Samsung Galaxy Note 9: live news and updates from the Unpacked event

If you want a big, powerful Android phone that can run Fortnite exclusively for a while, you can reserve your Samsung Galaxy Note 9 right now from a variety of retailers.

The phone will officially release on August 24th. No matter your carrier, you can redeem preorder bonuses through the Samsung Shop app, so long as you preorder before 8/23. This will include either a set of AKG noise-canceling headphones ($299 value) or 15,000 V-bucks ($150 value), which is Fortnite’s in-game currency. You can also buy both of them for $99. You have until September 13th to upload your proof of preorder purchase through the Samsung Shop app to claim the goodies.

Samsung has a new dual wireless charger that seems designed for its new Note 9 and Galaxy Watch. The Wireless Charger Duo has two charging pads, with a flat area meant for the new Galaxy smartwatch and a propped up charging spot for keeping a phone display visible during a charge.

Each charging pad has 12W of charging power, so both pads will support fast charging from Samsung or any other phone vendor. Together, the two pads resemble one of Samsung’s propped up charging pads glued together with one of its flat charging pads. While Samsung already sells another dual wireless charger, that one has two flat charging pads. This is the first dual wireless charger that lets you watch shows or check texts while charging your phone, which is more convenient.

Fortnite is making its way to Android, but not until Samsung device owners get a stab at it first... for a measly couple of days. At the Samsung Unpacked event on Thursday, the Fortnite team announced that Samsung users will be on the receiving end of an unusually short exclusive, ending well before the Galaxy Note 9 is released near the end of the month.

In the next few days, the game will be made available for all other supported Android devices, so Pixel users and others won’t have to wait too long to start building forts and cracking open pink llama piñatas. According to a spokesperson for Epic Games, the company has yet to disclose exactly when the Android beta will be fully released. At the event, it was announced that it would be out in the next few days, meaning it would be widely available before the Note 9 even hits the market.

Samsung announced today at its Unpacked 2018 event that its new Galaxy Note 9 will arrive with Bixby 2.0. It will be Samsung’s first smartphone device that will have an upgraded version of Bixby out of the box, which the company says will be better at processing natural language, predicting user needs, and offering quicker response times.

Samsung demoed some of Bixby’s new skills onstage, showing that it’s now possible to have more natural conversations with it. If, for example, you asked Bixby about what concerts are happening in Brooklyn over Labor Day weekend, you could then follow up with another question like “What about the first weekend in October?” without requalifying the context. This is the same sort of functionality that was announced for Amazon’s Alexa earlier this year.

Samsung has announced that it’s entering a long-term partnership with Spotify, including support for the just-announced Galaxy Home smart speaker.

The partnership is described as one that will span all of Samsung’s devices from phones to TVs to speakers. It seems like a deeper, more integrated version of the existing Spotify Connect feature that the company already offers for Samsung’s hardware.

The Galaxy Note 9 is here, and like every Galaxy Note device before it, one of the highlights of the Note 9 is the thing that separates it from most other smartphones: the S Pen stylus.

This time around, Samsung is upgrading the S Pen in a big way: it’s adding Bluetooth Low Energy, turning the stylus from a mere note-taking accessory into a full-fledged remote control for your phone.

One of the worst-kept secrets in gaming has turned out to be true: the Android version of Fortnite will be available exclusively on Samsung devices at launch. But it’s not just the new Note 9 and Tab S4 getting Fortnite; owners of a range of recent Samsung devices — the S9 / S9 Plus, Note 8, Galaxy S8 / S8 Plus, Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 Edge, and Tab S3 — can all start playing the beta today. You’ll be able to install Fortnite from either Samsung’s Game Launcher app or Epic’s new installer, both available here.

The official announcement from Samsung comes after a handful of reports pointed to the possibility, most recently following a leak of the game’s APK. The exclusivity period will last “for the next few days,” according to Samsung. That sounds like less than the 30-day window that was rumored, which should be welcome news for fans of the game. Anyone preordering the Galaxy Note 9 will have the option of receiving 15,000 V-bucks and the Fortnite Galaxy skin (seen above) instead of noise-canceling AKG headphones. (Or you can get both by paying $99.)