Yet another report claiming Samsung is pushing for an early Galaxy Note 9 launch emerged online, having been authored by the Korea Herald earlier today. The publication’s insiders believe the Android phablet will be officially announced on August 9, with that same date having already been mentioned on two occasions in the last several weeks. The new rumors hence point to Samsung rushing the debut of its next Galaxy Note-series offering two weeks ahead of its usual schedule, possibly in an attempt to account for weaker-than-expected sales of the Galaxy S9 lineup and beat Apple’s next iPhones to the market.
While the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus are presently the best-selling smartphones in the world, according to several industry trackers, their overall performance was previously said to have been significantly below that of the Galaxy S8 family. With Apple’s iOS flagships being expected to debut in September, August is Samsung’s last chance to launch new high-end products and introduce them to the market without any direct competitors taking away their media spotlight. The Galaxy Note 9 itself is understood to be a refinement of the Galaxy Note 8 formula more than a design revolution attempt, with the overall physical footprint and capabilities of the 2018 Android flagship being expected to remain largely unchanged with its successor.
While the handset should be powered by the same improved chips found inside its Galaxy S9-series siblings, the base memory configuration including 64GB of storage space and 6GB of RAM is said to be staying the same this year. A new version of the S Pen stylus is rumored to be part of the package, with Samsung already openly talking about Bixby 2.0 in the context of a Galaxy Note 9 debut, having previously confirmed the new iteration of the artificial intelligence assistant will offer much shorter response times and a broad range of new features. Should the Galaxy Note 9 end up being announced in early August, it’s likely to go on sale by the end of the same month.