The Galaxy Note 9 is official, along with the unveiling of the long-rumored Samsung smart speaker, the Galaxy Home.
At its annual Unpacked event in New York City today, the company finally confirmed details of the various hardware that had been leaked leading up to the announcement.
The Note 9 looks… pretty much like any other Galaxy we’ve become familiar with.
It’s a 6.4-inch device that will ship with Android 8.1, and it packs a 4,000mAh battery inside. That’s the largest battery inside a Note device yet, proving that Samsung is extremely ready to move past the Note 7 incident.
The new S Pen stylus will also include Bluetooth, which allows it to perform various functions like doubling as a remote shutter for selfies and presentations.
Despite now requiring a battery power to run, the S Pen has super capacitive charging that allows it to regain power when you stick it back into the Note 9.
The Note 9 will also be the first device to ship with an updated Bixby 2.0 that the company announced back in October 2017.
The update gives Bixby a few new skills, such as the ability to search for nearby events, make restaurant reservations, and order Uber rides.
The device will also support Google Assistant, however, if you find that the update still isn’t quite up to par with its digital assistant competitors.
Spec-wise, the Note 9 has similar guts to the Galaxy S9: it’s got dual 12-megapixel rear cameras and a Snapdragon 845 processor.
Starting at $999 for a 128GB and 6GB RAM configuration, the price point is comparable to the iPhone X. Samsung will release the Note 9 on August 24th, with preorders starting on August 10th.
The anticipated Fortnite on Android also launches today and will be exclusive to new Galaxy devices for “a few days.”
That means by the time the Note 9 actually arrives to users, the exclusivity will be over.
