- This video is sponsored by PUBG Mobile.
Hey guys, this is Austin.
This is the Samsung Galaxy Note 9.
Now, if you go all the way back to 2011
when the first Galaxy Note came out,
it kinda changed smartphones in a big way.
Quite literally, a big way,
as not only is it one of the biggest smartphones of its time
but fast forward to 2018,
and that has kinda become the standard.
This has a massive 6.4-inch screen.
But the real question,
is the Note 9 even worth it?
With an eye-wateringly high thousand dollar plus price tag,
at first glance, the Note 9 doesn't look
all that different than its predecessor.
However, that's not necessarily going to be a bad thing.
The previous phone was one of the nicest builds
and designs of any smartphone in 2017,
and that definitely follows through in 2018.
With an all glass aluminum build,
there's no one who's going to complain
that the Note 9 is an ugly looking smartphone.
The only problem, and this is actually kind of
shared with the Note 8, is that it is really, really big.
Now, I know, I just talked all about
how the Note was one of the very first phones
to bring fabulous to the mainstream,
but this is just really tall.
As you'd expect from a Samsung flagship,
you are going to be getting IP68 water resistance,
wireless charging.
And if you look on the bottom,
what's very unique with this,
almost no other phone has it,
actually open this up here,
you're going to see a little round port.
Now this is actually not all that common
in phones these days,
but it's known as a headphone jack.
It's not really something that most people have.
This is back in the days before Bluetooth
where you'd use wires or something
to connect to your headphones.
I don't know, it sounds really weird,
I don't think anyone actually uses it,
but in theory, if you want to plug in your headphones
to your Note, you can do that.
There's also an S Pen, but no one cares about that.
Hey guys, this is Austin.
And today we're doing something just a little bit different.
One of the big upgrades on the Galaxy Note 9 this year
are stereo speakers, which is especially helpful
considering that before, having a single speaker
on the bottom of such a giant phone seemed ridiculous.
But what they're doing here,
just like on a lot of other phones including the S9,
the iPhone, is they're going to be using the earpiece
as well as the bottom speaker
to give you a pretty convincing stereo effect.
It also helps that it's properly loud.
So last week, I took a day off,
and I left everyone in the office with one simple mission.
You're also going to find the Bixby button.
I'm still going to complain about it,
and Samsung is still going to do absolutely nothing
to fix it.
But luckily, I have a much better solution.
One thing I have had some issues with
is the fingerprint sensor.
Now, thankfully Samsung has moved it to below the camera
as opposed to right beside it, which is a nice change.
However, the problem is
is that it actually isn't all that accurate.
What's new this year is that you swipe your finger
across the sensor once to be able to enroll it
as a fingerprint.
Now that sounds great, and it's a lot faster to set up,
but the problem is, it's just really inaccurate for me.
Now sure, being able to tap your finger on it
a bunch of times when you first set up the phone
is kind of annoying, but at least, you know
the fingerprint sensor is pretty good.
Whereas here, no matter how many times I try to re-enroll
a set of different fingers, it just isn't all that accurate.
Now maybe it's just an issue with my Note 9,
whether it's the software or the hardware,
but the good thing is, the facial recognition
is going to be pretty solid.
So you have a form of face ID known as Face Unlock
as well as iris recognition, which in combination
should be able to unlock pretty quickly.
That's not gonna be quite as fast as something like
the OnePlus 6, but it's around on par with the iPhone X,
and honestly, security wise, you'll be okay.
It won't unlock for Ken, but it'll unlock for me,
so I guess that's a good thing.
With a Snapdragon 845 on board,
just as you would expect, this is going to be right up there
with the rest of the Android flagships of this year.
And while on paper it's going to fall a little behind
the iPhone X and its crazy fast A11 chip,
you're definitely not going to be disappointed
with the performance of the Note 9.
What this isn't, at least based on my first impressions,
is as fast as the OnePlus 6.
And considering that this is going to be about
double the price,
that's not really going to be a good sign.
Now a big part of that has to do with software.
OnePlus has a fairly stock looking skin,
which doesn't have a lot of extra bloat,
and while I don't want to say that the Note 9
is full of the old school touch whiz of Samsung's past,
but it's definitely not going to be as speedy
and that higher resolution screen
doesn't make things better.
One of the big advantages of the Note 9
has to do with its gaming capabilities.
So of course, there's the biggest hottest games of 2018,
which are available on the Note.
And of course, we have to talk about the battle royale
that everyone is playing right now, PUBG Mobile,
who were awesome enough to sponsor this video.
This is the official mobile version
of Player Unknown's Battlegrounds.
If somehow you haven't heard of it,
it's a free to play battle royale game
on both Android and iOS, which features 100 players,
all dropping into a massive island
for a winner-takes-all battle.
But I don't need to tell you that.
You've played PUBG, right?
Well, PUBG is now on your phone.
As you'd expect with a high end phone like the Note 9,
it's going to have no problem playing PUBG
at fairly high settings.
Plus, since it's Android, you can actually customize it
all the way up to Ultra HD,
you can change the frame rate cap,
you can even change the style of the game.
It's especially impressive,
considering that you're getting the full experience,
with both of the game's huge maps
and it's all going to be powered by Unreal Engine
and give you full 7.1 audio outlets.
Not only can you play with four people on a squad,
but there are going to be faster paced arcade modes,
which are over in eight minutes for a quick game.
I'm always going to be partial to a mouse and keyboard,
but the controls really are not going to be bad,
especially for a mobile shooter.
The moral of the story, PUBG Mobile is fun
regardless of where you play it,
but it's especially good on the Note 9.
With a 6.4-inch, 2960 by 1440p AMOLED display,
it shouldn't be any surprise that this is one of the
nicest smartphone screens on the market.
Now, sure, when you put it side by side with the iPhone X,
it looks very similar,
and to be totally honest, Samsung has been on top
of the panel game for a few years now
so even something like an S7 or S8 looks good.
But this, this is about as good as it gets.
One of the more surprising upgrades with the Note 9
has to do with the battery.
And no, it's not that it's going to
catch on fire or anything
because that's totally not what used to happen.
Instead, the Galaxy Note 9 has a much larger
4000 milli Ampere hour cell.
Maybe because of that,
Samsung was a little conservative last year
with a fairly small 3300 milli Ampere hour battery,
but this year, with a full 4000 on board,
not only is it going to easily last through a full day,
something that couldn't always be said about the Note 8
or even the S9, but also gives some differentiation,
which is always been one of my big issues with the Note.
If you're not into the S Pen, a lot of times,
it just makes sense to buy the normal Galaxy S.
So at its core, the Note 9 still has
a pair of 12 megapixel cameras,
one wide angle camera with a variable aperture
as well as a telephoto option.
Now, I've always felt like, especially on the S9,
the variable aperture is nice,
but it doesn't make a huge difference.
Now, while it's not necessarily a new camera feature,
the S Pen has been upgraded with the ability
to use it as a selfie pen?
- Remote?
- I guess?
- Just snap selfies by pressing the button.
It's pretty cool.
- So we do have the live focus mode,
which is going to be the same as the Galaxy S9,
and while it works for the most part,
it does have some problems
with some pretty major differences in contrast,
so that's not great.
- Yeah, I've noticed a lot of
overexposing the background with this,
especially in some of the pictures that I've taken,
it definitely has that issue.
- One of my big issues with the Note 9
is that you could have bought the cheaper
and almost identical Galaxy S9 Plus six months ago.
Now sure, smartphone's definitely evolving,
and there are some advantages of going with the S Pen
and with the Note.
But when you look at other phones like the Oppo Find X,
which brings different design
and something that's legitimately different
around this price point, this is kind of a harder sell,
especially when you consider that the OnePlus 6
is equal to this in a lot of ways at half the price.
On top of that, there's some serious competition coming up
with the next generation iPhone and Pixel
right around the corner.
Now sure, if you really need that S Pen,
by all means, go pick up a Note 9.
But at a thousand dollars plus,
I just don't think it's worth it for most people.
And of course, huge shoutout to PUBG Mobile.
If you guys want to check it out,
the link will be in the description.
And let me know, would you actually want to pick up
the Galaxy Note 9?