At MWC, Samsung announced it’s latest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S9. It’s an amazing smartphone but it lacks somewhere. Here’s all the details and why is it ALMOST the perfect smartphone.
Design
Samsung updated the design on the S9 and it’s still gorgeous. As expected, this phone is beautiful, especially with the new Lilac Purple colour option. Samsung does a really awesome job with the design and making it look amazing. But the back on the new S9 doesn’t really look as good as the S8.
The fingerprint reader is moved to below the camera instead of beside it like it was done on the S8 and Note8. I actually liked the placement on the S8 better. It looked better and was more convenient for me. Well, that depends on how you hold your phone. None the less, the placement on S9 is not bad either.
Camera
The camera is the main feature on this device. There is a lot of stuff added to the camera and as Samsung says, it’s “Camera Reimagined.”
The major feature here is the Dual Aperture. The camera can switch from f/1.5 to f/2.4 . If you don’t know what this means, basically, it can improve the low-light performance. Whenever the camera detects less light, it switches to the wider aperture to let more light in. And when it detects fair amount of light, it switches to a lower aperture which helps improve the sharpness of the image and prevent over-exposure. The secondary telephoto camera on the S9+ doesn’t have this functionality.
It can also shoot Slow-Mo and Super Slow-Mo videos. You can shoot at 120 fps in 1080p and a whopping 960 fps in 720p but there’s a catch. You can only record 0.2 seconds of footage and the playback time will be 6 seconds on the Super Slow-Mo.
Samsung is also implementing ARemojis to compete with Animojis. ARemojis are a bit different. You have to take a selfie and then the emoji will be based off of your face instead of any monkey, unicorn, etc. and your facial expressions will be mapped on the emoji. You can also map your facial expressions on some select Disney Characters like Mickey Mouse and The Incredibles too.
The Little Stuff
Samsung has had a pretty huge advantage over other companies in the feature space. The phones just come with a PRETTY HUGE amount of software features and that’s what makes Samsung’s UI kinda better than Stock Android. Here are a few of them:
- Always On Display
- Game Tools
- Photo Editor
- Bixby
- Edge Panels
- Edge Lighting
- Heart-Rate Monitor (it’s not completely software feature)
- Customization (This is a BIG category with tonnes of options)
- Iris Recognition
- Face Recognition
These are literally the FEW of the small features that make this phone feel premium. You might find some of the above features just useless or you might find all of them useful. If you haven’t used a Samsung Flagship before, you don’t know how these features stand out even if they look like gimmicks. Also, as it is a major flagship, all the latest cutting-edge tech will be supported at least for 2 years from now.
Final First Impressions
The phone is JUST AWESOME. The thing that makes it NEARLY perfect and not COMPLETELY perfect is the ‘Small Things’. It’s really difficult to find faults in a phone like this but there are some which stand out. For example, the speakers aren’t Great. They surely are good, given that the added the new stereo speakers but if you want the best speakers, this is not for you. Also, the battery on the smaller S9 is just 3000 mAh. It can get you through the day with a bit of power still left because of the new battery efficient processor but if you are the power-hungry user, there can be some problems.
But don’t get me wrong. The phone is still a great deal and none of the above create a huge problem for the most of us. And this phone can also be The Best Phone Yet.
Jam The Techie 