The Samsung Galaxy S9 is official having been launched at the just concluded Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2018, the largest gathering of the mobile business community held in Spain.
The pricey smartphone is a direct rival to Apple’s premium iPhone X, and comes chock full of features. Here’s everything you need to know.
According to the South Korean device maker, Galaxy S9 is the most attractive phone the company has ever produced, boasting a svelte 8.5mm body with a huge 5.8-inch Quad HD curved Super AMOLED display that fills most of the phone’s front.
Though the S9 features essentially the same as last year’s flagship, Galaxy S8 with the full screen and curved glass edge, its major differentiator is the louder sound, faster processor and software that turns selfies into animated emoji.
This will appeal customers who prefer to use their phones to send text messages rather than long conversations on phone, the new and improved rear camera, AR emoji on the front camera is indeed a unique feature of Galaxy S9.
Samsung has packed in lots of improvements in its effort to ‘reimagine’ the phone camera as it features a single lens on the rear of the phone, there is a 12MP rear sensor with optical image stabilisation.
Samsung added another tool to its photography arsenal: a variable aperture. This means pictures taken with S9 should look sharper, have less image noise and handle extreme lighting situations better. This is indeed a big upgrade.
The aperture of a lens determines the amount of light that a camera sensor receives.
Galaxy S9 has two aperture settings : one wide open and the other more narrow. To get to the best balance of exposure and sharpness for pictures, the S9 automatically switches between its two apertures. This means that if one takes a picture in the dark, the Galaxy S9 might switch to its wide aperture to gather as much light as possible. This wouldn’t just make the pictures brighter but might also reduce noise. While on a bright day, S9 might use its narrow setting to prevent sunlight from over exposing a shot. This is an added benefit of improving a photo’s sharpness around the edges.
With f/1. 5, the Galaxy S9’s lens has the widest aperture ever seen on a phone. These exciting apertures improve a camera’s performance in low-light situations. The disadvantage is that this can result in softer images. The genius of the dual aperture system is it can use f/2.4 to capture sharp images in good light and switch to a wider f/1.5 aperture to gather more light in a dark environment.
Design
Samsung S9 doesn’t look all that different to the S8. One may notice that the bezels above and below the display have been trimmed down a little, leading to reduction in the height of the phone. Samsung has added a few fractions of a millimeter to the width and thickness of the Galaxy S9 to ensure it can still fit all the internal components in; it measures 147.7×68.7×8.5mm.
The device maker says Galaxy S9 will be available in three colors: midnight black, coral blue and the new shade of lilac pink. S9 features essentially the same design as last year’s S8 with the full screen and curved glass edge. It also has a repositioned finger print scanner below the rear camera and there is quite a distance between the camera and the finger print unlike the previous Samsung, so one won’t mistakenly put fingers all over the shooter.
There is a 3. 5mm headphone jack on the Samsung galaxy S9 on the bottom edge of the phone on the left hand side. Next to that sits the USB-C slot for charging and data transfer and one of the phone’s two speakers. The other speaker is at the top of the phone. Samsung says this new speakers will allow the S9 to be 1. 5 times louder than S8.
Display
The display is not different from the Galaxy S8. That means one gets a 5.8inch QHD+ offering with Samsung’s eye popping Super AMOLED panel and the taller 18.5:9 aspect ratio, which is increasingly becoming the norm for flagships after appearing on a handful of other phones.
The Galaxy S9 is easier to use in landscape mode with the whole User Interface now rotating to fit the wide-screen layout by reducing the frequency you need to rotate the phone between portrait and landscape. The curved edges of the screen provides an advanced finish and it is a great display for watching movies and playing games too.
Camera
It features Samsung’s dual aperture technology by allowing the camera aperture to expand and contract depending on light levels. Just the way the human eyes does, when the light drops below 100 lux though, the aperture widens to f/1.5,allowing the Galaxy S9 to suck in more light than S8.
Samsung also improved its slow-motion video capture. Slow-motion video at 960fps is recorded at 720p (HD), while 240fps slo-mo can be grabbed at full HD (1080p) resolution.
Motion detection is one smart feature that allows the phone do all the work because S9 automatically start recording when it senses movement. This is an amazing addition.
Battery and performance
The Samsung Galaxy S9 packs the same size battery (3,000mAh) and the same amount of RAM and internal storage (4GB and 64GB), retaining the headphone jack and IP68 dust- and – water – resistant- rating. Because of the need for specific carrier network support, Galaxy S9 will use Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon 845 system- on-a-chip to ensure it works with all the major carriers.
These chipsets are paired with 4GB of RAM with 2GB which provides enough grunt to keep the Android 8 Oreo operating system running smoothly.
Packed into the body of the Galaxy S9 is 64GB storage, a Microsoft card port which supports cards up to 200GB, allowing you to expand massively on the internal offering.
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