THE EMPIRE
Hey team,
So as you know we were invited along to the release of the new Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+. And since then I’ve been using the Galaxy S9 as a daily driver. In the essence of full disclosure, I’ve been a Samsung fan boy since my S5 however I shall attempt to be as objective as possible.
Now the two burning questions I shall attempt to answer, as requested by our social media. ” Is it much better than the S8? ” and ” should I rush out and buy one “
Well,
The main focus of the release revolved around the new Camera they are using, note the S9+ has an upgraded version of the camera on the Note 8 which I have not reviewed. and the S9 ( not plus) has a new camera from the S8.
Now I understand cameras in this day an age are important, from social media to capturing things very quickly and just having those memories on your phone to show friends who understand to look only at the picture you’re showing them and not to swipe through your gallery. What you find in there is on you, ya snoop
So basic stats on the phone, over-all have what I would consider to be a reasonable and expected, the upgrades are fair and logical for a new number to be used, But I would say for the S8 > S9, That’s about it. I think what it is these days is they expect every new iteration of phone to be really ground breaking and wow, there is some wow in this phone for sure don’t get me wrong. The upgrades and updates are fair and reasonable, I think the S9+ benefits more than the S9 from the new tech – certainly in terms of the camera. New features like super slow mo – 920FPS @ 720P is pretty impressive and enough of a resolution for social media easily. A dual aperture between F1.5 and F2.4 gives a new and very welcome low light performance. Samsung also added an AR Emoji which I think is something that I would never use personally but hey if you’re into that sorta thing, let us know what You think of it when you get yours.
What impressed me most about the camera is the quality of the images. As you know we’re always out running and gunning and taking pictures for Social Media and this website. Having a great camera phone is pretty important to me because it allows me to carry less and still operate at an acceptable standard. Here’s an example of how good this camera is. Now this is the same image simply pinch zoomed from a captured image to show the level of detail.
Now this for me means I can snap on the phone and have high quality images which i can crop into and still look amazing, a little basic editing on my phone via instagram and images are great, now you’re unlikely to crop that much, But it can be done. For you this means if your insta images aren’t quite level or you have shot too wide you can crop in and level it out with no noticeable quality loss.
So, great camera and some reasonable upgrades to processing and battery life.
I’ve had zero issues with apps on this phone, putting it through the standard torture test of opening as many apps I have and bouncing back and forth to stress the system didn’t even slow this phone down. Gaming was great with smooth buttery graphics and most importantly, The phone didn’t get warm. Now when I say the phone didn’t get warm, I mean at all – Even my S8+ you can tell its working hard on certain games for long stints in the thunderbox but this never got warmer than my hand so that’s a slight improvement to the last gen
Real world battery life, its 3000mah which is the same as the S8 – the first day I had this of course was setting everything up and trying everything out and it still lasted a full day with loads of picture taking, gaming and just faffing about with it. On a trip away where I was posting a lot and taking a lot of images, the phone lasted from 5 am to 2 am the following morning with 28% remaining under moderate use ( which is subjective of course ) I did apply some of the suggested power saving options to get the most out of it.
Again the S9 comes with IP68 certification – so don’t worry about dropping it in the pool or taking shower selfies – it might just take a while to dry out the USB C type port afterwards.
The 5.8 inch AMOLED screen looks amazing with very deep resolution and buttery smooth animations, the body of the phone feels a little easier to grasp as the sides are not as round at the S8+ so a little extra grip is most welcome.
We still have the 3.5mm headphone jack at the bottom and the sim/SD tray at the top – now expandable to a 400gb SD card ( claimed however I think its actually 256gb) and an option for a 256GB on-board storage ( $1599nzd) or the standard 64gb @ $1399
Bixby has been upgraded with some new features, the travelers among us will be impressed with the translate text feature ( which does require some sort of data connection) but it will translate a menu in real time in just a few moments with only the output language selected. This means it will read, identify and translate very quickly – neat trick.
So overall I feel again, like this is a fair and logical upgrade, the real big jump is the S8+ to the S9+ that I will be testing when I give back this S9
So what I would say is, if you’re on an S8 and you’re thinking about going to an S9 – maybe wait, It’s your money but at $1400 that’s a fair investment, I’l be going from an S8+ to an S9+ and am looking forward to the better camera most of all. But of course I am the type of person that demands the best from my devices so I want the flagships all the time and have chosen to stay with Samsung through the many devices we’ve tested.
If you’re on an S7 and your plan is about to roll over you’l be highly impressed with the new features and quality I can assure you. If it was my money I wouldn’t upgrade from an S8 to an S9 but I would go from a S7 to a S9 in a heartbeat.
Of course as always, questions are welcome in the relative comment sections where you are reading this. I was planning on doing a video review but I’ll wait for the S9+ for that.
Nick
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