The Galaxy S9 and the Galaxy S9+ are Samsung's flagships for 2018 and they will pave the way for the competition. However, the older Galaxy S8, S8+ and the Note 8 stand the test of time and are still worth your hard-earned money. We list out all that's new and all that's changed in the new flagships.
Samsung stole the show at Mobile World Congress 2018 in Barcelona by launching the Galaxy S9 and the Galaxy S9+, two flagships that will be the flagbearer for other OEMs this year. While not much has changed from the outside, the Galaxy S9 and the S9+ are whole new beasts from the inside. The focus this time is on the camera and we have noted that the Galaxy S9 and the Galaxy S9+ are going to delight an enthusiast photographer. Nevertheless, last year’s Galaxy S8 and the S8+, and more importantly the Galaxy Note 8 still stand the test of time and remain worthy of your hard-earned money despite being overshadowed somewhat by the newer entrants.
In this comparison piece, we list out what has changed and what’s new in the Galaxy S9 and the S9+ based on the spec sheet. A detailed comparison piece will be done after we intensively test out the new phones.
Design
The Samsung Galaxy S9 and the S9+ retains the design philosophy of their respective predecessors that received unanimous praise. The S9 even improves upon it by slimming down the top and bottom chins and making the phones even slimmer. Both the Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy Note 8 were criticised heavily for the positioning of the fingerprint sensor which was difficult to reach when operating the phone. This time around, the fingerprint sensor is more centrally aligned, right under the camera, which makes the Galaxy S9 and the S9+ much more ergonomic. The Galaxy Note 8 is still the largest in size to make space for the S-Pen.
Like last year, the Galaxy S9 and the S9+ features an all glass body (Corning Gorilla Glass 5) encased in an aluminium body, that facilitates wireless charging. All the phones are IP68-rated water and dust resistant.
Display
Here again, not much has changed. The smaller Galaxy S9 maintains the screen size of its predecessor Galaxy S8 at 5.8-inches while the larger Galaxy S9+ matches the older Galaxy S8+ at 6.2-inches. The Galaxy Note 8 still has the largest screen real estate among the three at 6.3-inch. As a result, the pixel density of the Galaxy S9 and the Galaxy S9+ has remained unchanged and is still less than the Galaxy Note 8. However, based on our initial impressions, the display on the Galaxy S9 appears to be brighter and the colours look richer.
The Galaxy S9 and the S9+, like last year’s Galaxy flagships sport a curved Super AMOLED display of 2K resolution with the Always On feature. The panel is HDR10 Compliant and with a 3D touch-enabled Home Button. The display also stretches to the edges with an 18.5:9 aspect ratio.
Hardware and UI
Even though the Galaxy S9 and the S9+ look almost the same as their respective predecessors, the innards are completely new. Both the Galaxy S9 and the Galaxy S9+ are powered by the Exynos 9810 in some regions while the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC in USA and China. Both chipsets have eight cores which has been manufactured on a 10nm LPP process and bring a 40 percent improvement in performance over its predecessor, the Exynos 8895 and the Qualcomm 835 chipset, which powered last year’s Galaxy S8 and the Note 8 last year. Apart from that, the Galaxy S9 sports 4GB of RAM, same as last year’s Galaxy S8 while the larger Galaxy S9+ sports 6GB of RAM, like the Galaxy Note 8. The Galaxy S9 and the S9+ are offered in three memory variants going as high as 256GB, while last year’s Galaxy S8 and the S8+ only went up to 128GB. The Galaxy Note 8, however, was offered in a 256GB variant.
The Galaxy S9 and the Galaxy S9+ feature front-firing stereo speakers tuned by AKG acoustics which according to Samsung, is 1.4 times louder than the Galaxy S8. The new Galaxy S9 also comes with Intelligent Face Unlock that combines Iris scanning and 2D face scanning, using either of them depending on the ambient light.
The Galaxy S9 also benefits from the Animated Emoji which essentially is a cross between Apple’s Animojis and Snapchat’s Bitmojis. Additionally, there’s real-time translation. You can just point your camera and translate a foreign language into your preferred language. These features are not present yet on the Galaxy S8 and the Note 8.
The Galaxy S9 and the S9+ also comes with Android 8.0 Oreo out-of-the-box which brings the usual Android Oreo-based features like picture-in-picture, notification management, etc.
You can read our initial impressions about the Galaxy S9 and the S9+ here.
Camera
If last year was all about the display, Samsung’s focus this year is on photography. And the Galaxy S9 and the S9+ pushes the envelop a lot further and opens up new possibilities. The Galaxy S9 and the S9+ became the first phone to be launched globally with a dual aperture camera. That means the camera on the phones can switch between two apertures — F/1.5 and F/2.4. The F/1.5 allows the Galaxy S9 to take better low light shots while the F/2.4 is used for the regular shots. The switch is done automatically depending on the available light. F/1.5 is also the largest aperture seen on a smartphone so far.
The Galaxy S9+ becomes the first Galaxy S phone to sport a dual camera stack at the back with a 26mm wide-angle lens and a 52mm telephoto lens, both of 12-megapixel dual-pixel sensor with OIS and PDAF. The Galaxy S9+ can do 2X optical zoom and the popular ‘Portrait Mode.’ In fact, this is the same camera that was there on the Galaxy Note 8, only with the added Dual Aperture feature.
The Galaxy S9 and the Galaxy S9+ can also record super slo-mo videos at 960 fps at 720p which allows the videos to look even more impressive than the 240 fps limit on the Galaxy S8, S8+ and the Note 8.
Read more about the Galaxy S9 and the S9+'s camera here.
Battery
The Galaxy S9 and the Galaxy S9+ are powered by 3,000mAh and 3,500mAh battery respectively, which is the same as the Galaxy S8 and the S8+. The Galaxy Note 8, on the other hand, features a slightly smaller 3,300mAh battery. Despite sporting the same battery, the Galaxy S9 is likely to last longer thanks to the more efficient Exynos 9810 chipset and its equivalent Snapdragon 845.
The phones also support wireless charging as well as fast charging.
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Subhrojit Mallick
Eats smartphones for breakfast. View Full Profile
