Samsung just dropped a massive hint about the probable launch date of the Galaxy Note 9 smartphone thanks to the official filing with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), a mandatory process that every device-maker has to go through before releasing a product. The date of approval, that is, June 25 indicates that the Unboxing event of this year’s Note flagship may take place in the last week of July and the phone may be made available in the first half of August.
While some rumours suggested that the launch of the flagship device has been delayed due to some last minute design changes, several leaks asserted that the flagship device will be launched on August 9, which is a month ahead when compared with the launch date of its predecessor Note 8. The Galaxy Note 8 hit the FCC on July 31 last year and Samsung’s Unpacked event took place on August 23.
Although the filing with the FCC did not delve out any information on specifications and/or features, it dropped another hint regarding the number of models that Samsung is expected to launch this year. The filing shows a phone with the model number SM-N960F, along with two additional models, SM-N960F/DS and SM-N960X will be released. The Galaxy Note 8 had the model number SM-N950F. The SM-N960F/DS may be a dual SIM version of the device while SM-N960X, a factory-unlocked one.
A front panel suggesting top bezel of Samsung Galaxy Note 9 has been trimmed. (Source)
Rumours point out that the Galaxy Note 9 will be an incremental update. It may have the same camera sensors that have been used in the Galaxy S9 and S9+ smartphones. Apart from thinner bezels and positional change of the fingerprint scanner, new features on the S Pen are also on the cards.
According to benchmarking website Geekbench, the Galaxy Note 9 will feature an Exynos 9810 SoC (Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 for the variant in the US). To complement it, there’s 6GB of RAM on board. It is expected to ship running Android 8.1 Oreo out-of-the-box.
Further, the smartphone is believed to feature a 6.4-inch Super AMOLED display with an aspect ratio of 18.5:9. The phone is expected to be backed by a 4,000mAh battery, which is a significant increase when compared to the 3,300mAh that came with the Galaxy Note 8 from last year.