Samsung’s super powerful Galaxy Note9 makes global debut at Unpacked 2018

Long the subject of speculation, rumours and finally a series of leaks for several months before its official debut today, Samsung has finally addressed them all as they have officially unveiled their most powerful phone ever made, the Galaxy Note9 in all its glory at Unpacked in New York 2018. To add to the festivities, Samsung Malaysia has also hosted an Unpacked party serendipitously at the Samsung Onyx Cinema at GSC Midvalley Megamall.

With a live broadcast of the Unpacked Event taking place simultaneously in New York, guests in Malaysia were able to viscerally experience the same thing, live in 4K resolution while basking in the plush seats of the Samsung Onyx cinema.

As expected, the Galaxy Note9 is the most powerful phone that Samsung has ever crafted. The phone is a massive improvement over its predecessor the Galaxy Note8 and has a host of features to ensure that it can take on all comers.

In terms of hardware, the Galaxy Note9 retains an IP68 water resistant casing that comes in several colours – Midnight Black, Lavender Purple and Metallic Copper, each of which comes with a matching S Pen stylus. The signature colour for the Galaxy Note9, dubbed Ocean Blue comes with a yellow and gold-trimmed S Pen for that extra bling factor for a total of four colour variants at the global launch.

In terms of hardware, the Galaxy Note9 has a massive 6.4-inch Quad HD+ Super AMOLED Infinity touchscreen display and either an Exynos 9810 or Snapdragon 845 octacore processor depending on region as well as two slightly different storage configurations, both of which are massive in their own right – a 6GB RAM/128GB storage and a humongous 8GB RAM/ 512GB storage variant.

Add in the expandable storage and Samsung’s upcoming 512GB microSD card and you can potentially get a 1TB of storage space, which is an impressive figure by any measure. Following precedent, Malaysia will get the Exynos variant of the Note9. 

Both Note9 storage variants are powered by a massive 4,000mAh battery, so far the largest in any Note series phone to date that is capable of offering all-day battery life.

Mobile gamers will appreciate what the Galaxy Note9 offers for gamers as Galaxy Note9 users will get a special Galaxy skin for the game as well as being among the first to play Epic Games’ hit battle royale game Fortnite. The fact that the Note9 also has a pair of stereo speakers makes it ideally suited for gaming indeed.

The rear of the phone comes with a rear-emplaced fingerprint reader paired with a dual 12-MP camera array, both with OIS. One rear camera has 2x telephoto zoom while the other one features Samsung’s Dual Pixel imaging tech and their impressive Dual Aperture that integrates a mechanical aperture that can change from f/1.5 to f/2.4 depending on ambient lighting conditions. The front is taken up by an 8-MP f/1.7 selfie camera.

New camera features include a host of AI-enhanced suggestions – the phone is smart enough to delicately suggest if your shots are wonky such as if the subject blinked, the lens is smudged or if your subject is backlit and to reshoot accordingly.

The biggest clincher though is the new S Pen stylus that integrates Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE) support, allowing you to remotely control the phone such as triggering the shutter release, control video playback and the like. Another particular feature that power users will appreciate is that the new Galaxy Note9 has a DeX desktop mode that activates by simply hooking it up with a HDMI adaptor to a monitor; previously, this required users to purchase a Galaxy DeX dock to get the feature to work.

Samsung also showcased a host of devices that complement the new Galaxy Note9 such as the new Galaxy Watch, the new Duo Charger dock that lets you charge both a phone and a dock at the same time and new refinements to Bixby, Samsung’s inhouse AI powering the Galaxy Note9 that accepts queries in a natural conversational manner and which remembers prior aspects of a conversation so you can interact in a more personalised fashion. Samsung also offered a glimpse of the new Samsung Home speakers that are powered by Bixby AI and which accepts Bixby voice input. While the rest of their offerings were impressive, the star of the show remained the titular Galaxy Note9.

So, when is the Galaxy Note9 coming to Malaysia?

 

In a word, soon. Confirmed, for now is that the Galaxy Note9 will come in three colours for Malaysia – Midnight Black, Metallic Copper, both with matching S Pens and the signature Ocean Blue with a golden Yellow S Pen. Both storage configurations 6GB RAM/ 128GB and the 8GB RAM/ 512GB variant will be coming to Malaysia though the 8GB RAM/512GB version will only come in Midnight Black.

Availability is slated from August 24 2018 onwards nationwide and Samsung Malaysia is taking preorders from 10 August at their online website as well as leading partner retailers till 19 August 2018.  In terms of prices, the Galaxy Note9 6GB RAM/128GB version is slated to come at an amazing RM3,699 while the larger 8GB RAM/512GB model comes at a RM4,599. For more swing by https://news.samsung.com/my/