Samsung Galaxy C9 Pro Unboxing, First Impressions

Samsung has quite a different line of smartphones under its Galaxy C series in China. Just last October of 2016, the Korean manufacturer announced its first 6GB RAM smartphone. As always, we still get our hands on these handsets thanks to parallel importers in the country. Without further ado, here’s our unboxing and first impressions of the Samsung Galaxy C9 Pro.

The Galaxy C9 Pro is no different in terms of retail packaging from other Samsung smartphones. It comes in a white box with subtle printing for the brand and model. Don’t mind the Chinese characters on the back since this one imported straight from China.

Inside, the first thing you’ll is the smartphone. Beneath it is the usual packaging contents included for every purchase, all in white color. There’s a quality in-ear headset, a USB Type-C cable for charging and file transfer, and a charging brick equipped with Samsung’s Adaptive Fast Charging rated at 5.0-9.0 V= 2.0 A.

Now, to the phone itself. The Galaxy C9 Pro, like its Galaxy A9 Pro cousin, is a huge smartphone or a “phablet” as we like to call it. As with other Galaxy C handsets, the phone sports an aluminum unibody design. We see it as a direct competitor to the iPhone for consumers in Mainland China.

It’s got a 6-inch Super AMOLED display with a Full HD resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels equating to 367ppi. Its face is a typical Samsung with a front-mounted fingerprint scanner with a couple of capacitive keys for navigation. There’s a 16-megapixel selfie shooter with an f/1.9 aperture above the display and an earpiece which also acts a second channel for its stereo speaker setup.

On the left-hand side is a pair of buttons for volume up and down. The thin antenna bands originating from the rear also extends to the sides.

While on the right are the power/lock button and two card trays. There’s one for the dedicated microSD card and another for two Nano-SIM cards. This will please those who doesn’t want to sacrifice the second SIM card slot for a microSD.

Up top, we just have the pinhole for the noise-cancelling microphone. A “Qualcomm 4G” sticker is found here as well if you have a fresh unit that assures you that the phone is powered by Qualcomm rather than other chipset makers.

It’s quite busy down at the bottom with the 3.5mm headphone jack, USB Type-C port, main microphone, and the loudspeaker sitting next to each other.

On its back, we’ll notice the clean state of its aluminum chassis. The primary 16-megapixel f/1.9 camera sits in the top center with its dual-tone LED flash on the side. What’s interesting about the handset is the scheme of its antenna bands. Others put a thick strip of plastic to act as an antenna for the internal radios which becomes unsightly. Here though, Samsung puts a trio of thin plastic strips and it looks neat compared to the likes of the old iPhone 6.

Powering the phone is a Snapdragon 653 octa-core processor with Adreno 510 GPU. As mentioned, it’s got a whopping 6GB of RAM which is more than enough for multitasking, or is it? The phone runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow with Samsung’s skin on top. While it’s quite disappointing not to have Nougat out of the box, Samsung’s customization already has its traits including the split screen feature. Additional specs include 64GB of expandable storage, NFC support, 4G LTE, and a generous 4,000mAh battery despite its 6.9 mm waistline.

Samsung Galaxy C9 Pro specs:
6-inch Full HD Super AMOLED display
Snapdragon 653 octa-core processor
Adreno 510 GPU
6GB RAM
64GB internal storage
Expandable to 256GB via microSD card
16MP rear camera with f/1.9 aperture and dual-tone LED flash
16MP front camera with f/1.9 aperture
Dual-SIM (nano)
4G LTE
WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
Bluetooth 4.2, A2DP, LE
GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS
USB Type-C
Cirrus Hi-Fi audio codec
Samsung Pay via NFC and MST (magnetic secure transmission)
Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow
4000mAh battery
162.9 x 80.7 x 6.9mm
189 grams

We’ll be taking the Galaxy C9 Pro for a full spin in the coming days and, as always, we’ll share our honest thoughts about the handset. This unit we have here is available at Widget City for Php24,500USD 417INR 35,393EUR 398CNY 3,040 (see listing here). Be sure to check back for our full review.