Introduction
Is that a Samsung Galaxy S8+ you just bought? Or is it the S9+? Let's be honest: place it on its back and nobody will be able to tell. It's definitely one of the two, you can't confuse it for anything other than a recent Samsung flagship, but the Galaxy S9+ would not readily strike bystanders as the newer model of the two.
It's only the view of the back that reveals the innovations implemented in this phone. That's where the S9+ fixes one of the biggest issues of its predecessor, namely the location of the fingerprint scanner. Oh, and look, it has dual cameras too!
The S8+ is definitely a tough act to follow, so how well has Samsung managed to top its best seller from last year? Are the upgrades worth the steep price? Is it even possible to think of the S9+ as a successor to the S8+ when they look so much alike from the front? We're willing to bet that the answer to this question is a resounding "Yes!", but let's test that theory.
To find out how easy or frustrating it is to live with the Galaxy S9+, we used it as our one and only smartphone for an extended period of time and we are ready with the verdict. Once we go past the superficial aspects (such as looks), there are a lot of new things crammed into this glass and metal package, which are worth talking about. So join us over the next pages as we take a look at what makes Samsung's latest flagship tick, where it delivers more than we expected, and where it falls short.
Design, build quality
It's been a year since Samsung debuted its Infinity Display look with the S8 duo, but we still can't say that it feels dated in any way. Nowadays a lot of the company's competitors are embracing the notch for their top of the line offerings, and that only makes the Galaxy S9+ stand out more in a sea of iPhone X lookalikes.
The top and bottom bezels appear to be refreshingly symmetrical. The fact that the top bezel is more than 1mm taller than the bottom one is very hard to spot with the naked eye, which makes them feel symmetrical even if they aren't. And then there's the other symmetrical-looking aspect of the phone - the way the front and rear sheets of glass meet the metal frame on the sides by curving at seemingly identical angles.
On the other hand, the top and bottom sides of the S9+ still fail to appease OCD sufferers, the former with its misaligned SIM and microSD tray and microphone hole. On the bottom, the headset jack, charging port, mic and speaker aren't aligned on the same vertical plane either. On the bright side, the 3.5 mm jack is still there, as Samsung is bucking yet another trend that's taken ahold of the mobile world in recent times.
Despite the fact that its design isn't really fresh, no matter how hard we try we can't call the S9+ anything other than beautiful. It oozes quality, with the glass and metal sandwich construction still embodying the epitome of premium-feeling smartphone design, even if it comes with obvious downsides: scratch marks from day-to-day use all over, easily shattered glass when you drop the phone, and an overall slippery feel.
But man, build quality is amazing! The handset feels very solid and isn't disturbingly top-heavy. It's as if it wasn't made up from many different components, but one dense piece of premium-feeling material.
That said, quite a few small scratches have appeared in a lot of places on both the front and back glass of our unit, even if we've taken extra care not to put it in a pocket with keys or anything sharp. We had exactly the same experience with the S8+ last year.
The Galaxy S9+ has a camera hump that's so understated that it might actually be a blessing in disguise, as it makes the fingerprint scanner very easy to find just by touch. Speaking of which, the biometric sensor is part of the same raised island as the dual rear cameras, sitting beneath them. The scanner itself is actually slightly recessed inside that island, which once again aids in locating it without thinking too much.
The position of the sensor is undoubtedly great this time around. Samsung has listened to its customers' angry feedback regarding the odd placement in the S8 duo and the Note8, and fixed that problem this year. The situation isn't entirely rosy in the S9+, however, since we feel like the fingerprint scanner is a bit on the small side. It's definitely usable, and it works very well, but making it a tad taller would have improved that usability even more. Anyway, a big pain point of the S8+ has been alleviated, and that's good news.
The LED flash and heart rate monitor share a much smaller, non-protruding island to the right of the dual cameras, and that once again messes with the concept of symmetry. The position of the Samsung logo doesn't help either, since it crowds the top part of the S9+'s back for no good reason - it could have easily been placed lower.
Camera
The Galaxy S9+ features the mobile world's first dual-aperture main camera, along with a secondary 2x telephoto zoom lens. The setup creates some of the best pictures of any smartphone camera at the moment.
The one thing you need to keep in mind is that Samsung's algorithms love to make things look more vivid and more saturated than they are in real life. This is, however, what most people seem to prefer in their shots, so it's just a case of the company giving its customers what they want.
If you don't mind the above, you'll find that the pictures shot with the S9+ have plenty of detail, a wide dynamic range, and are almost entirely devoid of noise. Sharpening has been thankfully put on a leash and isn't as dramatic as it was in prior Samsung phones. The samples below have all been captured on the default Auto mode, which comes with Auto HDR on.
Samsung Galaxy S9+ daytime photos taken with the main sensor
In Pro mode, you can manually switch between f/2.4 and f/1.5 aperture, but in our long-term reviews we want to use phones the way a majority of their owners will - with the default settings. So the aperture used in each photo was decided by Samsung's automatic algorithms, not us. If you want comparison shots of the two aperture modes, we've got some of those lined up for you in our normal review.
The 2x zoom shots captured by the dedicated lens turn out pretty good too. If you like to pixel peep, you'll notice the limitations of the smaller sensor, but for most people there shouldn't be a big degradation in quality when switching from the normal camera to this one. That's good news for when you absolutely need to get a closer shot of a subject but can't achieve that by simply positioning yourself in its proximity. You may also find that the telephoto lens gives you a more natural perspective for some scenes, including portraits.
Samsung Galaxy S9+ daytime photos taken with the 2x zoom lens
An unpleasant side effect is that portrait mode shots (the Live Focus photos in Samsung's speak) end up rather noisy in low-light as they are always taken with the tele camera and you have no option of selecting the wide one for those.
At night, with f/1.5 aperture being used, you get much less noise than competing devices produce, with the aid of Samsung's noise reduction algorithms and the fact that the camera is optically stabilized. We haven't added 2x zoom samples for our nighttime shots because the secondary snapper is not used when ambient light goes down. Instead, what you get when you hit the '2x' button in the viewfinder is a digitally zoomed image captured by the main sensor.
The S9+ produces incredibly sharp nighttime images, but their dynamic range could have been better. That's not to say it's bad, but there's slight room for improvement there. This is definitely one of the best cameras for low-light shooting on the market right now.
Samsung Galaxy S9+ nighttime photos
Selfies come out good too, even if the same sensor is used as seen in last year's Samsung flagships. The 8 MP snapper has autofocus, which is still not very prevalent in front-facing setups. Its f/1.7 aperture helps with low-light capture, and overall the shots are pleasing and usable in all but the most extreme of lighting conditions.
Samsung even offers a Selfie Focus mode that will blur the background for 'portrait mode' like images, despite the use of a single lens. The results of that processing are decent, but edge detection is easily fooled by stray hairs.
Samsung Galaxy S9+ selfies, daytime, without and with Selfie Focus (portrait mode)
When ambient light levels go down, you'll find that the Selfie Focus mode has issues recognizing your face and applying the fake blur effect. So for our nighttime selfie samples we decided not to use it. We find the much too white skin tone shown by these pictures a bit worrying, as the public lighting around was by no means bluish white.
Samsung Galaxy S9+ selfies, nighttime
The camera app now requires you to swipe on the viewfinder to access the various modes, and there's still no dedicated video viewfinder, you have to press and hold the record button to see the correct video framing before you start recording. We found the app fast, reliable, and easy to use. You can double-press the power button to start it up no matter what you're doing (or if the screen is off).
This being a Samsung, it goes without saying that you have a million different options at your disposal, but as usual you can ignore them and just go with the defaults. As showcased by our samples above, that will result in great pictures anyway, so there's no point in bothering with complicated settings unless you're a camera enthusiast.
Display
AMOLED panels have matched and even outdone LCDs in the mobile world in the past few years, with most of their downsides having been alleviated or fixed. So it's getting quite hard to root for LCDs in this 'battle'.
The Samsung Galaxy S9+ probably has the best AMOLED screen ever put in a phone: it's incredibly vibrant, has inky blacks as you'd expect, and great contrast. The company keeps one-upping itself in this area, with every new flagship boasting slight improvements in the screen, even though the previous one was already its best yet.
It's not just the hardware. Samsung's famous propensity for giving you tons of options shines in this area. If you don't like the colors, you can change them. The Adaptive Display setting is default and best for most users, yet if you want a more accurate color rendering conforming to the DCI-P3, Adobe RGB, or sRGB color spaces, it's only a tweak away. But wait, there's even an Advanced mode which lets you individually set red, green, and blue levels. Additionally, you get HDR10 video compliance with the S9+'s screen, to make videos adhering to the standard even more immersive.
Display and Screen mode settings
Samsung's auto-brightness system deserves an award for being the best one implemented on any Android build (at least so far). It works well on its own, reaching a higher peak brightness level than its achievable in manual mode, so sunlight legibility is never an issue.
Yet if you find that the built-in system makes the display too bright or too dim at any point, simply adjust the brightness slider manually. The software will remember your adjustment and from that point on, whenever the phone encounters the same level of ambient light, it will apply your customized setting. No matter how unusual your specific requirements for screen brightness might be, within a week or two of tweaking the system you will have tuned it in a way that will satisfy you.
Auto brightness setting explains itself
Because Samsung loves throwing more options at you than you can possibly handle, there's a setting that will change the screen's resolution. In fact, out of the box, the S9+ is set to run at FHD+ (2220x1080), even though the panel is capable of WQHD+ (2960x1440). We're assuming this may save some battery, but we fundamentally disagree with the concept at play here: why pay a lot of money for a phone with the best display out there and then not enjoy every pixel it has to offer? Not to mention that savings are small at best and negligible in most cases.
Screen resolution settings
The curves
Let's talk about those curves. They still don't offer much from a usability standpoint, but they do make the phone look impressive when you're playing with it. Yes, you can use Edge panels if you want to, bringing your favorite apps and functions just one swipe away from the edge of the screen. But that doesn't really change the fact that the curved edges of the display are there primarily for cosmetic reasons.
That's not a bad thing, however. Looks aren't everything, sure, but they count for something. They are important, and the way the content on the screen seemingly drops off into the sides is still an awe-inspiring thing to behold.
The main downside (if you don't count glare) of the dual-curved panels Samsung loves so much has always been palm detection, or lack thereof. There's a good chance that the palm you're holding the phone with will trigger an unwanted touch event and, for example, launch an app you didn't want to because its icon was sitting in a bottom corner of the display.
We're happy to report that this is almost a non-existent issue in the Galaxy S9+. It's not that we haven't had any such occurrences at all, but the amount of pain this has caused us is negligible. A couple of times a day at most is when you'll be surprised by actions you didn't intend happening, and that's it.
We're not sure if Samsung's improved the palm detection with its Oreo build, or the hardware in this panel itself is responsible. No matter the reason, we'd call the S9+ about on par with the Note8 from this point of view, which itself was better than the S8 and S8+. Naturally, one way to ensure that you never encounter such problems is to use a case of any kind.
More fluid than expected
At this point, TouchWiz is just a distant memory. Like a bad dream you had once, a long time ago. With the latest version of Samsung Experience, the design is much tighter and less cartoony, and the whole thing is more fluid than any Samsung UI overlay has ever been.
Whether that's thanks to software optimizations or the hardware, we can't tell. But what we will say is that Samsung Experience 9.0, as seen on the Galaxy S9+, is the best ever iteration of the company's software. That, however, doesn't mean it comes without quirks - some more annoying than others.
For the first time in history, Samsung's launcher is silky smooth. Seriously, there's absolutely no jankiness or choppiness when you move between home screens, or swipe up to bring the app drawer into view, or swipe down to see your notifications (these are optional settings, by the way).
Home screen settings
Bixby
It couldn't have been all great, though, so the one area of the launcher that lags like crazy is the Bixby Home panel. Specifically, it's the worst when you access it, by swiping right on the leftmost home screen page. Do that motion and then find yourself waiting anywhere between 1-4 seconds for it to load. This is frustrating in itself, but much more so given how fluid things are elsewhere in the launcher.
When it does eventually appear, you're treated to a bunch of cards that don't really show you information that's very personalized to your tastes, or many useful things either. Google Feed on Pixels (and some other handsets such as Sony's) is far from perfect, but it presents much more tailored info for you. Compared to that, Bixby Home is just a sad attempt at coming up with something similar, but not nearly as good. Thankfully, it's possible to disable Bixby Home entirely, and thus fully enjoy the lag-free life.
Bixby Home
Bixby is definitely something Samsung isn't ready to give up on. Hence, you need to be mentally prepared to either live with it or ignore it if you buy a Galaxy S9+. Bixby Voice, the virtual assistant, is the most obvious case of duplication for duplication's sake in the Korean company's software, but obviously not the only one. Google Assistant exists, is present on the S9+, and is incomparably better at most things. On the other hand, Bixby Voice does have deeper ties into the user interface, and will let you do a lot of specific things inside the Settings and built-in apps, if you're into that kind of thing.
Bixby Voice
Bixby Vision is just awkward. It's a very 'big' idea - point the camera at something, and it will tell you what that is, perhaps with an added shopping link so you can buy it. So big, in fact, that companies much more focused on AI that Samsung (Google comes to mind) haven't cracked this one entirely at the moment.
This might be a case of 'the technology just isn't there yet', but, as always, Samsung wanted to be among the first to try. Let's say that Bixby Vision is okay on the very rare occasions when it works, but don't expect it to work all the time. It likes to identify generic object categories (like a TV stand in the screenshot below) and then suggest you buy random things that fit that description. It's a nice gimmick you can show off to friends once or twice, but it's definitely not reliable enough to depend on every day.
Bixby Vision
The Bixby button is just... there. We've read a lot of reports about people constantly pressing it by mistake, but that's only happened in our use a couple of times during the first two days of having the S9+. The mistaken presses occured when we were hunting for the volume down rocker with our finger and confused it with the Bixby key. We feel that this issue has been blown out of proportion, especially for the plus-size model - in the S9 the button is further down and thus easier to mispress. On the S9+, you can in fact easily ignore the Bixby button after a few days, if that's what you want.
Sure, there's a philosophical discussion to be had about whether Samsung should have included it in the first place, since it brings up a service that's in no way amazingly exciting in what it can accomplish. But think about it this way - if the point of the Bixby button was to make people aware that Bixby exists, Samsung has obviously achieved its purpose, and all of the controversy around the key has only aided in that.
Duplicate apps and bloatware
Samsung Experience 9.0 still duplicates certain Google services, but the situation has improved a lot in this regard recently. The biggest offender from this point of view, aside from Bixby of course, is the Galaxy Apps store, which seems to exist only as an insurance policy against a possible time in the future when Google and Samsung wouldn’t get along anymore.
Samsung’s Gallery does the same thing as Google’s Photos but without the amazing unlimited cloud backup, while the Korean company’s Phone, Messages, Camera, Clock, Contacts, and Calendar do the basics you’d expect from a new smartphone - and Google’s versions aren’t baked in anyway (though you can use some of those if you download them from the Play Store). You also get reasonably useful preinstalls such as the My Files app and Secure Folder.
Upon the initial setup, Samsung lets you choose whether or not to add its Calculator, Email, Gear, Health, Internet Browser, Members, Voice Recorder, SmartThings, and Notes apps on top of all that. Speaking of the time you first turn on the phone, you're presented with an option to restore your apps and data from a previous Google backup. Yet once the setup is over and the UI has booted, you get a notification from Samsung's Smart Switch inviting you to transfer data over from your old phone or a backup in the Korean company's cloud.
The technicality here is that Google's option, as implemented on the S9+, isn't capable of grabbing data straight from your old device on the spot, whereas Smart Switch can. But isn't the sight of two different data restoration options going to be confusing to normal users?
It's worth noting that Samsung definitely isn't alone in doing this, we've also seen similarly confusing stuff from other companies during the initial setup of their phones. At this point it's just an Android-specific quirk, which you can only get around if you buy a Pixel. That's because in Google's devices there's just one option, that can grab data both from the company's cloud and an old phone.
The latter part of the system is apparently Pixel-exclusive, so we could blame Google for the state of affairs on other devices. Then again, we're doubtful that Samsung would be willing to give up on Smart Switch even if Google did let it use its service to the fullest extent. The continued existence of the Galaxy Apps store is proof enough.
As for third-party bloatware, that’s limited to Facebook and Microsoft’s app suite: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneDrive, and LinkedIn. In some markets you may also get Amazon Assistant and Prime Photos.
Multitasking weirdness
The multitasking rolodex looks reasonably similar to the one employed by Google, and getting to it is no longer a laggy affair thankfully. However, Samsung is employing some pretty weird and unnatural-feeling scrolling speed settings in it, and you may find that going back to a specific app is harder than it ought to be.
Multitasking menu
That's because you need to be careful to only swipe a little in one direction, as going past that small amount will make the rolodex spin very fast. The physics of the movement, along with its inertia, just feel wrong, so hopefully this is something that is going to be fixed in Samsung Experience 9.1 or similar.
Updates
When it comes to updates, you'll have to be patient. So far Samsung's kept the S9+ current in terms of security patches, except for unlocked devices in the US which for some reason have been left behind on the update schedule. While today it's the company's latest flagship, we're assuming it will get less love a year from now. And judging by past events, big updates such as Android P will take many, many months to finally land on the S9+.
Current software version
It's how it's always been, and this wasted time probably has a lot to do with the sheer amount of things Samsung bundles on top of 'vanilla' Android. That's what makes its flagships come with a myriad of options and settings, so late updates are part of the price you pay for this interpretation of the OS.
For many people out there, that's just fine. There are those who buy a top of the line Samsung because of the marketing and perception that the smartphone space is a duopoly (with Apple being the other player, of course). But there are also people who buy the latest Samsung Galaxy S for all of its options and the choices those enable, not in spite of them.
Performance
The Galaxy S9+ is incredibly fast, as it should be given the hardware inside. It remains fast no matter what you do. And, amazingly for a Samsung device, we've encountered almost no stutters or lags throughout our use - with the sole exception of the Bixby Home panel in the launcher, which we've discussed in the Software section.
In our time with the phone, performance didn't show any signs of degrading. We didn't feel it slowing down, and we didn't need to reboot it in order to make things go faster. We didn't employ the 'fixes' suggested by the Device Maintenance section in Settings, nor did we switch Performance mode from its default of Optimized.
Device Maintenance
Device Maintenance has some neat options, like freezing apps that crash a lot (they will be unfrozen once you use them again), or freeing up internal storage, but it also performs useless tasks like closing background apps in order to free up RAM. RAM is meant to be used, and if you keep 5 of your 6GB free at all times, you're basically working with 1GB of memory. Why would anyone want to do that?
Also note that we kept the McAfee antivirus (known as Device Security in the menu) off at all times, since such apps are mostly useless on Android anyway. In fact, they may make your experience of using the phone actively worse, with all the scanning going on. As long as you avoid installing obscure apps, and you download stuff only from the Play Store, there's a big chance that you will never, ever need antivirus software on your phone.
Smoothness
After so much talk about smoothness in all previous long-term reviews, we finally decided to make it an independent section. Yes, we shall once again compare the phone we're currently reviewing to a Pixel in terms of 'smoothness' - that very hard to define concept that has to do not only with actual UI speed, but also how reliably it is delivered, and with how many hiccups.
As we've said before, 'smoothness' is tough to define but easy to grasp as a concept once you've compared a Pixel to any other Android smartphone, preferably by performing the same tasks on both at the same time, with one device in each hand.
The Galaxy S9+ is by far the smoothest smartphone Samsung has ever made. It is in fact much smoother than even the Galaxy Note8, released less than a year ago. Whether this has to do with the hardware employed or under-the-hood tweaks we'll never know. Maybe the Korean company has finally decided to take this more seriously, after years and years of feedback from people who weren't happy with seeing lag and stuttering everywhere in their very expensive new flagship.
Regardless of why it happened, it did. The S9+ is still nowhere near a Pixel in terms of smoothness, but it is getting close. Not as close as the Sony Xperia XZ2, which was the subject of our previous long-term review, but closer than any Samsung ever, and closer than LG's V30S ThinQ (another long-term review subject), for what it's worth.
Battery life
We've been using the Exynos-powered model for this long-term review, which is an important thing to note as there's also a Snapdragon-endowed S9+ on sale in some territories.
Battery life has been good overall, but rather inconsistent. Our typical use involves 14-17 hours off the charger on any given day, with most of those spent on Wi-Fi, a couple hours using mobile data, and a couple hours of streaming music via Bluetooth. The best Screen-on time we managed to squeeze out of the S9+ was 6 hours and 50 minutes going from 100% to 4% battery capacity, and without using any of the Battery saver modes.
Our screen on time record
That seems impressive, but we've only achieved something like this once. The average screen on time was between 4 and 5 hours. That's certainly decent, but nothing to write home about, especially when you consider that those numbers will surely go down if you're mostly connected to mobile data or use the screen outdoors in bright lighting conditions. If on top of that you add possible reception issues in your area, things will be looking even worse.
So depending on your specific use case, you may find that you need to charge the S9+ even before your day is over. Thankfully though, it supports wireless charging - if you have some of those pads lying around you can just place it on one when you're not using it.
Also, if your unit isn't lasting as long as you'd like it to, there are two power saving modes you can try, that should extend the phone's endurance.
Additionally, the App power monitor will tell you when any installed app is excessively using the battery in the background, and offer to put it to sleep. That means it may not receive updates or show you notifications, but it will wake up as soon as you start it up again. There's also an automated setting that puts any app to sleep if it hasn't been used for a specific time threshold, which by default is 3 days.
Power saving modes • App power monitor • Put unused apps to sleep • App draining battery
Conclusion
This is the second long-term review in a row where we feel there's no need for a dedicated 'Frustrations, niggles, annoyances' page. That's as surprising to us as it may be to you. It's not that the Galaxy S9+ is a perfect device, of course. Yet the things that have frustrated us when using it as our one and only smartphone have all been covered in the respective sections of the review. That was made possible by the fact that there weren't very many annoyances to begin with.
The experience of using the Galaxy S9+ is surprisingly positive, even compared to the Note8. The software's fluidity and smoothness have reached levels we weren't sure Samsung would ever be capable of producing. We weren't expecting this to be a bad phone, but we were prepared to face much more lag, many more stutters, and much less smoothness than what we actually encountered.
It's not all sunshine and rainbows, though. There are still some duplicate services pre-installed, along with a few third-party bloatware apps added in for good measure. There's absolutely no point in the S9+ shipping with two app stores, for example, other than to alleviate Samsung's fears of one day becoming irrelevant if Google fully owns that part of your Android smartphone experience.
The S9+ takes some of the best pictures of any device on the market at the moment, it's got a beautiful design that's symmetrical in some ways and asymmetrical in others, and what is probably the best screen in any handset ever, with curves that are still an awe-inspiring sight to behold. It's a complex package that has way more positive parts than negative ones, and is the non-Note epitome of Samsung's love of cramming as many features in its devices as possible.
In the end it's all about choice, as with any recent Samsung. The more you love having as much choice as possible, the more you'll enjoy using a Galaxy S9+. If, on the other hand, you believe that less is more and some options aren't worth making the user actively think about whether to turn them on or not, then you'll be better served by a different company's products. This is the gist of the conclusion of our Galaxy Note8 long-term review, in fact, and it applies to the S9+ as well.
But there's an important thing to also consider. The Galaxy S9+ is the first Samsung flagship that comes even remotely close to being as smooth in operation as it should be, given the price that's asked for it. It's the first top of the line Samsung to not annoy you with lag here and there from day one, and micro-stutters everywhere in the UI.
It is, in other words, the first Samsung premium device to actually feel like a premium device when it comes to software too - not just when you read the spec sheet, use the camera or look at it. It's a very good phone that's much less frustrating to use than any of its predecessors.
0 Response to "Samsung Galaxy S9+ long-term review"
Post a Comment