With all of the leaks that have surfaced in the weeks and months leading up to the official reveal of the Galaxy Note 9, there won’t be much left for Samsung to announce at its Unpacked event in August. In fact, one of the only surprises that the company had left was to show off the physical hardware itself, but even that privilege seems to have been stripped away this week as Samsung CEO DJ Koh was spotted using the phone at a media event.
As you can see if you look closely at the image above, the device that Koh is holding has a different camera housing than that of the Note 8. As was previously reported, Samsung has moved the fingerprint sensor below the cameras in order to make it easier to reach. That’s one of the only cosmetic changes to the Note 9.
We can’t glean much else from the photo, but we do see Koh using the S Pen to operate the phone. From what we can gather, the upgraded stylus will have Bluetooth support, enabling new features that weren’t possible with previous iterations of the S Pen. Other than the updated internal specs, the S Pen might actually be the most exciting addition to this year’s Galaxy Note smartphone (which isn’t a very encouraging sign).
Samsung’s Galaxy S9 is one of the best phones of 2018, but sales have been underwhelming at best. If the Galaxy Note 9 is yet another minor refresh, it’s hard to imagine the market reacting much differently. Reports suggest the Note 9 will feature a 6.3-inch OLED display, Snapdragon 845 processor (Exynos 9810 overseas), 6GB of RAM, 128GB of internal storage, dual 12-megapixel cameras, a 4,000 mAh battery and will run Android 8.0.
Samsung will unveil the Galaxy Note 9 at an Unpacked event in New York City on August 9th. The flagship is then expected to be available in stores on August 24th, allowing Samsung to get out in front of Apple’s fall event.
