Smartphone review: Samsung Galaxy Note 9 is the comeback kid … if you ignore Bixby
SAMSUNG’S Galaxy Note 9 launches worldwide today and has the potential to make us forget about its fiery past … with one exception.
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WHEN more than 50,000 Australians broke up with Samsung’s Galaxy Note two years ago, it was traumatic.
That’s not just because this smartphone was a potentially fiery partner — burning bedside tables and causing plane evacuations — but because the Note 7 was such a groundbreaking device.
Many of its features returned a year later in the Note 8, but it wasn’t quite the same. Literally and figuratively, there was no spark.
The new phone featured a smaller battery and thicker body, its fingerprint scanner was in an awkward new position, and the whole package had been spoiled by earlier, unfulfilled promises.
The Note 9, however, feels fresher. It feels specifically designed for Note users. And it feels like it offers something more than gimmicks.
We’ve spent almost two weeks with the device that launches today and, while it still has room to improve, there are solid reasons the Note 9 seems like a true comeback.
BIG FEATURES, NO COMPROMISES
Samsung Galaxy Note users are a specific niche in the smartphone audience.
These are people willing to dedicate their largest pockets to their phone, to carry the handset when their pants won’t accommodate it, to demand a bigger screen every year, and to hold the phone in two hands to type, if necessary.
The Note 9 appeals directly to that audience.
Its 6.4-inch screen is the Note’s largest display yet, and offers an extra 2.1cm2 over the previous model.
The border around this new screen is smaller, particularly at the base of this phone. It also features the same attractive, curved sides as before, comes with smart adjustments to boost colours depending on the content you’re viewing and, despite losing five pixels per inch due to its larger size, never looks less than crisp.
This jumps in size does make the phone 1.6mm wider but, if you avoid a bulky phone case, it’s hardly noticeable.
Given Apple’s flagship smartphone is currently available in the smaller size of 5.8 inches (at least before its next big announcement), the Note 9 has a serious screen edge.
YOU GET THE POWER
The Note 9 doesn’t just offer a bigger screen, but more power and more grunt to show things on it.
In a bold move, the battery inside this phone is a lot larger than that of the previous model. The 21 per cent power boost is designed to deliver “all day” use and it’s a noticeable addition.
Even if you smack your phone’s alarm when you wake, check email for longer than you should, scroll social photos, read some news, and stream a couple of songs, you’d be unlucky for the battery to show less than 90 per cent by the time you arrive at work.
Samsung’s Note 9 battery boost was risky, given faulty batteries caused the explosive Note 7 breakup, but this handset barely warms up, even under high demands.
The top model Note also boasts an extra two gigabytes of RAM for powering through apps and handling demanding games such as Fortnite, and storage of up to 512GB.
Huge memory has not always been a calling card for the Note — the last model shipped with as little as 64GB — but this is the kind of addition that should please discerning fans.
THE PEN IS ALSO POWERFUL
It’s easy to underestimate the power of the S Pen that accompanies this phone, but it gives the Note its identity and can be super handy.
Additions like Screen Off Memo, which lets you scrawl on the screen of an otherwise locked smartphone, and Translate, which lets you highlight text to be converted, are genuinely convenient.
And this year they’re met by an interesting addition — the stylus is now battery powered and can be used to control the phone remotely.
That can mean controlling a presentation when it’s plugged into a TV, but a much more likely use is as a selfie snapper. The S Pen’s button can be pressed once to use it as a remote shutter — and it will work from up to 20m away from the phone — or pressed twice to swap from the rear cameras to the front lens.
Most people will probably still choose to sign documents and scribble notes with the S Pen, but its capability has been genuinely expanded in the Note 9.
CAMERA SMARTS
The camera in this phone isn’t so much better as it is a touch smarter.
The Note 9 steals the dual 12-megapixel cameras of its Galaxy S9 predecessor, with one a wide-angle lens and the other telephoto, providing DSLR-style depth of field and a modest optical zoom.
The new additions the Note 9 does bring to the table involve software and artificial intelligence.
The most obvious is Scene Optimiser that assesses what’s before the camera lens, picks one of its 20 modes, and captures the photograph with settings designed to make the most of the scene.
Those modes include sunset, food, mountains, and flowers mode and, while it didn’t nail every scene every time, did an impressive job the great majority of the time.
Samsung’s also added new smart warnings to this camera that not only caution when you’ve wiped a greasy finger across the lens, but if your subject may have blinked.
This came in handy on at least one occasion during testing, warning when a subject had started to squint.
With these additions, Samsung’s top phone cameras are definitely some of the very best available. It’s arguable whether the Note’s cameras can best the Google Pixel 2 for intelligence, however, or the Huawei P20 Pro for lowlight performance.
OH, BIXBY
Samsung’s smart voice assistant was the last to launch and, unfortunately, is likely to remain users’ last choice for some time to come.
Bixby gets smarter in the Note 9 but it had a lot of room for improvement.
The assistant is better at recognising speech, but it’s unable to answer questions or perform tasks more than half the time.
Its insistence on providing Fahrenheit forecasts and Father’s Day reminders for June (rather than September) does not bode well, and it took me more than 10 attempts to set a basic morning alarm. Others may have abandoned Bixby well before it reached that point.
VERDICT
The Samsung Galaxy Note 9 is a return to what its audience wants: big screens, powerful hardware, and fewer compromises.
This phone’s bigger battery and storage, faster operation, and smarter S Pen are all reasons to consider its purchase, particularly if you’re a Note enthusiast who didn’t jump straight back into it with the Note 8.
There are little annoyances, of course, including an often scatterbrained Bixby, a fingerprint sensor still slightly too close to camera lenses, and dual 12-megapixel cameras with no hardware updates.
Ultimately, though, Samsung’s new big-screen phone is impressive, strives hard to justify its big price tag, and has the potential to woo back more old Note fans.
Samsung Galaxy Note 9
$1499-$1799, samsung.com/au
Score: 4.5/5
Originally published as Smartphone review: Samsung Galaxy Note 9 is the comeback kid … if you ignore Bixby
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