When the S8+ was released last year it sat at unparalleled in design for most of
the year. 12 months though can bring out the best in the competition and the S9
enters a competitive flagship world filled with high-end specs and just
notches everywhere. Can the S9 and the S9+ keep Samsung on top most
importantly is it worth the premium price? I'm Jon Rettinger from TechnoBuffalo
and this is our review of the Galaxy S9.
For full disclosure most this review is going to focus on the S9 Plus which I
use for almost two and a half weeks before filming. It was super important
for me to get to know the phone before rushing out a review. I really liked the
S8 but there were two major problems with it no stereo speakers and the
maddeningly placed fingerprint reader. Samsung clearly listened to consumers
and fix both of these making the earpiece work double duty as a speaker
and moving the fingerprint reader where it should have been all along
below the camera or cameras depending on whether that you've got the S9 at the S9+.
Speakers here are 1.4 times louder but what matters is that they actually
sound decent and now I can actually find and use the fingerprint reader. It's
starting to be less a matter of opinion and more matter of fact that Samsung
makes the best screens in the business and for the most part the 5.8 inch and
6.2 inch quad HD Super AMOLED panels are unchanged from last year. The resolution
is the same at 2960 by 1440 but now they get 15% brighter
making the screens way easier to see outdoors and I get it might not sound
like much but in the real world testing it makes a gigantic difference. So
the brightness improvements aside the screen still look like there's a sticker
on there not real screens. Colors as Samsung likes to do or oversaturated a
bit but they look incredible in black levels as you'd expect our killer. It's a
pleasure to watch videos on but gaming can kind of be a bit squirrely due to the
super thin bezels but I am happy to make that trade for the slim design which is
also slightly trimmed down from the S8. It was a curious decision for Samsung to
essentially fork the S9 line with the S9+ getting the second camera and 6
gigabytes of RAM versus 4 gigabytes on the s9.
I loved that it was essentially the same phone save for screen size on the
S8 and S8+. I don't agree with it but know the phones are not the same. Both
phones are the first ones on the block to get the qualcomm snapdragon 845 chips.
They are obviously gonna benchmark well but synthetic scores don't really matter in
real-world usage. The 845's other claim to fame aside from performance and
battery improvements is supposed to be what Qualcomm is calling Ultra HD
Premium which supports a wider color gamut such as REC 2020. That's gonna give
you more colors. Considerably more shades of existing colors in 10-bit HDR which
is a mouthful. Those improvements though weren't noticeable either but maybe that's
more to do with the content I was watching. What this boils down to though is there
aren't that many improvements right now at 845 which is kind of disappointing but
I would imagine start to see these changes in the coming months as software
starts to take advantage of what I think is the awesome hardware in here and
speaking of software its Android 8.0 out of the box not 8.1
which is kind of a bummer. Samsung has been a bit better at pushing
the .1 updates than they are at pushing the full new Android versions but if you
decided to pick one of these up resign yourself to only getting Oreo and be
pleasantly surprised if and when Android P ever comes. What you are gonna get
though with the S9 and S9+ is the latest version of Samsung experience. It's quick
and thus far I have had no slowdowns at all. I get that's a preference thing
but at least be open-minded going in. I don't think you're gonna be disappointed. So
while good it's not perfect though. There's still duplicate apps to what Google
offers which is kind of annoying. I'm looking at you internet browser nobody
uses. I also don't like having a separate galaxy app store. I've covered Samsung's
UI at length so I won't go too much into it here. Bixby is also here same with its
non-reprogrammable button. They added some new tricks like calorie counting some AR
makeup stuff and the ability to translate words which you look in the corner it's
just gonna say it's using Google Translate. It is pretty solid though
for performing phone tasks but as an assistant it is slow to respond and
doesn't always answer the questions right all the time.
So Samsung is getting into the live emoji game with AR emojis. Think of
them like HD versions of the Nintendo mii and it's super easy to just view these as
an animoji knockoffs but in a lot of ways they do more. In just a few seconds
they're gonna create one of your face and the facial tracking is pretty
impressive. Even the ability to track my face down to my individual dancing
eyebrows. I like that it creates GIFs automatically for different situations
that can be used in any messaging app. It's a pretty cool implementation that
feels more custom than animoji but in all honesty I forgot they were there after
just a few days anyway. The biggest change with the S9 and S9+
is with the camera. Samsung is touting dual aperture as a flagship feature
which both the S9 and S9+ do have. It's a big Hardware change but it
doesn't really have significant impact in the real world. When comparing it to the S8
you'll notice a slightly sharper background outdoors but that's probably
also due to 2.4 aperture. Indoor sharpness and background look very
similar. The dual camera set up on the S9+ just adds the optical zoom and
looks and feels identical to the Note 8. It works well and it's my preference to
have the extra flexibility. The biggest change over from the S8 is in image
processing. Photos look way less processed less artificially sharp less
saturated and just more natural. Noise reduction is also way better in low
light which I can't overstate enough. This is an incredible camera in
low-light. Slow-mo video on these phones is pretty awesome.
In theory 960 frames per second at 720p capture some crazy cool moments but only
records 0.2 seconds so be sure to time it exactly right. It's a cool novelty but
it does come out a bit grainy despite the resolution. As a party trick or a
look at what my phone can do type feature it's it's pretty sweet. A crazy cool
thing to mention with the cameras this time around is they actually have their
own RAM to help with capturing all these images. I'm sure if you give it a few years
we'll be complaining that my cameras only got 6 gigs of RAM but RAM is in the
camera module, it's kind of cool. So the bottom line on the camera it's not
surprisingly the best camera system Samsung has ever used but it's
definitely not world's better than the S8 or even the Note 8. So Samsung has
improved the iris recognition and the facial scanning system and this time it
gives you the option to combine the two to what it's calling intelligent scan. It
gives you the ease of facial unlock with the security of iris and it works pretty
close to flawlessly. With light behind me in dark rooms and pretty much every
other scenario I threw at it it just worked. It wasn't always the fastest but it
was damn close to working 100% of the time. Battery sizes are unchanged from
last gen at 3,000 3,500 milliamp hours respectively. My actual usage was
slightly better than the S8+. After a full day for me I had about 35 to 40%-ish
left. It looks like the 845 is about five-ten percent more efficient on battery or
maybe apps just got better optimized throughout the year. So I give Samsung
credit they really check almost every flagship
box. IP68 expandable storage Snapdragon 845 six gigs of ram dual cameras 64
gigs of internal storage Samsung pay a freaking headphone jack and a beautiful
design without a notch. We also finally have some good colors
making their way to the US in the form of coral blue and lilac purple to go along
with the now staple midnight black. I wish the gray was coming to the US but
hey colors. So the final verdict on the S9 and the S9+. They are not surprisingly
awesome phones and the best Samsung has ever made.
Assuming you don't need a stylus. If you have an S8 or an S8+ hold off. I don't
think even Samsung believes you'll need to upgrade but if you're coming from S7 or
older just coming from another manufacturer this is a huge leap forward
and gives you what I think is the best of Android. My experience was so positive
with the S9 and the S9+ I actually bought a coral blue S9+ for myself
which is a biggest stamp of approval I can give a device putting my own money
behind it.