Wefie Woes? Here’s What the Galaxy Note9 Can Do For You

Taking a great selfie or wefie is not so much a science as it is an art. Seasoned Instagrammers and YouTubers have mastered an intricate series of motor skills, that innate angling of face, hands and features for optimum effect while also factoring in things that mere mortals would not have considered like lighting, outfits and more.

For the rest of us mere plebeians, taking a decent passport photo is already a challenge. A good selfie? Slightly more pleasant and easier than a root canal. Taking a decent wefie with your mates or, worse, a larger group of buddies like your high school class? A Sisyphean task of coordination that would end up a jumbled montage of arms, leads and off-kilter snaps. I’ll opt for the root canal. Thanks.

Fortunately, smartphones of recent vintage these days offer several interesting features that can up your wefie game and the Galaxy Note9 offers plenty of tricks and the hardware to match that can make snaps look seriously good. Better yet, it has an ace in the hole that no other phone can yet match. Curious? Lead on squire.

Wefie Woes (and the answer)

Every smartphone on the planet lets you press the touchscreen to trigger the shutter release. If you’re taking a selfie, that’s fine and dandy. Add more people into the equation and things rapidly get more complicated.

The more people you include in a shot, the farther out your phone has to be or it needs a really wide angle lens. That or it needs some other feat of technical sorcery. Unless you happen to have the arms of an Olympic athlete, odds are you can barely manage to cram in less than a third of a soccer team in your shot at risk of dislocating your arm. This is where selfie sticks come into play though waving them about in a crowd is a dead giveaway that you’re either a tourist or a narcissist. Fortunately, the Galaxy Note9 has that problem handily nipped in the bud. Enter the Galaxy Note9’s S Pen.

Galaxy Note9 S Pen wefies

While the rear camera of the Galaxy Note9 has an impressive individually OIS-equipped dual-camera array with 2X optical zoom and their Dual Aperture tech, it’s the camera up front perched just above its 6.4-inch Super AMOLED display that makes it an interesting proposition for those who heavily indulge in self-portraiture.

The Galaxy Note9’s front-facing camera has been designed to address most of their classic pain points of prolific selfie and wefie snappers. The 8-MP sensor has autofocus which ensures that shots remain crisp and it has a bright F/1.7 aperture, ensuring that low light shots remain viewable instead of being a smudged mess.

To cram in more of your mates into the shot, it also has a fairly wide 80˚ of view though this can be further augmented through its Panoramic Selfie mode which lets you take in more of the scenery by panning and scanning the camera, before it stitches it all together into a combined shot. While this is great for a half dozen or so people, it doesn’t let you take really ‘large’ crowds or really scenic vistas with you in the shot. That’s where the killer feature of the Galaxy Note9 comes into play.

Galaxy Note9 selfie and wefie modes

The Note9’s camera has a plethora of options to let you take selfies on top of the usual button pressing on the touchscreen. You can use a ‘Show Palm’ mode where all you need to is to show your palm to the Note9’s camera then open and close your palm to take a shot. You can even activate it via Voice Controls so you can verbally command it to take snaps and video by saying “Cheese” or something along those lines.

Sometimes though, where you’re taking your wefie has so much background noise that even a soprano singer is inaudible like a soccer match in overtime in which case Voice Controls are somewhat of a moot point.

Or, more likely, your wefie group shot, like for example your high school reunion picture which has over forty people in the shot makes it challenging on account of the distance and number of subjects in the frame to even use Palm Commands. Sure, you can use a countdown timer, though this usually ends up a desperate sprint for the photographer just to make it back in time into position for the shoot and generally middling results that have to be repeated several times.

Where the Note9 trumps the competition and which will endear it to any selfie or wefie lover is its most unique feature – the S Pen stylus.

As covered previously, the Note9’s S Pen has Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) connectivity, allowing it to act as a remote control up to 10 metres away from the Galaxy Note9. After turning on the camera, you’re able to capture a selfie or wefie with just a press of the S Pen button; once your Note9 has been suitably positioned of course. With a simple double press, you can even swap from the back to the front camera at will like a boss and, if you’ve customised it accordingly, even start capturing video too.

Best of all? You don’t need to wait for that countdown timer so that you and your mates have to freeze a grimace of a smile until you capture that elusive photo. All you have to do is just press the S Pen. Easier selfies and wefies? Oh yes indeed.

 

For more on the Galaxy Note9 and its myriad features, check out our feature regarding what makes its rear dual cameras so powerful, its nifty DeX mode here and what other tricks the S Pen can perform here. The Galaxy Note9 is now available nationwide in Midnight Black, Ocean Blue and Metallic Copper for the 6GB RAM/ 128GB version at RM3,699 and RM4,599 for the 8GB RAM / 512GB version which only comes in Midnight Black. For more details swing by www.samsung.com/my