The Galaxy Note 9 is likely to have a 3,850mAh battery and an in-screen fingerprint reader, industry insider known only by their Twitter and Weibo handle “Ice Universe” said earlier this month. The claim comes shortly after reports suggesting Samsung still hasn’t given up on the idea of commercializing an under-display fingerprint sensor in 2018 emerged, with the company’s display manufacturing arm supposedly presenting the firm with three or four options for doing so. While Samsung traditionally finalizes the design of its Galaxy Note models at least five months prior to their commercialization, the company opted for a longer development period this year in an effort to address the possibility of equipping the phablet with such a new technology despite many technical barriers to doing so, insiders claimed last week. The move still isn’t likely to affect the commercial availability of the phablet which is widely expected to debut in August before going on sale by late summer.
Should the Galaxy Note 9 end up featuring a 3,850mAh battery, it would ship with the largest cell ever included into a member of the S Pen-equipped series; the Galaxy Note 8 had a 3,300mAh battery and even the discontinued Galaxy Note 7 whose battery proved to be too large for its body shipped with a 3,500mAh unit. Support for Samsung’s Adaptive Fast Charging technology is likely to be part of the package but it’s presently unclear whether the Snapdragon models of the device sold in the United States, Canada, and China will be compatible with Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 3.0 which all of Samsung’s flagships lacked so far. Even the latest Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus only allow for Quick Charge 2.0 due to what are understood to be licensing issues related to the royalties Qualcomm is demanding.
Not much is known about the next addition to the Galaxy Note lineup, though Samsung’s mobile chief recently suggested the phablet may end up debuting alongside Bixby 2.0, a significantly upgraded version of the company’s artificial intelligence assistant. A base of 6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage space boasted by the Galaxy Note 8 should be retained by its successor, whereas AR Emoji may also be part of the package given how aggressively Samsung is promoting the feature in the context of the Galaxy S9 series and the fact that the tech behind the solution is relatively easy to implement into any conventional smartphone, Android or otherwise.