Living with a Samsung Galaxy S9+

For the past few weeks, I've been testing the Samsung Milky way S9+, which has proven to be the fastest and most capable Android phone I've seen. While its advent hasn't changed much from last year'south model, improvements to the camera and the processor accept made it even more than impressive. Though I did come across a few minor glitches, none were meaning, and the sheer array of features makes the S9+ stand out from the pack.

As was clear from the product introduction at Mobile Earth Congress, the camera system saw the biggest update this year.

Camera Improvements

The main rear-facing camera now has a "dual-aperture" organisation, meaning that information technology uses f/2.4 for daylight pictures, merely switches to using an f/1.5 aperture in depression calorie-free. This is a mechanical aperture, and Samsung says that in low light, 28 percent more light will reach the sensor, resulting in better photos.

The sensor itself is new—Samsung calls it a 12-megapixel super-speed dual pixel sensor—and the photographic camera has logic and DRAM stacked on height of the sensor to make image processing much faster, which enables multi-frame racket reduction. This means that the camera captures a grouping of four photos and uses all of this detail to reduce the noise in photos. Samsung said low light photos on the S9 and S9+ will have thirty pct less noise compared to the S8.

Samsung Galaxy S9+ shoot during day - Grand Central

While the megapixel count isn't as high as on some competing models, I found the photos I took with the S9+ were very expert in daylight. There does seem to be less noise in the images, and in general the quality of the photos is excellent.

Samsung Galaxy S9+ shoot during night - Grand Central

Low low-cal photos were typically brighter than what I saw on the S8 or on competitor'due south phones. But while it's a footstep in the right direction, information technology's yet pretty easy to stop upwardly with shots that are blurry or dark. All the same, the S9+ takes photos that expect better than photos taken with any of the other Android phones I've tried, quality that's on par with the iPhone X.

Camera quality is an interesting consequence. Each year we see comeback, just information technology's incremental—information technology just gets better every yr, and the S9+ is a great example of this. However, there are even so scenarios where an SLR or a camera with a large optical zoom will capture meliorate photos. Still, if the difference from i generation to another isn't that large, the cumulative impact is. At ane outcome I attended, a friend had a Galaxy S6 and we compared photos; the divergence in the sharpness and noise in the photos was quite noticeable.

The S9+ is the get-go phone in the S family unit to have dual rear-facing cameras (the smaller S9 with its five.8-inch brandish has only a single rear camera), although the stylus-based and larger Annotation 8 featured dual cameras last fall. These cameras enable a "telephoto" (2x) lens, making zoomed-in shots a chip clearer. It'south a prissy improver, though it often feels more like a catchup in features rather than a big advancement. This also enables a "live focus" feature in which y'all can adjust the background mistiness, which is similar to Apple'due south Portrait way. In practice, I thought this feature was noticeably better than the similar mode on the Huawei Mate 10 but non quite every bit practiced as what I got with the iPhone X.

As you would expect, the S9+ camera arrangement also has modes for automated shooting, a pro mode, and panoramas. It has a "nutrient" fashion, which saturates the colors; in practice, I thought the "auto" photos actually looked better and more realistic.

The S9+ as well has an eight-megapixel front-facing camera with an f/one.7 aperture, which appeared to exist nearly identical to the ane in concluding year's model. Information technology does have new modes for what Samsung calls a "wide selfie," which lets you move the phone left and correct to fit more people into your selfies, and for "selfie focus," which gives you a bit of bokeh.

One unusual feature is AR emoji, in which you create an avatar so utilise the camera to capture your emotions and etc., to generate a moving, personalized emoji. This looks a picayune more than flexible than the animated emojis on the iPhone 10, just I'm still not sure I take a need for this feature.

For video, both the rear-facing cameras are optical image stabilized, and tin can capture up to 4K at 60 frames per second, with numerous options betwixt the default 1080p and the high end. Note that 4K 60fps capture is express to 5 minutes per video, and that features like tracking car-focus don't work at annihilation more than 1080K 30 fps video.

One new feature is what Samsung calls "Super Slow Mo," in which you can capture images at 960 frames per 2nd, admitting for just 0.2 seconds at a time. You can do this manually, just it worked meliorate using automatic motion detection (the feature turns on when motion moves into a box on the screen). One matter to notation is that while taking such videos, you lot cannot zoom, and information technology does seem to just work with the normal discontinuity. Notwithstanding, information technology's pretty absurd, and it didn't accept me long to get the hang of using it.

Super Slow Mo is a absurd talking point—it really is the kind of thing yous desire to show your friends. You can likewise convert these videos into wallpaper or GIFs, but after y'all've done that a few times, I'm not sure how often yous would really use it.

One unusual feature is "Bixby Vision," named after Samsung's AI assistant. When you are taking a photograph, Bixby Vision lets you point at an object and translate text from ane language to another, detect images of similar items, shop online for a similar production, tell you near the food or wine you are looking at, or fifty-fifty try on different kinds of makeup via a selfie. (I didn't try that one.) The quality of this varies—I had surprisingly good results with the text translation and the wine solutions, but product shopping and nutrient information was oftentimes wrong. Still, it'south an interesting attempt at making the photographic camera more useful. Google has added a like feature in its Google Lens app for the Pixel and now includes a similar feature in its Google Photos app.

The S9+ doesn't take the extended wide-angle lens or all of the video features that the LG V30 has, simply for the kind of everyday photos and videos I notice myself taking—and actually overall—the S9+ probably offers the all-time photograph system of whatever phone I've seen to date, and that's certainly true of the Android phones.

The Basics

From a design perspective, the Galaxy S9+ looks almost identical to last year'southward Milky way S8+, with a half-dozen.ii-inch display that fills nearly the entirely forepart of the phone, with only a very minor bezel. As with near of the current flagship phones starting with last year's S8 and S8+, this phone features an elongated display, and then it fit well in my hand despite the large screen size. The sides of the phone and the "infinity brandish" are curved, then you come across inappreciably any bezel at all on the sides of the phone, and just a small corporeality on the pinnacle and bottom of the phone. The LED on the height of the telephone within the bezel has been toned down, and so as to be less visible than on the S8 and S8+.

The device measures six.2 by two.9 by 0.33 inches—almost identical to last yr'southward model—only weighs 6.67 ounces, about half an ounce more, probably to accommodate the improved camera and speakers. That makes it about an ounce heavier than the vi-inch LG V30, just I can't say I really noticed the difference. The S9+ continues to have a 2,960-by-1,440 pixel curved Super AMOLED brandish, which is if anything brighter and more than accurate than the previous model, and is nevertheless 1 of Samsung'southward great strengths. Note that the S9+ defaults to 2,220-by-1,080 to preserve battery life, simply even and so, the display looks cracking.

It however offers an "always on" mode that displays the time and date (and optionally your schedule or a contact bulletin), even when the device is locked.

There is a big alter to the unlocking and security organisation. First, the fingerprint reader location has changed. In the S9+, the 2 cameras are aligned vertically in the eye of the phone with the fingerprint reader below, a vast improvement over the S8 series and the Notation, which put the fingerprint reader right next to the camera where it's too piece of cake to bear on and smear the lens. It's still not as prominent compared to most other high-stop Android phones, but it works quite well. That's the good news.

The less good news is that unlocking the phone is however not as skillful every bit it is on the iPhone X. Apple's Face ID, with its True Depth camera system, simply works for me every time I use it, and the security appears to be very good. With the S9+, Samsung has an iris scanner, front end-facing camera, IR emitter, and proximity sensor, and has added a organization called Intelligent Scan which looks at your confront and and so your iris. This does a better job of face up recognition (for unlocking the device), simply the visitor admits this information technology isn't equally secure, so the telephone defaults instead to iris detection, fingerprint recognition, or a passcode for accessing the more sensitive parts of the device, similar the Secure Folder or Samsung Pay. In my use, I didn't discover the face up recognition to exist as fast or as accurate as the iPhone X—I often had to adjust where I was holding the phone and have off my glasses to brand it work—non convenient. I ofttimes found myself using the fingerprint reader instead, which worked well.

On the other mitt, performance was terrific. The US models feature the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845, and this is the phone aircraft with this processor. (International versions run on Samsung'south own Exynos 9810.) The Snapdragon 845 has four high-performance cores running at ii.8GHz and four high-efficiency cores running at 1.7GHz, along with improved graphics, an improved DSP, and some new AI features.

In most of the benchmarks I've seen, including those from PCMag, the 845 beats last yr's Snapdragon 835 on most tests—particularly in graphics-heavy tests—and depending on the exam, runs amend or worse than Apple tree's A11 Bionic in the iPhone X. In the real world, the S9+ feels a bit more snappy than last year'southward S8 or Annotation eight, but the divergence can be subtle when it comes to the most common tasks such as email or web browsing, where the network connection can be more than of a clogging.

The S9+ includes a Category xviii modem, with a theoretical limit of 1.2 Gbps. You'll never go that in the existent globe, though my colleague Sascha Segan recently saw amend than 500 Mbps on AT&T in Chicago, using Licensed Assisted Access (LAA). All I can say is that it seemed quite fast in the New York area, only not noticeably different than other contempo phones. Information technology all comes down to what bands your carrier supports, and in the areas where I've been, AT&T hasn't yet rolled out LAA service.

The S9+ comes with 6GB of RAM, while the smaller S9 has 4GB. The model I used had 64GB of flash storage (other models have up to 256GB), with support for microSD cards for additional storage.

The S9+ has a 3500 mAh battery with fast wired and wireless changing and support for the now-standard USB-C port for charging. In the real word, I easily fabricated it through a total day on a charge. The phone also offers IP 68 levels of water resistance, and dual speakers on the height and bottom of the phone. Music sounds louder and ameliorate compared to the S8+, though I typically heed to music over headphones. The practiced news here is that—different some new phones—this phone continues to feature a headphone jack.

Additional enhancements

The Galaxy S9+ runs Android viii.0 Oreo, with Samsung's interface enhancements on top. Some of these are quite interesting—such as swiping from the right edge to open applications, see notifications from your favorite contacts, or bring upwards other functions similar a clipboard, choice tools, or reminders. This also works equally an easy way of pulling upwards the multi-window support, as yous tin can set options for which two applications to see at the aforementioned time. I did observe this useful in a number of cases, especially to display mail service and the Internet at the same time.

Ane particularly interesting feature is that y'all tin set the phone to piece of work in landscape manner, with all the icons and displays defaulting to this view.

In some ways, the nigh obvious Samsung application on the phone is Bixby, Samsung'southward ain assistant. As mentioned, this is likewise used as the name for various AI features in the camera module, but the basic Bixby characteristic is an banana designed to compete with Siri or the Google Banana. Y'all tin can press a button or say "Hey Bixby" and ask it a question, or just take it bring up the calendar, important news, weather, Facebook notifications, and etc.

Bixby is still a piece of work in progress. It does more things than it used to, and is getting more useful, merely in practise, I was normally happier using the Google Banana (which is still available past pressing and holding the habitation button).

In full general, for the most function I preferred the Google apps to their Samsung equivalents. For example, Samsung'southward agenda doesn't have a schedule or calendar view, but Google Calendar does. Samsung seems to understand the futility of trying to catch up with Google in most of these areas, but still ships both versions of these apps. Some people accept complained that it leads to duplication, just they don't take upward much space, and I plant it like shooting fish in a barrel to select the tools that I wanted from the list of Google or Samsung applications.

In general, I've been quite happy with the performance of apps on the S9+, though several times I did notice that I got a notification that an application had crashed when I switched away from it (merely these come dorsum to the same place when you tap the icon, so it didn't really slow anything down).

I unique feature that was also in terminal yr's model is Samsung Pay, the company'southward organization for letting you use your telephone to pay for things. Samsung's unique advantage hither is support for magnetic secure manual, which means it works with just about whatsoever bill of fare reader, not just those that back up NFC.

Possibly the near unusual feature for some business users is DeX, Samsung's method for connecting the phone to a keyboard, mouse, and monitor to provide a desktop-like feel. This ways enterprises with lots of mobile users could support just i device, and could enable employees to plug their phones into a DeX unit of measurement instead of a laptop. I used the S9+ with final year's DeX unit, which props your phone upright while charging it, only the visitor has also appear DeX Pad, a flat dock for connecting the telephone to a monitor, and which also lets y'all use the telephone as a keyboard in a compression.

DeX itself has evolved a bit, just is still pretty much the same equally when I tested it with a Note eight, though the latest version of Knox, Samsung's security surround, lets managers add together a custom logo, and gives them a bit more control.

When yous plug your phone into the dock, you lot see your screen in a horizontal layout with your home screen icons on the left side of the brandish and a task bar on the bottom, which shows your current applications and provides access to common system tasks. It looks just like a standard desktop environs. You can run multiple applications at a time, in multiple windows on the screen, and with applications designed for DeX, you can resize the applications and drag and drop material between the windows.

As I said before, this isn't yet as powerful as Windows or Mac, and only a relative handful of applications are designed for DeX (meaning that you tin resize easily, drag and drop, etc.), though these applications practise include Samsung's Email client (which adds a three-pane design), the browser, and the bones Microsoft Part suite. The Android versions of Word and Excel certainly don't do everything that their Windows or Mac equivalents tin can do, merely they do work well, and I even wrote parts of this post while using Word on DeX. It's not for everyone, but I tin imagine DeX being useful for those who practice the bulk of their work on their phone.

Overall, the S9+ offers an improved camera, groovy functioning, and a few unique features, making information technology the nearly compelling Android phone I've ever used. I wouldn't call it a must-upgrade, as about of the improvements are incremental, but it is heartening to see how proficient many of its standout features take become.

Here'south PCMag's full review.