They are here. They are expensive. But people are ready to line up for them. And by they I am talking about the who is who in the smartphone market 2018. To help us talk about these high end 2018 flagships is a brief examination of two devices that feature some next-gen capabilities – devices that come with a $1,000 price tag, give or take – the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 and the now old OPPO Find X.
For more about Samsung Galaxy Note 9, click here.
The review of OPPO Find X is on this other article.
Kshs 100,000 (one hundred thousand), enough money to enable many build decent shelters for their grandmoms back in the village, is the amount of money Samsung, and OPPO want you to cough – in cash – for their latest flagships. So, as many Kenyans on social media would like to ask, what magic would these phones do? Of course downloading ready-made food is still out of the question. At least for Samsung Galaxy Note 9, we know the device has some form of piped water inside for its cooling mechanism whereas the OPPO Find X has a mechanized camera popup mechanism.
Digging deeper, we find that Samsung Galaxy Note 9 is coming with the best screen ever on a smartphone. About a week ago, DisplayMate released its verdict on the display of the newest note, and the verdict read in part, “The Galaxy Note9 is the most innovative and high-performance Smartphone display that we have ever Lab tested, breaking and establishing many new Display Performance Records”. In addition, and although Samsung phones aren’t being marketed as camera-centric, the new cameras on Samsung Galaxy Note 9 are the best yet both in raw specs and in real-world performance. When Samsung introduced the portrait mode in the Samsung Galaxy S8, the portraits were off especially with the phone’s inability to rightly detect edges.
Samsung improved the portrait flaws of Galaxy S8 in Note 8, S9 and has perfected the portrait performance in the Samsung Galaxy Note 9. With the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 therefore, you can in certain occasions use the phone to do professional photography. The dual camera setup also enables the device to do a clear well balance almost perfect 2X optical zoomed photo. Then there is the S Pen on the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 – an S Pen that can help one remotely control certain apps e.g. the camera or control a presentation on slides like PowerPoint. To operate the Note 9 features is the top of the end Qualcomm SDM845 Snapdragon 845 for USA/China markets or Samsung’s own Exynos 9810 Octa – EMEA for the International market. These processors are clocking speeds up to 2.8 GHz per core. The Note 9 will also provide you with a 4000 mAh battery typically meant to take you through the day without hustle, but Samsung’s 1440p screen is bound to consume a large chunk of that juice. You’d also love the fact that the galaxy giant is IP68 certified to withstand dust and water – where it can withstand being in water up a depth of 1.5 metres for a whole 30 minutes.
For Kshs 100,000 OPPO Find X is offering almost the same hardware specs, even though the phone’s AMOLED screen isn’t the best in the market. Just like Samsung Galaxy Note 9, OPPO Find X doesn’t have the detested notch that came with iPhone X, but the OPPO phone has been given a beautifully imagined camera compartment that pops out when the camera icon is pressed – and the compartment houses both the front-facing camera and the rear duo cameras. By specs, the cameras rival those on Samsung Galaxy Note 9, although the Galaxy Note 9 needs to also be in the market to allow us to test it along the OPPO Find X. What OPPO is definitely bragging about is the 25 MP selfie shooter but for those of us who are not selfie lovers, no amount of gimmickry on a selfie camera can make us salivate. Body wise, both of these cameras feature all-glass – corning gorilla glass 5, but the OPPO Find X doesn’t have the advantage of water and dust resistance.
Of these phones, a phone that its selling point is productivity (even though there is no any real meaningful productive work you can do with it), vs another whose selling point is selfies (even though you can’t take any pro photos with the selfie shooter), which one will you give Kshs 100,000? Remember the productivity one can demand as high as Kshs 130,000 when it finally lands in the Kenyan market.
