Is the Note9 the upgrade you need?

These days, the smartphone community primarily watches what four device manufacturers are doing. Is OnePlus coming up with another budget flagship killer? Is Huawei getting more colourful as they upgrade their camera prowess? Is Apple going to reinvent something everyone else has offered for years? Is the Samsung Note going to become bigger? Yes on all fronts. But the new Samsung Note 9 is much more than just bigger. Here are the five reasons you may want to upgrade.

DESIGN

The curved glass and metal border design is now a bit of a design classic for smartphones. Much like a 1968 Mustang. So why mess with an original design? Samsung continues with what we've seen this year on the S9 and last year with the Note 8. Only the Note 9 is wider. With a protective rubber case, it will be too much for most formal trouser pockets.

Aside from that, it still looks brilliant. The one I got is the black with the black S Pen although a lot of people will prefer the added bling of the blue Note 9 with the yellow and gold pen. It is also rather heavy. You may love the heft but it becomes a brick when you add a proper protective case.

Design cons: The Bixby button, situated on the left is not mapable to anything else. Often you will inadvertently hit the button launching Bixby. And I do not want to. That or a screen swipe to the extreme right brings up Bixby. No thank you, not yet.

S-PEN HAS NEW TRICKS

Your stylus is literally the Note's biggest draw, now with Bluetooth. Just like in the Note 8, you get to pop it out and start writing on the black screen without even unlocking the phone. Quick notes are saved, well, quickly. The pen writes on the unlocked screen in the colours it comes in. Yellow pen in yellow ink and so on. My black pen writes in white.

Added tricks include the pen acting as a selfie camera remote. The phone IS big so reaching out to the on-screen shutter button can be a large task for those with small hands. Just click the pen. It helps to click through music and progress through slide show presentation while making you look like the coolest cat in office meetings.

WATER CARBON COOLING

What? Like a radiator in a car? The Note 9 promises massive power boosts over other devices on the market. This liquid cooling allows the device to run cooler than traditional devices while running very graphics intensive games. PUBG, Fortnite, and Real Racing 3 players should rejoice. This is in comparison to the previous Note 8 which surprisingly suffered from a bit of lag in simple scrolling. It was annoying mainly because this was supposed to be the most powerful phone on the market, yet it stuttered. The Note 9 on the other hand functions flawlessly.

BETTER PHOTOGRAPHY

The Note 9 has the same variable aperture tech as in the S9. It can quickly switch between f/1.5 and f/2.4 depending on your lighting conditions. It now also features AI (like Huawei and LG have done before) which helps detect between 20 types of scenes and adjust parameters on the fly. First thing I did getting hold of it is test the camera against an older S8 Plus and a Note 8. Images are obviously sharper, better defined and better focused. Whereas the S8 Plus has to be held steady and focused manually for a clear shot, the Note 9 needs to be still for a split second before you press the button. The differences are marginal, but they are visible when you zoom in. Where the Note 9 shines is in low light imagery. It has stepped up the game a bit more than the Note 8 but to get perfect night time shots of still objects, you do need a tripod. There is no other way about it.

BATTERY

It comes with a big 4000mAh battery but it will still not last you through a whole day if you keep all your settings to the max. I work on my phone a lot as well as spend a little leisure time watching Netflix while putting my child to sleep at night. Over a couple of weeks of usage, the device has settled into an average of almost a whole day of usage before requiring a charge. That's real-world usage stats. Throttle down the performance a little if you're not gaming and keep the brightness low to gain a couple more hours.

The Verdict

If you have a Note 8 who is not facing any lag issues, you are unlikely to jump to this. S9 users will want to upgrade because of the stylus; it is fun, cool and practical. If you want the newest, biggest, baddest phone out there, then this is it. It is not XS-ively priced either compared to a few competitors, but it is not cheap either. What Samsung did is refine an existing good product. It is more of the same but much better. You get more power which will be useful specifically for gamers. Everyone else can do with half that amount. It comes with a 128GB standard so there is a lot of storage for all your big photos files. Right now, there is very little on the market offering this much practical 'cool'.

Specs

Display: Super AMOLED, 6.4 inches, 1440 x 2960 pixels

OS: Android 8.1 (Oreo)

CPU: Octa-core (4x2.7 GHz Mongoose M3 & 4x1.8 GHz Cortex-A55)

GPU: Mali-G72 MP18

RAM: 6 GB

ROM: 128 GB

Camera: Back-12 MP, f/1.5-2.4 & 12 MP, f/2.4 & Front- 8 MP, f/1.7

Features: Iris scanner, fingerprint, gyro, proximity, barometer, heartrate

Battery: 4000 mAh

Price: Approximately Tk. 94,900/-