to stain the camera lens, as happened in the Note 8 and the S8, it also seems somewhat uncomfortable to use, especially due to its elongated of the terminal. upcoming mobiles in Bangladesh. It just gives me the feeling that the natural position is at the height of the cameras. In its current location I have to hold the phone lightly with the other hand to be able to change the position of the other and bring my finger to the sensor. In summary? Much more comfortable to use the intelligent scanning (facial + iris), which works fast in most cases, with and without wearing glasses.
Anyway, as the days go by, you end up getting used to the design of the Note 9, even if the marks on the hands are still there.
performance to spare
Possibly the most boring section to comment on a terminal with these characteristics is performance. And that’s good because we have spent several generations in which the high-end Android shows off muscle, with processors and memory capacities that guarantee fluid use in all kinds of situations. The Note 9 is no exception.
The 8GB of RAM and 512GB of drive storage we’ve tested is plenty for both normal and more severe activities. It is true that it gets hot with moderately demanding games, but nothing to worry about.
The battery is one of its strengths . Those 4,000 mAh are noticeable, which you can stretch without problems for a day with normal use. In my case, I reached peaks of almost six hours of screen activation with moderate use (video calls, social networks, video recording, photos, games, content consumption, etc.).
If we compare it with what I consider its most direct rival, the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra 5G Price in Bangladesh, the Huawei P20 Pro , which I also used for a month , those six hours of the Note have little to do with the nine hours that I achieved with a similar use of the Huawei device. Both have the same battery capacity.
There are other things where there is room for improvement, such as application power control , which is conservative by default and turns off the most consuming applications in the background. Result? It is possible that until you start an app again you will not find out about the notifications. I also don’t like that a terminal that costs more than a thousand euros puts advertising in the notification drawer:
And it is not something isolated, here the second time on the same day and with a different announcement:
The gesture of including different performance modes is appreciated . I was curious to try the game mode, which increases the brightness by 10% and maintains FHD + resolution, although the change is barely noticeable. I think for future iterations it would be nice if these modes had the ability to turn on automatically. If I’m going to play a game I want to do it at that moment, and I don’t want to waste time looking in settings for the different performance modes and selecting the game mode, much less if the change is discrete.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 9 is pure muscle and its power ensures excellent performance for several years. Except for what has already been commented, few faults can be put on it.
When having good cameras is not enough
The Note 9 has the same “eyes” as the S9+, that is, a dual rear camera (standard lens + telephoto with variable aperture f/1.5-2.4, both 12-megapixel) and an 8-megapixel front camera with 1.7 aperture.
Samsung Galaxy Note 9: these are the cameras with which the new “flagship” of this brand aspires to stand up to its rivals
It has the most demanded innovations in current mobile photography (optical stabilization, portrait mode, super slow motion and 2x optical zoom). However, having them all does not make you better . In fact, I think it is not in any of them. In optical zoom, the Huawei P20 Pro beats it. In super slow motion the Sony Xperia XZ3 beats it. In portrait mode, the Pixel 2 or the iPhone Xs beat it.
