The extra physical button on Samsung’s Galaxy Note 9 may be used for screenshots and recording the flagship’s screen, according to a new report out of South Korea. Following last week’s leak of a supposed Galaxy Note 9 case, the upcoming device is expected to ship with five keys in total, with the new one apparently being positioned near the bottom of one of its two edges. While initially speculated to be a camera shutter button, Herald Corp reports Samsung recently filed to trademark a “perfect capture technology” which appears to be more directly related to screengrabs.
All of the company’s devices released in recent times can perform screenshots via a two-button shortcut; since Samsung started launching its own implementations of Android 7.0 Nougat, that shortcut consisted of a volume-down and power key, though the company’s software also supports a gesture-based approach to getting a screengrab, allowing users to do so by swiping the side of their hand across the screen of their handset. The addition of an extra screenshot button is speculated to be related to Bixby 2.0, a radically improved version of Samsung’s artificial intelligence helper which is expected to debut on the Galaxy Note 9 before rolling out to the firm’s older Android handsets. According to recent reports and Samsung’s own hints, Bixby 2.0 will be specifically designed to analyze screenshots, not unlike the solution first introduced with Google Now On Tap.
A dedicated button for screen recording is also a possibility as Samsung already has proprietary screen recording software, though the company has so far only been offering it as part of its Game Launcher service. The Galaxy Note 9 is expected to be officially announced on August 9 and should go on sale by the end of the same month, according to a number of recent reports. Samsung is likely to deliver a refined take on the Galaxy Note 8 formula, much like the Galaxy S9 provided an incremental upgrade over the Galaxy S8 earlier this year.