Speaker 1: Samsung Galaxy Note nine review. It's a big, expensive phone,
Speaker 1: but you get it all. What's going on? I'm Rich Demiro.
Speaker 1: This is Rich on Tech. The Samsung Galaxy Note nine
Speaker 1: is in stores right now and it sells for one
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. That gets you a six point four in screen,
Speaker 1: one of the best I've ever seen on a phone,
Speaker 1: plus one hundred and twenty eight gigabytes of storage, dual
Speaker 1: cameras on the back, an s Penn Stylus with Bluetooth,
Speaker 1: and one of the biggest, baddest batteries you can pack
Speaker 1: into a phone that still feels pretty darn good in
Speaker 1: your hand. How's that for an intro. Well, I've been
Speaker 1: using this device for the past two weeks and I
Speaker 1: can tell you it is one of my favorite phones ever.
Speaker 1: It is a pleasure to use. It's fast, it has
Speaker 1: every feature you can think of, a fun camera, the
Speaker 1: stylus makes a great addition to Instagram Stories in general
Speaker 1: navigation when you remember to use it. Plus, it's big,
Speaker 1: but it's not on wield. And although I still prefer
Speaker 1: the clean software and faster camera on the pixel, the
Speaker 1: Note nine offers so many more features. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: some of them for starters. The battery in this thing
Speaker 1: is just a rock star. It's four thousand million hours,
Speaker 1: which is a lot, about a third more than other
Speaker 1: big smartphones, and the battery is going to be the
Speaker 1: least of your concerns on this device. It charges super
Speaker 1: fast with the cable or wirelessly, and if you drive
Speaker 1: for a bit during the day and have it plugged
Speaker 1: in your car, like I often do in Los Angeles, realistically,
Speaker 1: battery life is not a concern at all. There are
Speaker 1: even some nights I didn't even bother to plug it
Speaker 1: in because it was still so full by the time
Speaker 1: I went to bed. The storage is also great. It's
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty eight gigabyte standard. You just won't
Speaker 1: worry about anything taking tons of pictures, videos, downloading Spotify
Speaker 1: music and Netflix shows and YouTube videos. I didn't even
Speaker 1: consider how much storage everything was taking up because it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. And if you get close to filling up
Speaker 1: that one hundred and twenty eight gigs, you can just
Speaker 1: add a memory card. Two hundred and fifty six gigs
Speaker 1: on Amazon right now is just about eighty dollars, and
Speaker 1: you can go all the way up to a five
Speaker 1: hundred and twelve gigabyte memory car when that's available. Performance
Speaker 1: on the Note nine has been great. Samsung software gets
Speaker 1: a bad rap and there are little things I don't
Speaker 1: like about it, like the way it handles notifications and
Speaker 1: the always on screen, but I can live with that,
Speaker 1: and for ninety nine percent of people, you're probably not
Speaker 1: gonna care. The phone hasn't gotten hot even once, which
Speaker 1: is a departure from other Samsung phones which have eate
Speaker 1: it up in the past. Maybe it's because Samsung added
Speaker 1: some sort of new liquid cooling inside, but I can't
Speaker 1: be sure, but this thing stays pretty cool throughout the day.
Speaker 1: The Spen with Bluetooth is really cool, but you have
Speaker 1: to remember to use it otherwise it's useless, and that's
Speaker 1: one of the big features of this device. You have
Speaker 1: to remember to pull it out. When I did, it
Speaker 1: would come in handy for various creative situations like Instagram
Speaker 1: stories and writing on pictures. You'll figure out what you
Speaker 1: need it for, but it's a useful thing to have.
Speaker 1: And yes, I am the weirdo that sets up my
Speaker 1: phone on a tripod to take group pictures at family
Speaker 1: and friend gathering, so I'll definitely be using the Spen
Speaker 1: in the future versus the typical timer. I would normally
Speaker 1: set the Spen lasts for thirty minutes on Bluetooth use.
Speaker 1: Then you pop it back into the phone and it
Speaker 1: takes forty seconds to recharge it. But it always works
Speaker 1: to write on the screen no matter whether it's charged
Speaker 1: or dead. Now let's talk about the camera, because this
Speaker 1: is one of the biggest parts of any smartphone, and
Speaker 1: on the Note nine, it is good. It borders on great.
Speaker 1: It's a very capable camera and you will have lots
Speaker 1: of fun with it. I really love having the two
Speaker 1: times lens so I can zoom into things optically versus digitally.
Speaker 1: And the camera performs good, but I'd like to see
Speaker 1: it perform great. It can be a little slow to
Speaker 1: react and focus sometimes, and things like zoom and movements
Speaker 1: can look a little jittery in the preview window. But overall,
Speaker 1: the photos you take on this device are very, very
Speaker 1: good and many times excellent. It does a great job
Speaker 1: in low light, one of the best performers in low light,
Speaker 1: and I'm very impressed with the detail on pictures compared
Speaker 1: to the iPhones photos. I think those look nice, but
Speaker 1: they always look kind of flat. The Galaxy Note nine
Speaker 1: has much more depth and detail. Of course, not as
Speaker 1: much as a pixel, which has like crazy computer processing
Speaker 1: going on to make any shot look good. But Samsung
Speaker 1: definitely makes one of the top cameras on the market. Now,
Speaker 1: they did add some sort of scene detection artificial intelligence,
Speaker 1: but I can't really tell if that's helping my photos
Speaker 1: look better or just boosting things like color and other
Speaker 1: stuff depending on the situation. It can recognize scenes including food, portraits, flowers, animals, landscape, sky, sunrise, sunset, text,
Speaker 1: and more. The camera also tells you when someone blinks,
Speaker 1: or the shot is blurry, or there's some bad backlight.
Speaker 1: I found this feature nice to have, but not entirely useful,
Speaker 1: because look, if it's an important shot, I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: reviewing it anyway. Now. The front facing camera is a
Speaker 1: totally different story. If there's a source spot to this device,
Speaker 1: this is it. In a word, I'm unimpressed. It's very
Speaker 1: hit or missed. Sometimes you get such a good shot
Speaker 1: it looks like a pro took it. Other Times you
Speaker 1: get something that looks kind of muddled and blurry. The
Speaker 1: front facing camera is not a deal breaker, but it's
Speaker 1: definitely the biggest disappointment on this device. Low light is
Speaker 1: especially challenging for it. It will take a noticeable amount
Speaker 1: of time to snap a front facing photo and the
Speaker 1: result is often not very good, so you're gonna have
Speaker 1: to take a couple of front facing photos to get
Speaker 1: a good one. As for the rest of the Galaxy
Speaker 1: Note nine, it is a very complete package. The screen
Speaker 1: just simply amazing. It puts other smartphone screens to shame.
Speaker 1: I watched the original Jurassic Park movie on a plane
Speaker 1: and I just can't tell you how good it looked
Speaker 1: on that big, bright, six point four inch screen, and
Speaker 1: that's an old movie. If you look at some of
Speaker 1: the new stuff on Netflix with HDR, that's unbelievable. You
Speaker 1: also get Dolby at most. Video on this thing is
Speaker 1: just amazing, and plus you get all the features you need,
Speaker 1: like a headphone jack and the fingerprint reader. Although it's
Speaker 1: a tad small, it's in a dream spot compared to
Speaker 1: last year's model. You can actually reach it without looking,
Speaker 1: and it's properly placed under the camera instead of to
Speaker 1: the side of the camera. Now, the Note nine is
Speaker 1: expensive and I'm not thrilled about either color combo. You
Speaker 1: can choose from blue or lavender. In the US right now,
Speaker 1: there is a black and copper model available, just not
Speaker 1: in the US just yet, but I expect them to
Speaker 1: make their way here eventually. And one thing I don't like.
Speaker 1: You no longer have the option to turn off the
Speaker 1: Bixby button now unless I'm missing it in the Bixby settings.
Speaker 1: They seem to have gotten rid of this entirely, which
Speaker 1: is unfortunate because you do press that dedicated button a
Speaker 1: lot and it activates Bixby, which I don't think is bad,
Speaker 1: but I just don't need another assistant in my life
Speaker 1: right now. So let's compare against some other phones. Against
Speaker 1: the iPhone ten, well, at number one, we're coming out
Speaker 1: with the new iPhone very soon, so if you're comparing
Speaker 1: those two and deciding, you probably want to wait to
Speaker 1: see what Apple does. But against the iPhone ten, you're
Speaker 1: definitely getting more for your money with the Note nine. Now,
Speaker 1: I rarely compare Android to iPhone anymore, because, let's face it,
Speaker 1: I've realized most people don't care through either Apple or
Speaker 1: Android for life, and they don't want to switch, And
Speaker 1: that's kind of fine with me. It's personal preference, and
Speaker 1: I understand how Apple folks will miss I Message, FaceTime
Speaker 1: and other niceties of the Apple ecosystem, So I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to convince you to switch here now. If you
Speaker 1: don't need the stylus or the large battery, you'll be
Speaker 1: perfectly happy with the Samsung Galaxy S nine plus. This
Speaker 1: is nearly the same phone, just slightly smaller, with less
Speaker 1: bells and whistles, but it's a very similar camera setup,
Speaker 1: and it has that gorgeous screen again just a bit smaller.
Speaker 1: And if you don't want to spend one thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: the one plus six is a really nice Android device.
Speaker 1: It has amazing software, it's super fast, it charges fast
Speaker 1: although there's no wirel charging, and the software is updated
Speaker 1: way more often. The only downside of the one plus
Speaker 1: really is you don't get as good of a camera.
Speaker 1: But I will tell you the one plus six is
Speaker 1: doing some amazing pictures for that five hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: dollars price. One plus you're doing a great job. Now
Speaker 1: against the Pixel. That's a tough one, because that is
Speaker 1: my favorite phone ever. And rumor has it that the
Speaker 1: new Pixel is gonna add wireless charging in wired headphones,
Speaker 1: which are two chief complaints I had against the last one,
Speaker 1: and the Pixel camera is just a monster. It's the
Speaker 1: absolute best in the world on a smartphone and one
Speaker 1: of the reasons I keep going back to that device.
Speaker 1: And also, the Pixel is going to be cheaper than
Speaker 1: the Samsung Note nine, but it won't come with as
Speaker 1: many software bells and whistles. Some will like that, others won't.
Speaker 1: Samsung versus Pixel is a tough one. If you're a
Speaker 1: true Android hardcore, that's a tough decision. All right. There
Speaker 1: you have it at my review of the Samsung Galaxy
Speaker 1: Note nine. Bottom line, this is a beast, but in
Speaker 1: a good way. Samsung has managed to cram just about
Speaker 1: every feature known to man in a smartphone that actually looks, feels,
Speaker 1: and performs great. The price tag and large size are
Speaker 1: basically the two biggest downsides, along with infrequent software updates,
Speaker 1: but that's about it. You're really getting one of the
Speaker 1: best phones on the market. Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1: If you want photo samples, video samples, plus my TV review,
Speaker 1: check the show notes, or just go to richontech dot
Speaker 1: tv and let me know if you have any questions.
Speaker 1: You can find me on Facebook, on Instagram, on Twitter,
Speaker 1: I will be listening and answering. Amrich Demiro, I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you real soon