Samsung Galaxy Note 9 Teardown Reveals Notebook-Class Cooling System

The biggest buzz in the tech world this week was Samsung's official unveiling of the Galaxy Note 9 smartphone that had been oft-leaked and much talked about for weeks now. The Galaxy Note 9 was unveiled at the Samsung Unpacked event back on Thursday. The main specs for the smartphone (our live hands-on) include 8GB of RAM, Snapdragon 845 SoC, up to 512GB of storage, S Pen, and a big 6.4-inch screen. Preorders opened on Friday and Samsung is already running commercials for the Note 9 poking fun at Apple's iPhone X.

Preorders may have only started yesterday, but the folks at the Russian site hi-tech.mail.ru have laid hands on the device and ripped it apart to get a glimpse at how it works on the inside. Despite the Note 8 and Note 9 being almost identical on the outside, the two smartphones differ significantly on the inside. One of the most significant findings in the teardown is that the Note 9 has a beast of a cooling system said to be a notebook-class water-cooling system. The Note 8 had a passive cooling system.

Samsung has dubbed the Note 9 system a "water-carbon" cooler and claims there is actual water inside. The pipe the water lives in is made of copper and the thing is huge. In the image below, you can see just how massive the copper cooling pipe is for the Note 9 (on top in the image) compared to the cooling system in the Note 8 (on the bottom in the image). Sustained performance improves the cooler the Note 9 runs. Better cooling also means less chance of overheating.

Once inside, the Note 9 the pains Samsung took to ensure the phone would achieve its IP68 water resistance rating are clear. There have been some changes to the Note 9 compared to the Note 8 internally that should make for easier repairs if needed. One example of this is the move to a charging port that is connected to the motherboard but isn’t part of the board, so you can replace either part separately. That is a significant change considering charge port damage is the most common damage smartphones see. The Note 9 also has a larger earpiece than the Note 8 meaning better call quality and presumably improved ability to hear when making calls in a noisy environment.

The stylus in the Note 9 is held in place more tightly than in the Note 8 presumably making it less likely to fall out in a drop. Images from the teardown show that the battery still takes up huge amounts of space inside the Note 9 thanks to its ample 4,000 mAh capacity. The increased capacity compared to the 3300 mAh battery used in the Note 8 makes the new battery thicker and wider. Samsung made some of the other components smaller to allow the larger battery to fit inside and maintain essentially the same dimensions as the older Note 8. This teardown goes to show you that while the Note 9 and Note 8 appear similar on the outside, under the skin they are vastly different devices.

All still images via hi-tech.mail.ru