In April last year, Samsung released its flagship phones, the Galaxy S8 and S8+. Revolutionizing its design language, the South Korean company now had phones that, along with their almost bezel-less sides, had managed to significantly reduce the bezels at the top and the bot­tom as well. Marketed as ‘Unbox your phone’, both the S8 and the S8+ had wowed customers while heavily influencing the smart­phone design in 2017. Now in 2018, Samsung has announced the suc­cessor to the much-loved S8 with Galaxy S9 and S9+. The S9 and the S9+ are both excel­lent phones with top of the line specifications that many upcoming flagships will mimic. The phones are either powered by Samsung’s inhouse SOC the Exynos 9810 or the Snapdragon 845, both octa-core pro­cessors. The S9 comes with 4GB of RAM to support the processor while the S9+ comes with 6GB.

 

The internals are powerful and a significant improvement for the S8 lines. But the external design of the phone leaves a lot to be desired. It essentially looks exactly the same as its predecessors with a little more shaved off the top and bottom bezels. The screen-to-body ratio is the same (84.2 percent, with a 5.8 inch screen on the S9 while the S9+ has a 6.2 inch screen, both incredi­bly vibrant and crisp displays with 1440 x 2960 resolution). We have seen companies like Apple and Mic­rosoft stick to a well-adopted prod­uct design, so what Samsung has done does not come as a surprise. The S8 was a well-designed phone (aesthetically, at least); the S9 line looks just as sleek and modern. The rear glass panel does tend to attract a fair amount of fingerprints but a phone cover should easily solve the issue.

 

The phone is also consumer friendly with features like the head­phone jack and an external micoSD slot adding to its appeal. The awk­wardly positioned fingerprint reader on the back has also been moved to a more convenient location right under the camera module which makes it easier to hit. The S9 line, moreover, has a feature never before seen on a Samsung device: stereo speakers. The S9 fires music from a dedicated speaker at the bottom and the earpiece, which makes media consumption on this device signifi­cantly better. The speakers also have a better sound.

 

The most important change, how­ever, comes in the form of a vastly improved variable aperture camera. Smartphones of 2017 and early 2018 have all competed on camera per­formance, which has led to phones like the iPhone X and Google Pixel 2 producing remarkable pictures. As a response, Samsung has invested heavily on the cameras and it does not disappoint. The 12 MP rear cam­era works two apertures, f/1.5 and f/2.4; the camera will perform much better in low light with the aperture wide-open. The S9+ comes with an additional 12 MP telephoto lens for a closer zoom. With such impressive specifications, the S9 phones pro­duce great photos but still fall short against pictures from the iPhone X or the Google Pixel 2. Which is not to say the camera is bad, it’s a remark­ably good camera, it just falls short against its competitors.

 

While the S9 and S9+ have some really great updates, there are some aspects where Samsung failed to improve. The battery life on the phones are still sub-par and the phones are jam-packed with Sam­sung software. Software like Bigsby, Samsung’s voice assistant that’s still far inferior to Google Assistant, and AR Emoji, a response to Apple’s Ani­moji, all feel gimmicky and useless.

 

With the S9 and S9+, Samsung seems to be improving rather inno­vating. Instead to making dras­tic changes to the S8 line, it has managed to uniformly improve many aspects of the phone. The new flagships from Samsung are great devices and highly recom­mended if you’re in the market for a flagship phone.