Samsung’s Galaxy S9 Brings Many Refinements To Its Flagship Offering

If you’ve been glued to the rumor mill surrounding Samsung’s Galaxy S9, you’re not going to be in for too many surprises now that the official launch has taken place. That’s not a bad thing, though, because the S9 improves upon everything that made the S8 such a well-received phone (it helped people forget about the Note 8, and that says a lot).

Both the S9 and S9 Plus look extremely similar to the respective S8 models, with a major change being that the finger print reader is placed in what seems to be a better, and easier-to-reach location. Another notable difference is that the larger S9 Plus sports a dual camera solution.

Samsung’s midnight black Galaxy S9

Both phones have an 18.5:9 display ratio, resulting in a resolution of 2960×1440. That makes the smaller S9 slightly crisper than the Plus, at 570 ppi, vs. 529 ppi. Other differences include memory (6GB on Plus, vs. 4GB), and battery-sizes (3500mAh, vs. 3000mAh). Both will ship with 64GB of storage and can be expanded by up to 400GB through the use of a microSD card.

Other perks include Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 845 SoC, as well as 4×4 MIMO, dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5 LE, among other usual suspects. One feature that most phones don’t include is the iris sensor, and based on my experience with it on the S8, I can say that it works very well, and compared to face recognition (which the S9 also supports), it’s probably a bit safer, as well.

Samsung’s coral blue Galaxy S9 Plus

Let’s not ignore the fact that these phones do in fact confirm the rumor that the headphone jack will remain. For those who appreciate having a good set of wired cans on-the-go, this is a great thing. Bluetooth options are getting better, but I still prefer to stick with my usual cans, and seemingly many other people see things the same way.

One really cool feature worth pointing out (there are many, but only so much time to write) is a dual-aperture, allowing you to instantly switch between f/1.5 and f/2.4. Unfortunately, you can’t use any aperture in between those, but perhaps that’s something we’ll see happen on the S10 or S11? For emoji lovers, there’s also a new augmented reality feature that lets users create avatars that sound and act just like them. Sounds almost scary, but potentially fun.

Samsung’s pricing the S9 at $719.99 USD, and S9 Plus at $839.99. Both are available with financing, and are sold completely unlocked. But if you need a new carrier, T-Mobile is trying hard to secure S9 buyers, by promising outrageous LTE speeds of up to over 1Gbps. For the record, that’s even faster than Google Fiber (by 10% or more), and while few could seriously say they need such speeds, it’s hard to not want it!