I've spent the last 24 hours with Samsung's new Galaxy Note 9 - here are my first impressions

Anyone who currently uses a recent Samsung smartphone probably won't be impressed by the AMOLED display. It's the same resolution as last year's Galaxy Note 8, and only a hair bigger — 6.4 inches compared to 6.3 inches.

That being said, there's no denying it's gorgeous. Of course, any OLED display would look incredible compared to my iPhone 6s, but the Galaxy Note 9 is particularly impressive because of the size. This comes into play when you switch to full-screen mode when taking a photo, or when you're scrolling through Instagram during downtime. Watching videos feels like a whole new experience — I like to watch makeup tutorials on YouTube, and I could see way more detail and much more vibrant colors than I've ever seen on my own device.

Samsung may not be doing anything wildly innovative with the Galaxy Note 9 display, but just because it's not new and exciting doesn't mean it's any less impressive.

I've never owned a phone with a stylus before, so trying the S Pen for 24 hours opened up a whole new world. Taking notes, drawing, and tapping around the device using the S Pen is surprisingly fun, and gave me this automatic feeling, real or not, of increased productivity.

But the new S Pen that comes with the Galaxy Note 9 has a new, key feature that differentiates it from previous versions: Bluetooth Low Energy.

BLE lets you use the S Pen in a variety of ways. It works as a photo remote, so you can take selfies or group photos without having to be near your phone (the S Pen works with your phone from up to 30 feet away). It can also become a remote for a presentation, although I haven't needed to try that feature yet.

Beyond that new functionality, the S Pen just looks great. The Galaxy Note 9 I'm using is blue, an the S Pen that comes with it is bright yellow. The only strange thing about that is that all the other colors of the phone — lavender, black, and copper — have S Pens that match the device. I found myself wishing Samsung had made the contrasting S Pen standard across the board.

My favorite smartphone camera on the market is on the Google Pixel 2, and for a simple reason: It relies on technology rather than hardware to take great photos.

With the Galaxy Note 9, Samsung is starting to head in that direction as well. While Samsung phones have long had excellent cameras, I don't think they're the best you can buy. With the last few Samsung phones I've tried — the Galaxy S9, Galaxy Note 8, and Galaxy S8 — the photos tend to look overly sharpened and too bright, and the automatic face smoothing on selfies is often so extreme, it looks cartoonish.

But the Galaxy Note 9 is different. It still has some of the same tendencies — unnaturally bright and sharp photos — but it now has an added layer of technology that gives the phone an edge in the smartphone camera wars.

A new camera feature called scene optimizer will recognize what kind of object you're photographing and automatically adjust the settings so you can take the best shot. The camera also has flaw detection, which will alert you if the image is blurry, or if the subject blinked.

With these features, Samsung is taking an already-great camera, and adding a layer of artificial intelligence on top. This alone isn't enough to choose the Galaxy Note 9 for its camera — and we'll have to test it more to know if it's effective or just a gimmick — but it's an encouraging sign of where Samsung is heading.

There are a few key features that Samsung says set the Galaxy Note 9 apart from its predecessors and from other high-end smartphones: battery life, storage, speed, and versatility. Those are features that are hard to test in just one day.

What I can tell after just one day is that this phone has a unique place in the smartphone world. It's a phone for people who are hyper-connected and have jobs that require a super-powerful smartphone. But it's also a phone for people who don't want to shell out for a phone and a laptop, and want a device that can do it all. As someone who falls in the middle of that spectrum, I don't think it's the right phone for anyone who's like me.

Beyond those reasons, it's also difficult to get excited about a device that, on a surface level, is so similar to the phone that came before it. It's a beautiful, luxurious device, but it also doesn't feel particularly new.

So until we know whether what's under the hood outweighs what's on the surface, to me, the Galaxy Note 9 remains something of a question mark.