Hi guys, it's MTG here.
I've now used the Samsung Galaxy S9+ for a little over a month now.
On this channel I like to wait for the hype to die down a bit and for software updates
to roll out before conducting any full reviews.
In this video I'm going to review the phone, tell you what I like and dislike, and also
tell you why the S9+ is now my daily driver.
Let's get right into it.
To give a little context, the phone that had my sim card in it before this one was the
Pixel 2 XL.
You can watch that revisited video to see why I had chosen it.
But before I get into this review, I wanted to quickly answer the question: what do I
consider when choosing a daily driver.
My daily driver is never simply the best phone, because already that statement has no clear
answer.
It's a phone that best fits my lifestyle, my preferences, and does the most of what
I want a phone to do.
It's a device that will inevitably be with me at all times as not only a phone, but also
my calendar, media consumption device, camera, and pocket computer.
By now, you probably already know a lot about the S9+'s design and specifications, but let
me quickly run through some key aspects to remind you of how great the phone looks on
paper.
The S9+ has Corning's Gorilla Glass 5 on both its front and back, and is held together by
an aluminum frame.
I don't know if it's the way Samsung curved the edges or the overall symmetry of the phone,
but the S9+ feels a lot better to hold than any of the other bigger phones I've used.
The phone has a near bezel-less, 6.2 inch Super AMOLED display with a QHD+ resolution
and no notch.
If you're in the US, the phone will be powered by the Octacore Snapdragon 845 chipset, and
just about everywhere else, it will be powered by Samsung's Exynos 9810 Octa chipset.
The S9+ sports 6 GB of RAM, and has a base 64 GB of storage.
When I picked up the S8+ for the first time last year, I was immediately blown away by
the best smartphone screen I have ever seen.
And especially because I was coming from the Pixel 2 XL this time around, I had the same
experience when I booted up the S9+ for the first time.
The screen just screams premium and quality.
When scrolling through apps like Bleacher Report and Twitter, you can see how crisp
the text is and how clear and vibrant the images are.
And when you watch high resolution videos, it becomes so blatantly obvious why Samsung
screens are said to be the best on any smartphone.
The screen also gets plenty bright enough to see it even in direct sunlight.
I then wanted to check out the phone's camera because Samsung had made a really big deal
about it at its event, and my initial impressions are that it has maybe the most well-rounded
camera system on a phone to date.
In bright light, the phone performs as I expect any phone at this price-point to perform.
Images are clear, colors are great, and an amazing amount of detail is captured in every
single shot.
But the camera started to really impress me when I began to challenge it with more difficult
lighting conditions.
Its HDR capabilities took a big step up from the Note 8, always making sure the light in
the background does not overpower the image.
Then at night, the S9+ did a great job of automatically switching to that f/1.5 aperture,
creating detailed night shots with minimal noise.
Again light sources never flare out too much, and the phone is able to capture great natural-looking
night shots because it doesn't have to work too hard in post processing.
For more detailed looks at the S9+'s camera system, and to see video and audio tests,
check out the camera comparisons I have between the S9+ and the iPhone X, Pixel 2 XL, and
Note 8.
Samsung has always packed as many features as they possibly can into their smartphones,
and the S9+ is no exception.The S9+ remains one of the few major flagships to maintain
a headphone jack, which to a lot of people, including me, is still an important feature
for a phone to have.
I own Bluetooth earphones, headphones, and speakers, but in those instances where those
are out of battery or there are only wired options available, phones without headphone
jacks seem worthless.
Even when older Samsung flagships had the best displays, they weren't too great for
media consumption without headphones because of how bad the onboard speakers were.
This time around, Samsung partnered with Dolby and put some decent stereo speakers on the
new S9's that get impressively loud.
They might not be the clearest sounding speakers in the world, but they are in the highest
tier when it comes to smartphone speakers.
A feature that I don't hear people talk enough about is Samsung Pay.
Unlike Android or Apple Pay, Samsung Pay actually tricks any card reader into thinking a physical
card was swiped, which is very convenient in those instances where you forget your wallet.
And of course the S9+ has the staple features like expandable storage, an IP68 water and
dust resistance rating, and wireless charging.
In terms of biometric security, Samsung gives you options to unlock your phone instead of
forcing you to use one.
The fingerprint sensor is finally in a universally accessible location.
It is extremely quick to setup and works as expected.
This year Samsung introduced Intelligent Scan.
With Intelligent Scan, the S9s pretty much instantly toggle between using either just
2D facial recognition, just iris scanning, or a combination of the two.
This makes for an unlock method that is more secure than the old facial recognition, but
significantly faster than iris scanning was on previous Galaxy phones.
But all of these cool features don't mean anything if the phone stutters or struggles
to do the simpler tasks.
This is where the S9+ begins to separate itself from other phones in my head.
Samsung's skin on the S9s are very clean and do not seem cluttered at all.
Navigating between different menus and apps seems Pixel smooth, and the 6GB of RAM has
allowed most of my background apps to stay open and ready to go whenever I needed them.
Everything is just very snappy, and the phone so far has very rarely stuttered.
With the S9+, you can rest assured knowing that the software experience will only make
you like this phone even more, not the other way around.
The battery had been an aspect of this phone that I hoped Samsung improved from the Note
8.
The onboard 3,500 mAh battery, along with the added efficiency of the Snapdragon 845
exceeded my expectations.
The S9+ has now become one of the longest lasting smartphones I've ever used, and on
most days it comfortably makes it to the end of the day, even if it was used a lot.
Couple the decent battery life with fast wireless charging and fast wall charging, the S9+ does
not disappoint at all in the battery department.
But there are some things that I don't like about this phone that I wanted to address.
I still don't know why Samsung softens its pictures shot on Live Focus so much.
I understand that some people think the pictures are more flattering, but even when I turn
all beauty modes off, details get suppressed.
The S9+ can take some quality depth-effect pictures, but the smearing of details, especially
on the subjects' faces keeps the camera from being just about perfect.
Also I have hit the Bixby button on accident so many times that I don't care how advanced
of a digital assistant it is.
I ended up pretty much disabling all Bixby functionality except for the long-press to
activate, which is a bummer for a feature that takes up its own button on the phone.
With phones like the iPhone X priced at $1000 and Samsung's own Note 8 priced at $930, I
was pleasantly surprised to see that even the S9+ was priced at $840.
And when you see that the S9+ includes $100 earphones, a fast charging wall adapter, and
all of the features I mentioned before, the price tag actually seems more palatable given
how little other manufacturers like Apple include with their phones.
If you couldn't tell, I am a big fan of the Samsung Galaxy S9+.
It's a phone with a versatile camera, lots of features, good battery life, and great
software experience.
All of which are packaged with the best display on any phone made to date.
I chose it as my daily driver because I really value a big, clear, vibrant display.
The portrait mode is still not Pixel level and there isn't the added convenience of being
in the Apple ecosystem, but the camera is so good in other aspects and the software
is so seamless and snappy that I don't really mind.
Hopefully this video helped you out if you were thinking about getting the S9+.
As always, thanks for watching, and I will see you in the next video.