Samsung Galaxy Note 9 First Impressions: Can the new S Pen make a difference?

Samsung has finally launched the much-awaited Samsung Galaxy Note 9 in India. The all-new Note 9 is a successor to the last year's Note 8. While it shares a lot in common with the previous generation, it surely brings in a ton of new features and improvements. Here are our first impressions on the Samsung Galaxy Note 9.

Specifications

Samsung Galaxy Note 9 features a 6.44-inch Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 1440x2960 pixels. The smartphone is powered by the Exynos 9810 processor coupled with Mali-G72 GPU. The phablet comes in two variants, one with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of onboard storage while the other one carries 8GB of RAM and a whopping 512GB of internal storage. The storage is further expandable up to 512GB using a microSD card. All of this is backed by a 4,000mAh battery.

Design

The design of the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 looks a lot similar to the previous year's Note 8. The glass-sandwich design, the Infinity display and even the button placements. However, the design is now much improved. The fingerprint scanner is now in a much better location while still being out of reach with one hand for someone with small hands. The display now has smaller bezels when compared to the Note 8. Thankfully, Samsung has still not gotten rid of the headphone jack.

The glass back invites a lot of smudges so we highly recommend slapping a case on as soon as you get the device. The colour variants are quite attractive while we personally liked the Blue one as it comes with a yellow S Pen which adds into the beauty of the phablet. Speaking of the S Pen, the stylus is now better than previous generations as it now comes with Bluetooth. It allows for the button on the S Pen to be used as a Camera trigger, media controls and what not.

Camera

As soon as we took the first picture from the Samsung Galaxy Note 9, we were really impressed and we can say that these will be one of the best cameras on any smartphone in 2018. The phablet sports a dual-camera setup consisting of two 12-megapixel sensors with OIS on both. Up front, there is an 8-megapixel selfie shooter.

Conclusion

Samsung Galaxy Note 9 is priced at Rs. 67,900 for the 6GB+128GB variant while the 8GB+256GB variant retails at Rs. 84,900. The smartphone will be available in Midnight Black, Ocean Blue and Metalic Copper colour variants. The smartphone comes with a ton of features and the company is surely charging a premium for that. However, looking at Apple's pricing, the Galaxy Note 9 is quite reasonable in India. If you are using a Galaxy Note 8 already, this might not be a worthy update. In case you are coming from something like the Galaxy S8 or older smartphone, the Galaxy Note 9 deserves a look.