Samsung Galaxy Note 9 Review - Review 2022

The Samsung Galaxy Note nine ($999.99 for 128GB; $one,249.99 for 512GB) is the ultimate productivity phone. Packed with a huge battery, a massive screen, and a powerful stylus, the Note 9 has more of everything than any other phone on the US market. This kind of beast won't exist for everyone, that'south for certain. But if you want to stay connected everywhere, constantly creating, with no worries about running out of juice, this will exist your love monster. It'due south certainly our Editors' Selection for big-screen phones.

Design and Size

The Galaxy Annotation 9 ($999.99 at Amazon) looks almost exactly similar last year'southward Galaxy Note eight. At 6.38 past 3.01 past 0.35 inches (HWD) and seven.09 ounces, information technology is very slightly narrower, very slightly thicker, and 0.2 ounces heavier than the Note 8, just you probably won't be able to find the departure immediately from the forepart. In the US, it comes in blue and imperial, but surprisingly not blackness.

Let me make information technology clear: This phone is very large. And when you put it in a case, it will exist even larger. This is not a one-handed telephone for any but the largest hands. Also keep in mind the Note nine volition not fit into Note 8 cases because Samsung moved the fingerprint sensor—it's at present below the camera module, as opposed to next to information technology. That volition delight people who are worried about smudging the camera lens.

Otherwise, the phone has a six.4-inch quad Hard disk Super AMOLED curved screen, and USB-C and standard headphone jacks. I'll spin out some more than buzzwords hither just to get them out of the way: Like other Samsung phones, the Note 9 has IP68 waterproofing, fast wireless charging, Samsung Pay, Knox security, and the Bixby vox assistant as well.

The telephone comes in 2 storage models, 128GB and 512GB. The 128GB model ($999) has 6GB of RAM, and the 512GB model ($1249) has 8GB. You lot can pump up the storage further with a microSD carte du jour. Both models come up from diverse US carriers besides every bit an all-carrier-uniform, unlocked model direct from Samsung.

Screen, Connectivity, and Battery

Superficially, the Milky way Note ix's screen looks a lot like the Galaxy Notation viii's. We generally turn to DisplayMate Labs, which has all-encompassing lab equipment, to judge pinnacle-of-the-line smartphone displays, and DisplayMate's Dr. Ray Soneira says that the Note 9's AMOLED screen is significantly better than the Note viii's and sets new functioning records.

What'due south so not bad almost the 6.iv-inch, 2960-by-1440 curved screen? Soneira says information technology has very loftier accented color accurateness, the screen is even less reflective than other leading smartphones, and its effulgence is amongst the highest available. Y'all won't, at this fourth dimension, become a better smartphone screen than this i.

The Galaxy Note 9's modem is the aforementioned every bit the one in the Galaxy S9+, which is not bad news. This chart shows y'all how the Galaxy S9+ gets better LTE speeds than either previous Galaxy generations or iPhones, thanks to its Category 18 Qualcomm X20 modem. It supports all of the frequency bands, and all of the band combinations, used by every N American carrier.

I know 5G is coming next year, but I wouldn't worry about that too much; it will be at to the lowest degree another year before 5G is widespread and before chipset makers work out the power-direction kinks that come up with new wireless data systems. Meanwhile, I've seen the existing X20 modem go speeds up to 700Mbps with the right carrier setup, showing there's nevertheless plenty of room in 4G.

We saw some odd behaviors while testing the Note ix's WiFi—sometimes nosotros got slower results than the Note viii, which shouldn't be the instance given the telephone'southward class-leading Wi-Fi hardware. I've seen this happen on new, pre-release phones before, and it was always a pre-production firmware problem that got fixed with an update, which could very well be the instance here.

The Note 9 brings the S9+'s dual speakers to the Note line. The two speakers are by the earpiece, and along the bottom. Compared with the Annotation eight's single bottom speaker, the speakers here aren't much louder. Only they're clearer: The Note 8's sound is tinny, while the Note 9 is richer and deeper. That makes a real deviation.

Phone call quality is nada brusk of spectacular. With calls on the T-Mobile network, we got loud, clear and dissonance-free connections. The dual speakers work for the speakerphone, adding audio richness. The phone supports the EVS voice codec, the almost advanced one currently bachelor in the Us, as well as Wi-Fi calling and VoLTE. Our unlocked model supported T-Mobile Wi-Fi calling, just to become Wi-Fi calling on other carriers, you need the carrier-provided model.

The Galaxy Notation 9'south standout feature is its 4,000mAh bombardment. Information technology ran out our 12-60 minutes battery exam video nosotros stream over Wi-Fi with 15 pct of juice remaining, projecting screen-on battery life out to 14 hours. That beats every other flagship smartphone we've tested. The bombardment is significantly larger than the one in the Galaxy S9+ (3,500mAh, x+ hours), the Galaxy Note eight (three,300mAh, 6 hours), or the Galaxy Notation 5 (3,020mAh, viii hours and thirty minutes).

This may win over some of those old Milky way Note 4 users who are still clinging to their phones considering they have removable batteries. The Annotation 9 may not have a removable battery, simply information technology has every bit close to an anxiety-gratis one every bit you lot'll see on a leading smartphone. The telephone also supports both fast charging over USB-C and wireless charging.

An Even Meliorate S Pen

The new S Pen looks a lot like the old one, only it has a major new feature: Bluetooth. Information technology's also a new colour. If y'all have a blueish phone, y'all get a yellow pen; a purple phone has a purple pen.

As before, this is the best stylus on a smartphone, by far. No other phone has anything really like the S Pen. In that location are stylus phones—I'1000 thinking of the LG Stylo line—and you can use a capacitive stylus with nigh whatever phone, merely their styli aren't as precise or every bit responsive; information technology's like using a crayon versus a fine ballpoint pen.

Pop the pen out of its spring-loaded slot and you can immediately write on the screen, a feature chosen "screen off memo." Otherwise, the pen is perfectly authentic and pressure sensitive, ideal for taking notes, making sketches, or doing annotations.

I gave the pen to two artistic types who are passionate most their Notation 4 phones. The finer tip gave them more precision in cartoon and sketching. The pen too has a better texture on the screen, they said.

The Due south pen has a battery at present. Information technology charges when the pen is in the telephone, to the melody of 30 minutes of usage for a 40-second charge. It works fine as a pen when it isn't charged; the only thing that needs charging is its ability to be a Bluetooth push.

The single button on the pen can be set to do diverse things in various apps if clicked, double-clicked, or long-clicked. Near usefully, information technology's a presentation clicker or a selfie shutter button; it will also interruption your music or step through web pages. Samsung is making an SDK available so other apps can back up the push button, too. Equally for distance, we tested the button to piece of work upwardly to about 15 anxiety away.

It's Also a Desktop PC...Almost

The Note 9 sometimes feels like it's about the size of a laptop; with Samsung's DeX mode, it tin turn into a desktop. DeX fashion has existed since the Galaxy S8 serial. If you popular your phone into the appropriate dock, you can connect a mouse, keyboard, and larger monitor, and use your Android apps in a multi-windowed context.

Our previous review of DeX foundered on the problem of…who actually has a mouse, keyboard, and monitor but not a PC? And if this is for road warriors, who's going to conduct those things around with them? Samsung has a bit of a solution this year: a $49.99 DeX HDMI adapter that plugs straight into a big screen; you can and so utilise the Note 9'due south screen equally a keyboard and trackpad. You can apply a dual-screen way that's exclusive to the Notation 9, for example, to prove a presentation on the big screen but your presentation notes on the phone's screen. You lot tin likewise use the S Pen as a presentation clicker.

This makes a lot of sense for people who do presentations or desire to share media. You won't be writing long memos this way, but you lot can certainly pop upwards Netflix or PowerPoint. We haven't tested the adapter yet, so nosotros tin can't speak to its functioning.

Processor and Performance

Like virtually current flagship smartphones, the Milky way Notation 9 uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor running at a maximum speed of 2.8GHz. Criterion results make sense when you take into account the two,960-by-ane,440 screen. Geekbench, which measures raw processor power, got 2422 unmarried-core, 8973 multi-core, which is correct nearly where other 845-powered phones fall. Information technology'southward lower than the iPhone X, which has faster CPU performance, but about 30 percentage higher than the Galaxy Note 8. (For more, encounter our story on the Galaxy Note 9 vs. the iPhone X.)

Results on the GFXBench graphics benchmark came out at 32fps for the avant-garde Automobile Chase benchmark, also on par with other 845 phones, and more than double the effect we got on the Galaxy Note 8.

See How We Test Phones

The Annotation 9'south score on the complex PCMark benchmark, which simulates regular applications, doesn't print as much. We got vii,662 with the screen turned up to total resolution, which clocks in lower than the LG G7 (7,983), the OnePlus 6 (8,484), and the HTC U12+ (8,518), only college than the half-dozen,866 we got on the Note eight. This may just be considering Samsung'southward Android overlay yet slows things down a touch.

Samsung says that using new cooling technology, information technology's managed to keep the phone going for longer at higher ability, which is great for gaming. We ran a processor-pounding benchmark to figure out the difference between the Note 9 and an S9+. After about four minutes, both phones started to throttle their speeds down to reduce estrus. The difference wasn't in the fact of throttling, but the method. The S9+ would drop way down, and then push its speed back up, creating valleys of functioning that could crusade games to stutter. The Notation 9 ramped down much more than smoothly, giving games time to adapt, which leads to smoother performance.

The phone runs Android viii.1 with plenty of Samsung add together-ons. You can refuse to load much of the bloatware during the installation process. One thing yous can't plough off is Samsung's Bixby Dwelling, an boosted screen of widgets activated past pressing a physical push on the left side of the phone. You lot will keep accidentally pressing this button; there is nothing you tin do most that. It's annoying, but not a bargain breaker.

The Camera: So, You lot Like Filters?

The Milky way Note 9's camera is, physically, the aforementioned as the Galaxy S9+'due south. That ways ii 12-megapixel master lenses; one switches from a f/ii.4 to a f/1.5 for low low-cal, and the other is a f/2.4 "2x" photographic camera. In our tests of the Milky way S9's photographic camera, we constitute that the hardware is excellent, only we were put off past aggressive oversharpening in the JPEG encoder.

The bad news is that the oversharpening is still there. Many of the photos nosotros took, in good light and low calorie-free, bear witness no existent differences from the S9+. The S9+ isn't bad at all, but it depends on how you lot feel about JPEG edges.

The Notation 9 photos bear witness more than saturated colors than the S9+, though. At least some of that comes from the telephone'south "intelligent camera," which, like the camera on the LG G7, automatically tries to scene-select based on what information technology thinks it sees. In testing, that acquired photos of plants, especially, to have richer, deeper colors and more than particular. And then that'southward good.

I had less luck with the Note 9'southward "flaw detection," which is supposed to detect if photos are blurry or someone is blinking. It told me my "last shot might be blurry," merely didn't offer whatsoever suggestions on how to fix that (hint: raise the shutter speed). It also didn't detect blinks when I tried it.

At this nosebleed level of the smartphone world, honestly, cameras are all pretty skilful. The big pick to make is whether y'all want to get with a device that has a 2x optical zoom, similar the Note 9/S9+/iPhone X, whether you want to go with the LG G7's wide-angle camera, or whether you don't care well-nigh either of those. I personally like the broad-angle approach more than the 2x i, but not plenty to revolve my buying conclusion around it.

The front-facing, eight-megapixel camera is besides exactly the same as the Samsung Galaxy S9+'s camera.

The main camera records 4K video at up to sixty frames per second, with a 10-minute maximum on individual 4K30 clips and a five minute maximum on 4K60. There's no time limit on 1080p video recording.

The camera also has all the modes that were added on the Galaxy S9: hyperlapse, bokeh, selfie bokeh, 960fps super slow-mo, and Samsung'southward rather creepy AR Emoji, which are like custom Bitmoji.

The camera should not brand or break this phone purchase for y'all. The pen should.

Comparisons and Conclusions

Old Galaxy Notation owners, it'due south time to put those failing, ancient phones downwardly and pick up this dazzler, with its all-twenty-four hour period battery. The Samsung Galaxy Note 9 is the ultimate productivity telephone right now, a gorgeous beast of a phablet that lets you sign PDFs, comment presentations, and take conference calls like nobody's business.

If you're creative, nothing matches a Galaxy Note because of the S Pen. My daughter, an artist, carries a Galaxy Note 4, and it'southward total of scribbles and doodles. Writers can utilize the immediacy of the screen-off annotation-taking function to jot downwardly ideas. No other telephone works like this. It's glorious.

But all that power comes in a big, heavy, expensive package. That means it's not for everyone. There are very many people who don't need a three-inch-broad, 7-ounce, one thousand-dollar phone. If yous don't intend to utilise the South Pen or hoard stuff in the massive onboard storage, you'll exist just almost also-served by a $720 Galaxy S9, or even a $529 OnePlus six.

How about the Galaxy Annotation 9 versus the iPhone Ten? Simply put, an iPhone can't do what this thing can do, because of the S Pen, and the Galaxy Annotation 9 kills the iPhone on battery life. But y'all might exist drawn to the iPhone platform considering of iMessage or iOS'south superior creative apps, in which case yous should stick with the iPhone. Information technology's a niggling infuriating that Samsung still tin can't combine the world's best art-making telephone hardware with the best fine art software, but that's where nosotros are.

While many people are comfortable driving cars, some people demand a truck. The Galaxy Notation 9 is the kitted-out monster truck of the smartphone world. That power makes it a clear Editors' Selection.

Best Mobile Phone Picks

• The Best Phones for 2022
• The Best AT&T Phones for 2022
• The All-time T-Mobile Phones for 2022
• The Best Dart Phones for 2022
• More Mobile Telephone Reviews
• More than from Samsung

Mobile Phone Product Comparisons

• LG G6 vs. Samsung Milky way S8
• Apple iPhone 5s vs. Apple iPhone half-dozen
• Samsung Galaxy Note 5 vs. Samsung Galaxy S7

Further Reading

• Report: Midrange 'OnePlus Z' to Ship With 5G Connectivity
• U.s. 5G Phone Share Rises to 20 Percent Thanks to Galaxy S20
• COVID-19 Causes Smartphone Market to Suffer Biggest Annual Decline Always
• Written report: Xiaomi Phones Scooping Up Tons of Web Browsing Data, Fifty-fifty in Incognito Mode
• Blue Wireless Shutting Down After Selling Spectrum to Verizon

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/old-cell-phones/28788/samsung-galaxy-note-9-review

Posted by: hayesfinece.blogspot.com

Share this post