Samsung Galaxy Note 9 Surfaces On Geekbench With Snapdragon 845 And 6GB RAM

Samsung already refreshed its flagship smartphone family with the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+, so what's next for the South Korean handset maker is to focus on its phablet, the Galaxy Note. Don't worry, that is getting a refresh for 2018 as well, presumably very soon. We are starting to see leaked information appear in regards to the Galaxy Note 9, including some preliminary benchmark figures.

Those benchmarks appear on Geekbench, a popular destination for such things. The database entry points to a "Samsung SM-N960U," which is almost definitely the Galaxy Note 9—the previous model (Galaxy Note 8) was listed as SM-N950. According to the database entry, Samsung is going with a top-shelf hardware configuration consisting of a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 system-on-chip (at least for the US market), the same as found in the domestic versions of its Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ phones, and 6GB of RAM.

On the software side, Samsung is running with Android 8.1 Oreo. That is the latest version of Android, and an incremental step up from Android 8.0 (also Oreo, of course) that ships with the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+.


Shown above are the leaked benchmarks. These are strong scores that are on par with other Snapdragon 845 phones, and in particular the Galaxy S9+. In our tests, the Galaxy S9+ scored 2,114 in the single-core portion of Geekbench and 8,348 in the multi-core test. We obviously have not benchmarked (or even got our hands on) the Galaxy Note 9, but if we are to take the above data at face value, it scores slightly higher than the Galaxy S9+ in both categories.

The difference is not enough to draw any kind of conclusion—matured drivers and a bump to Android 8.1 could both play a role in the Galaxy Note 9 edging out the Galaxy S9+. A bigger takeaway is that, based on the leaked data, it appears the Galaxy Note 9 is performing how we would expect, at least in Geekbench.

While nothing has been confirmed, a look around the web reveals some rumored specs, notably a 6.38-inch OLED display (versus the Galaxy Note 8's 6.32-inch panel) and a larger battery. The expectation is that Samsung will launch the Galaxy Note 9 in July.