The Samsung Galaxy S9+ ($839.99 as tested) is the best phone on the market. It hasn’t been reinvented from last year’s model. There’s no radical new feature that will send you running to the store, no change in the game or shift in paradigm. But it has the best screen, the best connectivity, the best speaker, and three of the best cameras available. There’s no reason to cast aside your year-old smartphone for an S9+, but if you’re shopping for a new phone, this is the one to get, and our Editors’ Choice.
Note that this is a review of the Galaxy S9+, which we think edges out the Galaxy S9 because it gives you dual rear cameras, more RAM, and a bigger battery. That’s a switch from last year, when we preferred the smaller S8 because we didn’t feel the S8+ differentiated itself enough.
A Little Better Every Day
The Galaxy S9+ looks a lot like the Galaxy S8+, to the point that it’s difficult to tell them apart. Like the S8+, the S9+ is a smooth phone with curved edges and a screen cascading down both sides of the curved glass. There’s a little bit less top and bottom bezel than there was on the previous model. Yes, there’s still a dedicated Bixby button on the left, ready to launch you into a secondary home screen. Turn the phone over and you’ll see a difference: two cameras instead of one, and a fingerprint scanner below the cameras, rather than next to it.
That fingerprint scanner location is a little bit of a middle finger to those who complained about the S8’s scanner, because it’s not any better. The S8’s scanner required you to feel around the back of the phone, possibly putting your finger over the camera lens, and that’s still the case. The solution now is just to slide your finger up from the bottom rather than in from the side.
The Galaxy S9 measures 5.8 by 2.7 by 0.3 inches (HWD) and weighs 5.8 ounces. The Galaxy S9+ measures 6.2 by 2.9 by 0.3 inches and weighs 6.7 ounces. Both are slightly shorter, wider, and heavier than their predecessors (respectively 5.9 by 2.7 by 0.3 and 5.5 ounces, and 6.3 by 2.9 by 0.3 inches and 6.1 ounces), but not so much that you notice. The S9+ is obviously larger than the S9, but it’s narrower than the iPhone 8 Plus (3.1 inches), making it easier to hold. The phones come in black, blue, or purple.
On the bottom, you find the same USB-C port and traditional 3.5mm headphone jack as on the S8+. The phone comes in 64, 128, and 256GB storage versions, and there’s also a microSD card slot. It supports both fast and wireless charging and it’s IP68-certified water resistant. So far, so much like last year’s phone.
Ultimately, though, everything’s a little better. Start with that screen, 6.2 inches on the S9+, and 5.8 inches on the S9. According to Ray Soneira of DisplayMate Labs, it’s a little brighter, has better automatic brightness settings, and has better colors than last year’s phones. The most dramatic new feature is a user-settable white point—if you think the screen is too blue, well, you can adjust that.
The phone’s dual speakers, one in the earpiece and one on the bottom, pump out sound that’s noticeably louder and more full than the Galaxy S8+. We got 90db of pink noise at a six-inch distance, as opposed to 83db on a Galaxy S8+. That affects not only media playback, but also the speakerphone. The Galaxy S8+ boasts the best call quality in the business; the Galaxy S9+ is just as good, and now louder.
Samsung galaxy 9 pre brief 8
Left to right: Galaxy S9+, Galaxy S9
The phone supports both voice-over-LTE and Wi-Fi calling, although you may need a carrier-specific unit to get those features. The unlocked model supports Wi-Fi calling on T-Mobile and Sprint, but you’ll need a carrier-branded unit for Wi-Fi calling on AT&T and Verizon.
Hot Chips
The Galaxy S9+ runs Android 8.0 Oreo on the first Snapdragon 845 processor we’ve seen in the US. This model has 6GB of RAM, while the smaller S9 has 4GB. The Snapdragon 845 has four cores running at 2.8GHz and four at 1.7GHz. It doesn’t appear to bring massively more CPU power to the table, but the improvements on graphics, LTE, and Wi-Fi are quite noticeable.
The Snapdragon 845 benchmarks better than any other Android phone; how it compares with the iPhone depends on which benchmark you’re using. On Geekbench, which focuses on CPU performance, the iPhone X beats the S9+ with scores of 4269 single-core and 10403 multi-core, compared with the S9+’s 2278 and 8379. But Antutu shows the opposite result: the Galaxy S9+ got 267,233 compared with the iPhone X’s 233,592, largely because of a better 3D performance score. Cross-platform benchmarks are not terribly useful. And on PCMark, well, our score of 7273 is similar to the Pixel 2 phones, although it’s noticeably higher than the 6800 we got on the Galaxy S8.
PCMark test results
Browser benchmarks show a modest improvement over Snapdragon 835-based phones. Those usually get about 63 to 65 on the Jetstream Javascript benchmark and 250 or so on Browsermark; here, we got 69.97 on Jetstream and 270 on Browsermark.
Graphics benchmarks comparing the S9+ with other Android phones, though, are heartening. On the GFXBench Car Crash test, the S9+ got 35fps offscreen, while Snapdragon 835 phones only get 24 to 25 fps. That’s a really nice performance bump.
The phone has a Category 18 LTE modem that can hit maximum theoretical speeds of 1.2Gbps, 20 percent faster than the previous generation of high-end phones. We tested the unlocked variant, and were happy to see that it has all the bands used by each of the US carriers, including (for AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon) the new 5GHz LAA band that recently gave us speeds of over 500Mbps on T-Mobile. The phone has 4×4 MIMO antennas on bands 2, 4, 7, 30, 41, and 66. (If you’re curious about the full LTE band list, including roaming bands used mostly in other countries, it’s 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12,13, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 38, 39, 40, 41, 46, 66, 71.)
There’s good news here for all carriers. The phone can support 12 streams of data to previous devices’ 10, and can do 4×4 MIMO on three bands simultaneously compared with the previous devices’ two. That means more flexibility to squeeze greater speeds out of each cell site on every carrier.
On AT&T, 4×4 MIMO on Band 30 is new. On Sprint, the S8+ lacks 4×4 MIMO on the critical Band 41, so you’ll see much faster speeds on an S9+. On T-Mobile, the S9+ brings in the new rural Band 71 for extended coverage, which isn’t on the S8+. The S7 doesn’t have either of these features, and no iPhone has them, either. When a carrier SIM is put in the unlocked phone, the phone adapts to whatever that carrier’s bands and aggregation strategies are.
To test RF, we brought the S9+ and a Galaxy Note 8 to a T-Mobile cell site of verified quality. We got slightly better signal and latency on the S9+ than on the Note 8. Now, that could be hardware, or it could be software, and we plan to look into this further, but there’s no question that we’re talking top-of-the-line LTE performance.
We were also very pleasantly surprised by the S9+’s stellar Wi-Fi performance when compared with the S8+ on the 5GHz band. In good signal conditions on a 150Mbps symmetrical connection, we got 130 to 150Mbps down on the S8+, but only 70 to 80Mbps up. On the S9+, we got 135 to 150Mbps up. And as we went farther from the router and through walls, the S8+’s connection decayed before the S9+’s did: With a middling link, we got 77Mbps down and 40Mbps up on the S8+, but still a solid 154Mbps down and 130Mbps up on the S9+.
As far as battery goes, the S9+ has a 3,500mAh cell. It outran our 10-hour streaming YouTube video, with five percent life, which bodes very well for battery life. We’ll post more battery results as we run them.
Android-wise, Samsung’s extensions to Google’s operating system here are identical to those from last year. Beyond the camera modes, which we’ll discuss below, the S9+ has Samsung’s “edge” functionality to drag in widgets from the side of the screen, and supports Samsung’s DeX docking stations to turn the phone into a desktop PC. Both features are useful, but probably won’t be used as often as Samsung would like.
Brighter Vision
The Galaxy S9+ has two primary 12MP cameras, stacked on top of one another on the back. Both the S9 and S9+ have new, dual-aperture lenses that snap from f/2.4 or f/1.5 depending on lighting conditions. At light levels under 100 lux—basically indoor lighting—they’ll pop open to f/1.5, letting more light in. You can also control the change manually in the camera’s Pro mode. You can actually see the iris open up if you look closely at the camera.
The front-facing f/1.7, 8MP camera is completely identical to the Galaxy S8’s in our testing, although it has a new wide selfie mode that combines selfie with a partial panorama, and a software-operated selfie bokeh mode.
From a hardware perspective, the S9+ delivers on its promises. Its bright lens and sensor deliver images that exceed other smartphones in dim light, and on-sensor autofocus locks onto subjects very quickly. But the software employs some very aggressive sharpening we’re not big fans of.
On the S9+, the dual-aperture lens is the top one. The bottom one is an f/2.4 lens at 2x zoom. Both have optical image stabilization. The camera UI is a little slippery and sticky. I’m confident this will get worked out in a firmware update, but scrolling across the different camera modes—Pro, Auto, Slow-mo, etcetera—sometimes jumps ahead and sometimes feels stilted, which is frustrating.
The idea behind the dual-aperture camera option is simple: crisper images when shooting in bright light with an f/2.4 prime, and lower ISOs in very dim conditions with f/1.5. An f/1.5 lens captures about 2.6 times the light as an f/2.4.
Of course, you’ll likely compare it with other handsets as opposed to dedicated cameras. The Note 8 sports an f/1.7 prime, giving the S9+ a more modest 30 percent advantage in gathering light. The iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and X have an f/1.8 main lens, which means the S9+ gobbles up about 45 percent more light. This translates into either a shorter shutter speed, lower ISO, or combination of both when working in dim light. Smartphone camera image quality suffers at high ISO settings, so this is a definite plus when snapping pics of your dinner in a fancy restaurant, or a shot of your bestie at the trendiest cocktail lounge in town.
A brighter lens is great, but due to some software choices by Samsung, the actual results are mixed. At its default, JPG output setting images are significantly oversharpened. Close examination shows odd artifacts, especially in high-contrast areas—say a dark object against a bright sky, a common situation in landscape and architectural photography. Even when viewed at screen resolution you can see modest halos in these areas. This is fixable in software.
It’s not a problem with the sensor. We looked at Raw photos too and they look great. Take a look at the comparison above, at a pixel level, with the JPG output at the left, a mostly untouched Raw in the center (we dialed down the exposure by a half-stop to better match the JPG), and a Raw processed to taste (+25 Contrast, -40 Highlights, +35 Shadows, -25 Blacks, and +15 Clarity) in Lightroom at the far right. You can definitely get more natural photos, with crisp lines and without the too-sharp look, with a little bit of processing.
The effect is more pronounced at lower ISO settings. As we move to the high ISO range—the S9+ can be set manually up to ISO 800—we see how the sharpened images, coupled with improvements in the underlying sensor technology, actually deliver more detail than the cameras from the S8+/Note 8 and iPhone 8/Plus/X. But it’s not just the JPG engine that’s doing it—the Raw sensor output from the S9+ shows more detail and less noise at ISO 800 than the Note 8 or iPhone 8 Plus main cameras—which means it’s also better than those phones in dim light.
While the S9’s hardware is better than any competing phone, Samsung’s software choices in JPG encoding mean the JPG output from competing phones, including Samsung’s own Note 8 and S8, the Google Pixel 2 XL, and this year’s iPhones, all look more natural. We’ve include a side-by-side comparison of an image of the same subject above, with the S8+ on the left and S9+ on the right (click for a larger version). Even at screen resolution the difference is clear—the S8+ captures a ton of detail, but does so without showing unnatural edges. The S9 is crisper than real life, like it’s pushing a clarity adjustment slider all the way to the right.
Luckily, serious smartphone photgraphers can get around this. You can shoot in Raw and process photos using a phone or desktop app—I’m a big fan of the film looks offered by VSCO, which is available for Android, but there are dozens of options out there. Or you can tune the JPG output in the Pro camera mode to one of several preset looks: Breezy, Vivid, Nostalgic, Soft, and Serene. Breezy is closer to what Samsung did with the S8 and Note 8 in color tone, but still a bit too sharpened. Nostalgic, Soft, and Serene dial it way back, but they’re more special effect than an everyday shooting look.
Videos are nicely optically stabilized, both at 1x and 2x, in up to 4K at 60 frames per second. The device doesn’t capture 4K HDR, though, and 4K60 capture is limited to five minutes per video.
Samsung also put memory right under the image sensor, the same way Sony has, to enable 960fps slow-motion. The GS9+ can capture up to 20, 0.2-second clips at that super-slow-mo level; it needs a moment to flush the memory buffer out after each clip. Because it’s really difficult to guess which 0.2-second you’re going to want, the camera also has an auto-detect mode where it starts recording normal video, and then kicks into super-slow-mo when it detects motion in the frame. The super-slo-mo clip becomes a short video, but the GS9 also creates three 4MB highlight GIFs that have much smaller file sizes than the video, and are easier to share. That’s some pretty great handholding for anyone who wants to post their slow-mo quickly to social networks.
I popped some balloons in slow-mo, and it worked fine. One thing to be aware of, though, is that the super-slow-mo mode only records at 720p, and the images can be very soft in indoor lighting. The more light you have at this speed, the better.
The Uncanny Emoji Valley
Samsung’s AR Emoji are a cross between Apple’s animoji, which I haven’t seen in the wild for months, and the cartoonish Bitmoji, which are a hideous plague on the internet. The idea is that they construct a custom cartoon character from your face that can match your facial movements for photos and videos. The characters, though, live firmly in the uncanny valley, that creepy land of somewhat-realistic dolls and zombie creatures that make you wince, not laugh.
When I created a character for myself, it initially didn’t look at all like me because it had the wrong hair and no glasses. Tweaking the hair color, skin tone, and glasses helped a lot, but the animation still floated in that creepy realm between cartoonish and photorealistic. After thinking on it for a while, the problem wasn’t that the face didn’t look like me—it’s that the slight slackness and lag of the motion capture created the problem. That’s part of why Apple’s Animoji are all cartoon characters, which you don’t expect human expressions from.
After getting over the initial shock, I realized that the AR Emoji aren’t bad at all when they’re turned into GIF stickers. The phone auto-generates a range of GIFs from your image, and while they’re ridiculous, they aren’t disturbing, as you can see here.
You can also use the S9’s motion capture prowess with three cartoon characters and a variety of Snapchat-like masks for your selfies. They all move a little stiffly, because the S9 doesn’t have the 3D face-tracking camera the iPhone X has on its front. Branded Disney characters are coming, Samsung says, but the animations will have to get more fluid and mobile to be compelling.
Samsung’s software story continues in the S9’s new Bixby camera modes. Bixby is Samsung’s catch-all term for AI software features. It’s a voice assistant, an extra home screen with informational widgets, and a bunch of intelligent camera modes. On the S8+, Bixby’s camera modes identifies wine bottles and other products, reads QR codes, and translates languages. On the S9+, you can count the calories in food and shop for makeup by putting it on your face as a Snapchat-style filter.
The camera modes’ quality varies, but they all feel like gimmicks you’ll quickly forget about. Unfortunately, the most useful one, language translation, doesn’t work well on many languages. It gave me a sense of Spanish and French in tests, but totally failed on Bengali, Hebrew, and Russian, even though it says it supports those languages. The calorie counter mode is an awesome party trick and works surprisingly well, but it’s of limited utility. Ultimately, there’s just nothing in Bixby that would make you buy a phone, and little that is better than a combination of Google Assistant and some third-party apps like Microsoft Translate or Bitesnap.
Comparisons and Conclusions
I don’t think the past 12 months make a great innovation year for smartphones. That doesn’t mean we’re seeing bad phones, it just means we aren’t seeing game-changing phones. With in-display fingerprint sensors coming at the end of 2018 and 5G networks coming at the beginning of 2019, we’re going to see some real innovation soon. For now, the S9+ just makes everything a little bit better.
It brings you dual cameras, a big battery, and lots of memory for $839.99 unlocked. We think that’s worth paying $120 more than you will for the smaller S9, and it’s less than you’ll pay for the Galaxy Note 8 or the iPhone X. Wireless carriers are charging more for this phone, but unless you need Wi-Fi calling on AT&T or Verizon, you should get the unlocked model—it has no bloatware, better resale value, and supports all US carrier bands.
This is an excellent phone, if an emotionally unexciting one. It’s our Editors’ Choice because it’s the best at almost everything that other Android phones do, and not far from the best at the rest (mostly, camera JPEG encoding).
If you have a Galaxy S8, it’s hard for me to argue that you toss away it away for a collection of meaningful but largely incremental improvements. If you have a Galaxy S7 or S6, on the other hand, this is a major upgrade, especially in terms of connecting to your carrier’s fastest network. Compared with the Note 8, get the Note if you’re going to use the pen. Get an S9+ if you aren’t.
The S9+ doesn’t change the “iPhone or Android?” calculus much. It puts the Galaxy line on par with the iPhone 8 Plus in terms of having dual cameras, but the song remains the same. I prefer the Galaxy line over iPhones right now because they have better radios, a real headphone jack, and what I think is a more attractive form factor, and the more I look at the iPhone X notch, the more I don’t like it. A lot of people still love iOS for its elegant third-party applications and Apple’s absolutely unmatched network of high-quality service and support. They’re not wrong.
Other Android smartphones can absolutely bring a quality experience for less money. They’re also not quite as good. The Google Pixel 2 XL, for instance, lacks the GS9+’s secondary camera, has a slightly slower processor, a slower modem, and doesn’t have as gorgeous a screen. It does, however, encode better JPEGs.
The Galaxy S9+ is the pinnacle of smartphone innovation right now. Like the Galaxy S8 did last year, it sets the bar for smartphone quality, and it’s going to make life difficult for companies like Motorola and Sony that are also trying to sell $700+ smartphones. If you need a phone, price is no object, you aren’t going to use a pen, and aren’t set on an iPhone, this is the one for you.
Jim Fisher contributed to this review.
Artboard Created with Sketch.
The Bottom Line
It’s not revolutionary, but the Samsung Galaxy S9+ sets the bar for smartphones in 2018, with the best hardware features you can get.
