Samsung S9 Brief Review, Ratings, Pros Cons, Specs, Cases & Covers

Samsung S9 Brief Review and Pros Cons:

Every one of us was looking up to Samsung Galaxy S9’s launch - and Its finally here. The Galaxy S9 as many had guessed earlier is Samsung’s refined Galaxy S8, and if you are not that keen observer, you might pick it up as a Galaxy S8. The design is something which has been kept completely unchanged from last year’s S8. The smartphone uses the same glass sandwich build and comes in 4 metallic shades - Midnight black, Coral blue, Titanium grey and a new one, Lilac purple. With the glass back, comes the burden of being a fingerprint magnet and Galaxy S9 just takes it from Its predecessor. Weighing at 163grams, It is fairly light and is comfortably thick at 8.5mm.

The one thing with which Samsung put everyone in sheer awe last year was S8’s Infinity Display and this time through the surprise is absent but the display is as delightful to see and use as it was back then, even more so. Samsung Galaxy S9 packs a 5.8 inch, Super AMOLED, 1440 x 2960 pixel resolution display at the same 18.5:9 aspect ratio with a pixel density of ~570PPI. The display is absolutely gorgeous and more bright than last year, though not by much. Protected by Gorilla Glass 5 up front.

The Galaxy S9 comes with the latest Snapdragon 845 in US/China and Exynos 9810 for the rest of the world. Both chipsets are very powerful and can handle any task with ease. The Snapdragon variant scores around 260000 in Antutu benchmarks while the Exynos variant scores around 245000. In Geekbench, you get a score of around 8000 in multi-core tests which is 20% lower than the score of iPhone X and around 20% higher than the score of Note 8, Pixel 2 etc. These scores make Galaxy S9 the most powerful android phone.

There is 4GB of RAM and 64/256 GB onboard storage can be expanded using the hybrid sim slot which supports MicroSD to up to 400GB. To face all your graphics requirements, there is an Adreno 630 GPU onboard, which is best of the lot.

Samsung is putting a lot of force on the new cameras in the Galaxy S9 and It is impressive. The Galaxy S9 becomes the first smartphone to have a variable aperture lens camera. The S9 camera now has a 12MP primary sensor with two apertures - an f/1.5 one for low-light photos and the other one, f/2.4 for other situations. The camera can switch between these apertures depending on when it requires more light to get a better shot or when it requires more sharpness in the photo. Of course, Samsung offers a Pro mode in the camera where you can manually switch between the apertures. The smartphone retains the same 8MP, an f/1.7 sensor on the front as in case of last year’s Galaxy S8. Galaxy S9 also catches up to iPhone X with super slow-mo video capabilities which enable the smartphone to record at 960fps. Overall, the camera performance of Galaxy S9 is excellent.

As expected, Samsung Galaxy S9 runs on Android Oreo. The latest and greatest Android out there for now. Samsung is one of the lousiest OEM when it comes to shipping Android updates and we are not sure when last year’s S8 would receive the Oreo update or when S9 would receive the Android P update in future. Samsung has kept the same UI customizations over Android Oreo as it did with Galaxy S8. It is not stock, It is performant but It has got lots of apps you don’t want.

The Galaxy S9 is IP68 waterproof same as Galaxy S8 - so you can be pretty confident to take it out in rain or close to a pool. Finally, Samsung has put stereo speakers in a Galaxy smartphone, up front. It keeps the headphone jack, which is certainly rare in 2018.

The battery is a 3000mAh one which will pull off the day if you are an average user, otherwise, do keep a charger around. Talking about charging, Fast charging is available along with wireless charging on the Galaxy S9. 

Overall, Samsung Galaxy S9 is a powerful phone with an excellent camera. We were hoping for a new design but that didn't happen. Go for it if you need the best Android smartphone available in the market.

User Reviews of Samsung S9:

If you would like to read the reviews given by customers who bought Samsung S9, check out the links below

Read Samsung S9 User Reviews on Flipkart