Modern smartphones often feel like an elaborate game of spot the difference. Squint really hard and you might discern which phone has the smallest notch, while those versed in the ancient art of the "spec sheet" can extrapolate the key details, but you have to know what you're looking for.
This is especially true of Samsung and its most recent phones, the Galaxy Note 9 and the S9. Here's a quick guide to what's new in the Galaxy Note 9 compared the S9 and last year's entrant, the Note 8.
The stylus now has Bluetooth built-in (and it does useful things)
The Note used to be the big brother to the S-series, but these days the stylus is the main difference. The Note has one and the S9, and more or less every other phone on the market, doesn't. But the story doesn't end there.
For the first time, the stylus on the Note 9 uses Bluetooth. This means it can be used as a kind of remote for the phone. You can control music using the stylus, skip slides in a presentation, unlock the phone or control the camera shutter remotely. The Note 8's stylus can do none of this. It just writes and draws (albeit very well).
The Note 9 has a huge battery that will last all day
Extra stylus features are nice and all, but most people will find this more useful. There's a huge 4,000mAh capacity battery in the Note 9, which is 33 per cent larger than the S9, 14 per cent larger than the S9 Plus and 21 per cent larger than the Note 8. Samsung reckons it'll deliver all-day battery life with plenty to spare, which sounds about right to us.
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But the cameras are just an incremental upgrade
Cameras on Samsung phones are a confusing business. Last year's Galaxy Note 8 added the now increasingly common dual camera setup, with one standard lens and a telephoto lens which could dovetail to create neat portrait photos with the much sought after background blur effect. But this year's Galaxy S9 had just one camera, while the Galaxy S9+ has two cameras like the Note 8.
The Note 9 effectively has the same setup as this year's S9+. This means two 12-megapixel cameras, one with a standard 26mm focal length and one with a 52mm lens for portraits. It also adopts the S9's odd (and somewhat gimmicky) dual aperture system where the standard aperture is f/2.4, but this can go down as far as f/1.5 when an iris opens wider to let more light into the camera sensor.
This is all fairly similar to the Note 8, which had a maximum f1.7 aperture. The Note 9 has a newer, higher performance camera sensor as well, but a dramatic upgrade this isn't.
If all that went over your head, here's what you need to know. Aperture is a measurement of how much light a camera can capture. The more the better. It's measured in 'f-stops' and the lower the number the better. It's mainly useful for low light, where you need as much light as possible to get a nice photo.
The Note 9 adds extra memory for faster app loading (and loads of storage)
Easy one this. More RAM.
Actually, a little more detail is needed. The Note 9 comes in a few different flavours, one of which is a somewhat ridiculous 512GB of storage and 8GB of RAM edition. That's 2GB more then than the Note 8 and S9+ and twice as much as the standard Galaxy S9. However, we expect most people will end up with the cheaper 128GB, 6GB RAM version.
The 8GB edition might be more attractive to anyone keen to use Samsung's DeX feature, which allows you to use your phone like a PC when plugged into a dock and monitor. You can also add microSD cards, which means you could (theoretically) expand the storage to 1TB.
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It has some extra features for gamers
Samsung has secured a lucrative time-limited exclusive for Fornite on mobile on Samsung phones, and the Note 9 has some features geared towards mobile gamers.
One is really loud speakers. Samsung says the Note 9 has the loudest speakers of any phone its made. They're also tuned by audio experts AKG, so hopefully they sound as good as they are loud.
Samsung also claims the Note 9 has superior cooling through a system called Water Carbon Cooling. It didn't elaborate on what that means, but the result (Samsung says) is you won't suffer slowdown as a result of the processor overheating.
It's slightly bigger, but it looks the same
Finally, a small note on the design. On paper, the Note 9 has the largest screen on any Note phone ever. It's 6.4-inches, but the Note 8 had a 6.3-inch screen so we doubt anyone will notice the difference. For the record, the S9+ is 6.2-inches and the S9 has a 5.8-inch screen. All of them have a Quad HD+ Super AMOLED screen. The core design remains much the same, though. Mercifully, this means there's no notch on the Note 9 and we have no complaints about the curvy glass finish.
Display: 6.4-inch Quad HD+ Super AMOLED, 2960x1440 (516ppi)
Camera: Rear: Dual Camera. Wide-angle: 12MP. Telephoto: 12MP Front: 8MP AF, F1.7
Size and weight: 162 x 76.4 x 9mm, 205g
Memory: 6GB RAM (LPDDR4), 128GB + MicroSD slot (up to 512GB) 8GB RAM (LPDDR4), 512GB + MicroSD slot (up to 512GB)
Battery: 4,000mAh
Operating system: Android Oreo 8.1
Sensors: Accelerometer, Barometer, Fingerprint Sensor, Gyro Sensor, Geomagnetic Sensor, Hall Sensor, Heart Rate Sensor, Proximity Sensor, RGB Light Sensor, Iris Sensor, Pressure Senso
Price: From £899
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
