Phone reviews have honestly become kind of routine for me.
First, I switched to the device entirely.
Then I use it as my daily driver
for anywhere from two to six weeks,
maintaining a Google doc where I jot down anything about it
that pissed me off.
Finally, when it's time to actually write the review,
I sit down with my list of annoyances,
cross off all the ones that were resolved,
either through software updates or experience,
and then create the script
that I will eventually read to you like this.
Well, the Galaxy Note 9 is bunging up my formula here
because this is all I got.
So let's see if we can pad that out into seven minutes or so.
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I covered most of the surface level stuff
about the Note 9 in my unpacked video.
But now that I've spent
some more time with it, I have some thoughts to add.
Ergonomically, the boxier shape of the Note 9
compared to the S9 Plus that I've been using
as my daily driver has been an adjustment,
as has the additional weight.
But one of the most meaningful tweaks
that Samsung made to the form factor
was widening the bezels.
This results in a slightly worse screen to bezel ratio,
which is a risky move at a time when competitors like Oppo
are going as far as to put in motorized camera mechanisms
so they can keep pushing the envelope.
But from a usability standpoint,
it's been a noticeable improvement,
especially when reaching across the screen.
The other ergonomic standout to me is the Bixby button.
Now I assumed that there would be first party support
for disabling it again, but for some reason,
Samsung, as of the time we're recording this,
has removed that option.
Overall though, I don't actually hate Bixby.
She runs locally on the device,
which means that on top of the additional functionality
that other assistants can't handle,
like executing voice macros,
she is noticeably faster for transactional things like,
turn on the flashlight.
But that's a double-edged sword
because compared to the Google Assistant,
which runs in the cloud,
Bixby is still, over a year later,
far less likely to understand me.
The fingerprint sensor has been moved into the center,
just like on the S9 series,
and I don't really need to sit that much
since I ended up using Intelligent Scan,
Samsung's unique combination of iris scanning
and facial recognition most of the time anyway.
So now we're at the part of the video
where usually I list out a bunch of specs,
but it's a little bit complicated this time.
Which processor you get under the hood of your Note 9
will actually depend on your region.
Now the good news is that it doesn't actually matter too much.
We only got one, so we couldn't do a head-to-head comparison,
but basically, the Snapdragon 845's,
Adreno GPU is stronger if you're a gamer,
while Samsung's internal tuning of the Exynos 9810 CPU
seems to give it the edge on that side of things.
Honestly, though, we're kind of splitting hairs
at this point and Samsung knows it.
They hardly even talked about performance in their keynote
because phones have basically succumbed
to the same failing of Moore's law
that we've been dealing with on the PC side
for the last five years now.
So whether you're running a Note 9 or a OnePlus 6
for literally half the price,
you can expect basically the same performance in your pocket,
at least from idle.
Now the water cooling marketing nonsense aside,
the big heat pipe that Samsung is using in the Note 9
does actually result in relatively little throttling,
even in CPU intensive tasks.
And that, I think right there,
is the most remarkable thing about the Note 9.
Not the heat pipe specifically,
but the fact that it's, you know, a little bit more powerful,
bigger than yours,
and they managed to squeeze that,
the S Pen,
the 4,000 milliamp hour battery that's big enough
that even with the weird battery drain bug
that I get sometimes,
I still managed to make it through the day.
They crammed basically everything into this phone.
Other notable inclusions,
up to eight gigs of LPDDR4 memory,
that's in the 512 gig storage version,
IP68 water resistance, NFC, high speed wireless charging,
and a 512 gig battery.
That's in the 512 gig storage version.
Micro SD expansion, a headphone jack, and stereo speakers.
Samsung, by the way,
with their spectacular HDR OLED displays
and flexible audio connectivity,
continues to deliver hands down
the best mobile movie watching experience.
So here's the thing.
Almost always when I'm working on a phone review,
because I actually switched to them as my only phone,
I wish that I, you know, had the form factor of phone X
with the features of phone Y,
and the camera of phone Z,
or something along those lines.
Most recently, I was actually working on my full review
of the Oppo Find X,
and I was crestfallen when I realized
that it doesn't have NFC.
I mean, that's apparently not a big deal in China,
but I use NFC for two factor authentication
on a very regular basis.
It was a real bummer for me.
And back to the Note 9,
the camera hasn't changed much since the S9 series,
but that's not really a terrible thing.
It's low light performance is still outstanding.
And everything from well lit indoor stills
to more challenging scenarios like poorly lit video
came out as well as I would expect
from any flagship smartphone today.
As for the new Bluetooth enabled S Pen,
as a not really a stylist guy,
it's mostly a handy little bonus.
And you know, you can write on the screen
even when it's off, I guess that's pretty cool.
But I mostly didn't find many occasions to use it,
even including the remote camera shutter functionality.
With that said, I expect some really cool things
to come out of the S Pen once the SDK lands.
Until then, assuming that you can afford one,
because it's not cheap,
the Note 9 is gonna have to settle
for being just the zero compromises smartphone,
a designation that I have never given
to any other handheld.
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