Samsung's latest flagship arrives in the country on Friday. NZ Herald reporter Chris Tarpey spent a week testing the camera, battery and performance of the new Galaxy Note 9.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 9 is here and people are excited.
There's a dedicated hashtag making the rounds on Twitter — #GalaxyNote9 — and fans are even filming themselves unwrapping their brand new handsets like it's Christmas morning.
Samsung launched it's latest mobile offering in Brooklyn's Barclays Centre overnight, describing it as the new "super-powerful smartphone that's built for gaming".
The phone features a 6.4-inch screen, up to 512GB storage, an all-day battery capacity and a battery-powered stylus that could be used as a remote control for selfies.
It seems the global tech giant is counting on a major partnership with the world's most popular video game to ensure that parents are nagged into dropping nearly $1700 on their shiny new toy.
Fortnite, the survivalist battle royale adventure game, will soon be released on Android devices, but only Samsung Galaxy customers will get first dibs on the wildly popular game.
Fortnite has teamed up with Samsung to launch the game on Android. Photo / Supplied
Other Android phone users will have to wait until the end of the month to play Fortnite on their phones.
Cyber psychologist Jocelyn Brewer told news.com.au the partnership between Samsung and Fortnite creator Tim Sweeney was genius.
"This is a really intelligent move by Samsung to link up with Tim Sweeney, who has devoted seven years to developing his game before it was released," Brewer said.
She described the move as an interesting example of "how gaming business models are evolving".
Brewer said the partnership between the two tech companies will yield major sales.
"There are a lot of people playing this game so the peer pressure to participate is very strong," she said.
"As a result, the pressure on parents to download the game and play is equally as strong".
Sweeney, who founded Epic Games which developed Fortnite, spoke at the Galaxy Note 9 launched, declaring his company and Samsung were "ushering mobile gaming into a new era of high end games for gamers".
"Samsung makes the best performing Android devices in the world and the Note 9 represents a real revolution for mobile gaming," Sweeney said.
Samsung announced that it would also offer exclusive content to customers, including a brand new 'skin'.
In a statement, the tech giant said customers who pre-order the handset in the next 13 days would be rewarded with "either 15,000 V-bucks with the Fortnite Galaxy skin or a pair of AKG noise-cancelling headphones."
In less than 12-months, Fortnite has recorded a mammoth 125 million players, with more than 40 million players logging onto the platform to play each month.
Brewer said mobile phone companies operate on a 'planned obsolescence' basis — where devices were built with the idea that they would ultimately be replaced by bigger, better models.
"These companies have to find new and exciting ways to develop markets that attract customers, especially younger people with disposable incomes," she said.
"Any company that has anything to do with Fortnite right now is making a good move,
"The question is what will the next Fortnite look like and how will Samsung get on top of that?"
