Samsung Galaxy Note9 Touts AI-Assisted Camera, Big Battery, Refreshed S Pen
Aug 9, 2018, 10:30 AM by Eric M. Zeman
Samsung today announced the Galaxy Note9, its premiere flagship phone for the year. The Note series has always featured Samsung's newest technology, a big screen, and a stylus. This year, Samsung iterated on the design of the Note8 while introducing new camera and stylus capabilities. The Note9 is a nearly all-glass device with curved panels on the front and back. A thin metal frame supports the chassis. The Super AMOLED screen has been stretched to 6.4 inches at quad HD+ resolution (2,960 x 1,440). The U.S. variant of the phone is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor. Samsung says it has boosted the performance of the 845's GPU with a new algorithm, a water carbon coolant, and a larger heat sink to get every bit of power for games. The phone will come with 6 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage, or 8 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage with support for an additional 512 GB via the microSD slot. The phone adopts the camera setup from the Galaxy S9+. The main, wide-angle sensor is 12 megapixels and includes a variable aperture that can switch between f/1.5 and f/2.4. The secondary telephoto lens has a 12-megapixel sensor at f/2.4. Both include OIS. Samsung is introducing a dash of artificial intelligence thanks to the Snapdragon 845. The camera can recognize 20 different scenes and adjust the settings automatically for the best shot (similar to the Huawei P20 Pro and LG V35s). It also has flaw detection and can manage things such as blinking, lens smudging, and image blur. The front camera has an 8-megapixel camera with autofocus at f/1.7 for better low-light selfies. Samsung has improved the S Pen. It now includes Bluetooth Low Energy and can act as a remote control for select apps, such as the camera to take a picture or PowerPoint to advance a presentation. The phone stores a 4,000mAh battery that Samsung says will last all day. It runs Android 8 Oreo. The battery supports rapid charging and rapid wireless charging. The Note9 will include a Cat 18 LTE modem with 4x4 MIMO, carrier aggregation, and LAA for theoretical download speeds up to 1.2 Gbps. Other radios include dual-band WiFi, Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, and GPS. The phone is rated IP68 for protection against water, it includes a 3.5mm headphone jack, and stereo speakers tuned by AKG. Samsung repositioned the fingerprint reader on the rear surface so it is easier to reach. The Note9 will be sold in blue with a yellow S Pen and lavender with a purple S Pen. Preorders start August 10 and the device will go on sale August 24. The 128 GB model costs $999.99 and the 512 GB model costs $1,249.99.
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