Samsung has just launched its flagship phone Galaxy Note 9. The reveal was made at the Barclays Center in New York. The massive phone is as good as it should be but costs a shocking $1,000 (Rs. 123,755) for 128GB version and $1,250 (Rs. 148,506) for 512GB storage.
Apart from revealing the phone, Samsung showed a bunch of new stuff and announced some exciting things that are coming with the Galaxy Note 9. We cover everything the Korean Smartphone giant announced yesterday.
Galaxy Note 9’s new S Pen features
Samsung Galaxy Note’s standout feature has always been its S Pen. With the new Galaxy Note 9, the pen is better than ever before. The new S Pen now relies on Bluetooth low energy (the pen has a built-in Bluetooth antenna).
The new pen’s features will significantly influence how you use the Note 9. You can still navigate, draw, create live messages and do whatever you could do on the previous Samsung Note’s but now the S Pen’s button comes with Bluetooth actions that let you trigger things within apps.
Samsung has even added a settings menu for these triggers that you can customize to suit your needs. For example, if you now long-press the S Pen button, you can open the camera app, and if you double press the S Pen button you can change between the front and rear camera modes. A single click on the button takes the photo.
This feature lets you take long-range shutter shots thanks to Bluetooth on board now.
The S Pen also uses very little energy now and lets you recharge it within a minute after you put it back into the phone. Some other things you can do with the pen includes playing or moving to the next track inside a music app, and control powerpoint to advance slides.
Samsung will allow developers to play with this new technology which means a lot of your apps on the phone will now be controllable using the S Pen button.
AI camera features of Samsung Galaxy Note 9
From the inside and outside, the Galaxy Note 9 is basically borrowing the same camera you saw in the Galaxy S9 Plus. The 12-megapixel dual cameras on the back and the 8-megapixel camera on the front really don’t have any hardware changes except that one of the cameras in the back can automatically change the aperture when it detects low light.
What’s really different on the Note 9 is its AI software. The new AI software can quickly analyze a scene and detect if you are shooting food, animals, flowers, or anything else in the environment. There are 20 options the AI can recognize and adjust the scene.
The camera also automatically balances the saturation and contrast to make photos look better depending on the scene. For example, if you are shooting in the snow, the camera automatically adjusts the colors and whites. Similarly, if you shoot in the city, it changes the way your picture comes.
The camera app can now also tell you to retake your shot if it detects a flaw in the picture or the camera settings. For example, if you took a photo of your friend and their eyes came closed, the camera will let you know to take another shot.
Samsung Galaxy Hardware highlights
The Samsung Galaxy Note 9 as expected has some of the best and highest-end specifications on the phone. Here are some quick highlights:
- Screen: 6.4 inch Super AMOLED with 2,960x 1,440 resolution
- Chipset: Octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor
- Storage: 128GB or 512GB internal storage
- Fingerprint reader: Now moved below the cameras
- Battery: 4,000mAh powerful battery
- RAM: 6GB RAM or 8GB RAM (512GB variant)
- Software: Android 8.1 with Samsung Experience 9.5
The phone will be released on August 29.
Fortnite comes to Android
One of the biggest surprise announcements from last night was Fortnite coming to Android. The game will be launched with the new Samsung Galaxy Note 9 on August 29.
And if you are already a Galaxy owner, you will have access to Fortnite Beta on your device before it becomes available to the rest of the world.