Okay, so we have just returned from Samsung's launch event for the Galaxy Note 9, and we have a lot of opinions.
We've got the Note 9 here in our hands.
Cheryl, what is your takeaway, what do you think?
You know, I think for a lot of people it's gonna look very similar to what we saw last year.
But there's some really good changes inside.
A lot more storage, a bigger battery.
They really played it cautious last year because of the Note 7 problem.
So the Note 8, they kind of went with a smaller battery than they could have.
Now we're back to them promising, you know, all day and more battery life.
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Yeah that's right, we've got a 4000 miliamper hour battery, which is big.
It's huge actually.
So I am looking forward to seeing how long that battery lasts.
This phone also starts at 128 GB of storage, which is huge.
Normally their phones start at 64GB.
Then, there's another option and that's 512 GB, that's insane.
What do you think about that?
Yeah.
I mean, you have to think about the fact that Samsung is the world's biggest flash memory makers.
But, it's just like they pulled out the shelf, put it in the phone.
Yeah, I mean that's something like the no users are typically like powered users, it's people that needs to do a lot with it, they want the stylish, they want to like.
Have everything the best, basically.
So that's what Samsung was really trying to do with this.
But kind of on the flip side, they also still have the expandable memory.
So they were saying they're still gonna have-
It's right in there.
Yeah, that they're soon gonna have the memory cards that make it so you can have a terabyte of storage basically on this phone.
You know it's interesting when you.
You get the largest capacity and then you also get a 520 gb memory car you are up to about a therabit that's a lot that's a tremendous amount of videos and photos and I think that what a lot of people want, the want a lot of memory.
Yeah but then it comes to the whole you know role play and pay for call services you know how much it's kind of like a debate right now like how much do you actually.
Need actually saved on your device versus how much you can have on the Internet, so.
Right, and then apart from that, and if you take out the memory, if you take out the battery, we've got a lot of very similar features to last year, and in fact, to the Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus, we've got the exact same
Camera set up with dual 12 megapixel cameras on the back, dual aperture, which helps with low light shots.
There's an eight megapixel camera on the front.
You've got a fingerprint reader, wireless charging, waterproofing.
So I do think that the one thing that makes the Note stick out is of course
There we go.
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The stylus, it's really crammed in there.
The stylus is a big deal, and Samsung, really, this year has gone ahead, and it's added a lot more features to this.
So you can still write, navigate, draw But now it's bluetooth connected
Yes yes so they're saying those things like you can use it as a remote basically to turn the shutter on your camera so like if you're taking a group picture instead of having to like go around and push the button or use the self timer I guess you can use that, You know they used it they were like to say they used it for their power point presentations so that their presentations would go to the next slides they were actually using the notes It'll be interesting to see how much you can actually do with it but yeah.
Yeah we got briefings, we got demos on it and basically you just long press this button on the S pen And as of right now it triggers a setup page for the S-Pen remote.
There's a lot of customization that you can do.
I think we still really need to deep-dive into what those use cases are.
And definitely in the demo I use this to,
successfully launch the camera, flip it over to selfie and take a selfie.
So I think that that could be really useful.
It's really nice to see Samsung expanding beyond, a lot of people have called for, " make the tip in to an eraser and let's do something else with this." So this is something that Samsung has been long over due for.
I am glad to see it here.
But, does it justify the elephant in the room, which is the price?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, so the price is more than what we saw from the Note 8. It's more than what we saw from the S9+.
We're just interested considering it's very similar actual specs.
Right.
So the phone actually starts at $1,000 for the 128 GB version.
And then, for the larger 512 GB version,
That is $1,250.
This is an iPhone 10 territory.
Yeah, I mean it's an iPhone 10 territory.
I think there's kind of two sides of this where Samsung devices are generally iPhone 10 quality.
Now they have good displays, they have good materials.
I think it's
Could be hard to justify this in some ways because there aren't as many kind of noticeable changes, but then on the flip side you also have more storage but storage is cheap.
You could go buy a micro-SD card.
I was just doing some searches.
A 64 gig micro-SD card you could buy for literally $5 or $6 so it doesn't justify, kind of, the Huge price to get more storage.
I don't know.
We have looking and talking about pricing for smart phones.
The prices have definitely crept up not just for Apple, not just for Samsung but for highend devices all across the board.
This is a trend that we're seeing.
It's not going go away.
The question is does it really justify it.
Are the days of $600 flagship phone behind us.
I think that the answer is clearly yes.
I think what that leaves us with.
Is asking and answering the question, who is this for?
And I mean, my immediate thought is that this is a phone for somebody who has an earlier version of the Note, like the Note 5.
You know, of course Samsung skipped the Note Six.
Yeah.
And then the Note Seven exploeded.
and had to be taken off the shelves and then there was the Note Eight.
So if you're left with a Note Five, this is going to be a huge upgrade.
Yeah.
It's going to be fast, it's going to be, you know, future ready.
Yeah.
And so it could be good for that, I mean.
It could also be great for a person who wants
Yeah.
like a very powerful device.
Like the best that they can get.
You know.
Yeah.
Power users who like the idea of using.
The stylus to write with.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean and like Samsung was saying, I was talking to one of their executives and he was saying that most people who upgrade, their upgrade customers are the people who would have had the note 5.
It's kind of those huge ultrafans.
It's a kind of a smaller percentage of it, and they're going to buy it no matter what.
For this, when they're thinking of upgrades.
They're thinking of Note 5 customers.
For the Note 5 customer or even Note 4. What ever it is that's older.
They also compared it to the S7 Edge.
It's a big step up for that.
It's just the Note 8 users, not so much.
And then competition is really fierce too, right?
So we have the next iPhones coming up.
We've got the Pixel 3 series probably coming up.
And then, Samsung itself is gonna have another next big phone, right?
Next spring.
Yeah,
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Even with pricing, it's almost just kind of a mental thing as well.
If they had cut pricing on this, or maybe even kept it the same, you kind of mentally think, well it must not be the best phone then.
Because the best phone is gonna be really expensive.
So it's kind of almost counter intuitive because you don't wanna pay more for a phone, but you know, I want the best phone.
So it's gonna be most.
Expensive phone.
Well, it certainly looks really good, and this blue color is very striking with that contrasting S-pen that comes out of it.
We are gonna have a lot more details coming up.
We're gonna have a full review of this device.
So stick with us for all of your Galaxy Note 9 news.
