Samsung just announced the Galaxy Note 9 - and it has the same price tag as the iPhone X
- Samsung announced the Galaxy Note 9 smartphone on Thursday during an event in Brooklyn, New York.
- The phone comes with high-end specs and design, as well as the Note line's signature S Pen stylus.
- Samsung added new features to the S Pen stylus, like remote camera control.
- The base model of the phone will cost $1,000, similar to the iPhone X's price tag.
Samsung announced its Galaxy Note 9 smartphone on Thursday during its Unpacked event in Brooklyn, New York.
The Galaxy Note 9 is Samsung's largest smartphone model to date with a 6.4-inch screen, and it comes with an "S Pen" stylus that brings a bunch of unique functionality to the phone.
The Galaxy Note 9 runs on high-end specs including the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor that turns the wheels inside most high-end smartphones in 2018. It also has a minimum of 6GB of RAM, with an option to go up to 8GB of RAM, which should make for smooth performance.
Worthy of note is the Galaxy Note 9's large 4,000mAH battery that's large for any smartphone, and should give it superior battery life. We'll have to see for ourselves how much longer the Galaxy Note 9 will last on a single battery charge.
As for the S Pen stylus that's used for note-taking and general navigation around the phone, Samsung has added a few features. You can now use the S Pen for controlling the phone's camera remotely. By pressing the S Pen's button, you can turn on the camera, switch the camera mode between the rear and selfie cameras, and take a photo.
App developers will also have the ability to integrate the S Pen's functionality into their apps.
The Galaxy Note 9's dual-camera system is also getting Samsung's new Intelligent Camera feature that recognizes what kind of object you're taking a photo of, and adjusts the camera settings automatically to take the best shot. This is something we'll have to test further when we try out the Galaxy Note 9.
Both cameras in the dual-lens system have 12 megapixels, one of which is for regular photos and can adjust its aperture for low-light shots, and the other is a "telephoto" lens for 2x optical zooming, which is better than digital zooming on phones without a telephoto lens.
Samsung also announced that the popular "Fortnite" battle-royale game will be exclusively available on Galaxy devices, starting with the Galaxy S7 and up, for "a few days." Galaxy Note 9 users will have exclusive access to a specific character skin.
Oddly, the Galaxy Note 9 will come running Android 8.1, despite Android 9 having been released earlier on Monday. It's not the worst thing in the world, but it's not the best either. Android phones running on older versions of the Android operating system cause Android's signature problem: Fragmentation.
The Galaxy Note 9 will be available for pre-order on Friday, August 10. Carriers will start selling the $1,000 128GB model of the Galaxy Note 9 with 6GB of RAM on August 24. The 512GB Galaxy Note 9 with 8GB of RAM will cost $1,300.