The Galaxy S9 cuts an excellent figure in this review, but it is not without weaknesses. Like its predecessor, it looks great, and despite its large display, it fits neatly in the hand. The image quality is beyond any doubt, the performance is strong and the photo quality is also excellent. But we would have liked a better detailed display in twilight and above all a longer battery life.
Overview
Pros
Class display & top performance
Very good camera
Great equipment
Cons
Battery life is a bit disappointing
Twilight photos are too soft
Samsung Galaxy S9: What’s new?
With the Galaxy S8, Samsung has heralded a small revolution. The huge but handy 18:9 display, the cool looking curved design, the side-to-side screen, the top performance and features – all these strengths convinced many fans. And Samsung is building on all these strengths with the new Galaxy S9 and the Galaxy S9 Plus, as our test shows. Or to put it another way: The Galaxy S9 looks like its predecessor. Only the fingerprint scanner moves under the camera, where it is easier to reach than the one placed next to the camera of the previous year’s model. In addition, the S9 is just under one millimeter shorter with the same image area.
Great display
The screen is a feast for the eyes again. With a diagonal of 5.8 inches and a resolution of up to 2,960 x 1,440 pixels, it is not only large and sharp, AMOLED-typical colors and contrasts also look strong. If you prefer a more subtle color display, you can change this in the display settings of Galaxy S9. By the way, the resolution can also be switched there, because by default the screen displays 2,220 x 1,080 pixels. Differences apart from VR-glasses can hardly be seen with the naked eye.
The maximum brightness is excellent: When very bright light falls on the light sensor, the screen in our test pattern shines around 743 candelas per square meter bright – so it can also be easily read outdoors. Anyone who turns up the volume manually indoors to make videos and photos look better will still get a very good 418 cd/m².
High performance, satisfactory battery life
The processor performance is also strong, as Samsung uses its latest and strongest Exynos 9810 chip. Its integrated modem achieves data rates of up to 1.2 gigabits per second in the LTE network, for example, as soon as the English networks support this speed. In the test, the Galaxy S9 always reacted very quickly, but it didn’t feel significantly faster than the S8 or another top device from 2017, as a very large PDF opened the Galaxy S9 a few seconds faster than its predecessor. Android 8 runs on the device under Samsung’s user interface. Regular updates are planned for two to three years.
But we are a little disappointed with the battery life of the Galaxy S9: In our test it was “only” 8:42 hours – that’s okay, but not really good. The Galaxy S8 runs one hour longer, the Huawei Mate 10 Pro even comes up to almost 12 hours. For our online runtime test, we dim the brightness to a pleasant 200 cd/m² for indoor use and let the smartphone load videos and websites from the LTE network; a script also simulates scrolling and typing inputs. We think this is a practical test.
We repeated the test three times, the runtime variations were small. Even in a direct comparison between the Galaxy S9 and the S8, the predecessor ran almost an hour longer. Although most users will get through the day without any problems, we would have liked to have seen more in view of the fact that batteries effectively lose capacity over time. Loading time is good. It took 2:08 hours to fully charge the 3,000 mAh battery. Thanks to quick charging technology, a particularly large amount of power flows into the battery in the first thirty minutes.
Very good photo quality, but…
The Galaxy S9 has a very good camera and takes great photos with 12 megapixel resolution. In good lighting conditions we like the pictures very much. The detail display is great, colors tend to be warm, but not unnatural. Even in daylight, however, it is noticeable that some of the light sources in the image produce overradiation effects: the image area around a lamp or the sun is then too brightly lit. Pixel 2 (XL) solves this better in comparison.
Currently unique is the variable aperture size, which promises the best possible results in both bright and dim light. When it is bright, the Galaxy S9 (and the Galaxy S9 Plus) selects a rather small f/2.4 aperture that allows a good depth of field. In twilight (less than 100 lux), the system enlarges the aperture to f/1.5 to absorb more light. The latter promises better detail, lower noise and more beautiful photos in these situations.
In our twilight test, however, both the HTC U11 and Pixel 2 (XL) perform better because they use less aggressive filters to eliminate image noise and therefore show more image details, such as hair, yarn or the grain of a wooden table. The Galaxy S9, on the other hand, can achieve a lot even in very low light and shows very little noise – but some of the photos seem a bit too smooth. All in all, the camera is great despite this criticism. Compared to the Plus model, you do not need a second lens for an “optical” double zoom and improved portrait mode with variable bokeh effect.
High-speed camera for super slow motion
We also had fun in the test with the super slow motion function. The Galaxy S9 records events in HD resolution at a speed of 960 frames per second – i.e. extremely fast – but unfortunately only for about 0.2 seconds (Samsung does not reveal the exact number, it should be 184 milliseconds). The system then plays back this recording in just under 6 seconds with a 32-fold slowdown – and that is quite respectable. With good light, cool and impressive super slow motion is always possible. In the evening and at night, however, there is no need to use this function, as the exposure time per image is extremely short, so you can hardly see anything.
Sony started with this super slow motion technology with the Sony Xperia XZ Premium. However, Samsung has extended the technology with a useful automatic mode, which starts the recording if desired, if movements are to be seen in a definable image area. There is also a normal slow motion mode in which you can record actions at 240 frames per second in full HD resolution for much longer. Unfortunately, Samsung hid it well. To unlock it, call up the camera app and then go to “Edit Camera Modes | Main Camera | Slow Motion” via the control dial. It can then be called up in the camera app next to the other modes.
If you like, you can also create a cartoon avatar of yourself that reacts to facial movements. This reminds us of Apple’s Animojis on iPhone X, but didn’t really convince us.
Galaxy S9 duos with excellent equipment
The equipment of the Galaxy S9 is excellent, especially in the duo version tested by us. Besides a fast working fingerprint scanner there is also face and iris recognition. The smartphone is waterproof according to IP-Norm 68, can be charged wirelessly, has a headphone jack, fast USB 3.1 type C, also fast AC-WLAN and Bluetooth 5.0. 49 gigabytes of the nominal 64 GByte memory are free. We think that 128 GB of memory could have been in it at the high selling price. As with the predecessor, the storage space can be conveniently expanded via a micro SD card.
The Duos model, which can be found mainly in free trade, also has a hybrid slot that optionally accepts a second SIM card, so that users can be reached at the same time, for example at home and at work, under two phone numbers on one device. On the secondary SIM card, however, the Galaxy S9 does not support LTE and therefore no voice-over LTE with improved sound quality – this is only possible on the main SIM.
All in all, we really like the Galaxy S9, but with its introductory price of 850 Euros, there are not enough improvements to justify the additional price of currently 300 Euros (as of March 2018) compared to the Galaxy S8. Enthusiasts who don’t look so much at their wallets will undoubtedly get an excellent smartphone.
Very good photo quality, but…
The Galaxy S9 has a very good camera and takes great photos with 12 megapixel resolution. In good lighting conditions we like the pictures very much. The detail display is great, colors tend to be warm, but not unnatural. Even in daylight, however, it is noticeable that some of the light sources in the image produce overradiation effects: the image area around a lamp or the sun is then too brightly lit. Pixel 2 (XL) solves this better in comparison.
Currently unique is the variable aperture size, which promises the best possible results in both bright and dim light. When it is bright, the Galaxy S9 (and the Galaxy S9 Plus) selects a rather small f/2.4 aperture that allows a good depth of field. In twilight (less than 100 lux), the system enlarges the aperture to f/1.5 to absorb more light. The latter promises better detail, lower noise and more beautiful photos in these situations.
In our twilight test, however, both the HTC U11 and Pixel 2 (XL) perform better because they use less aggressive filters to eliminate image noise and therefore show more image details, such as hair, yarn or the grain of a wooden table. The Galaxy S9, on the other hand, can achieve a lot even in very low light and shows very little noise – but some of the photos seem a bit too smooth. All in all, the camera is great despite this criticism. Compared to the Plus model, you do not need a second lens for an “optical” double zoom and improved portrait mode with variable bokeh effect.
High-speed camera for super slow motion
We also had fun in the test with the super slow motion function. The Galaxy S9 records events in HD resolution at a speed of 960 frames per second – i.e. extremely fast – but unfortunately only for about 0.2 seconds (Samsung does not reveal the exact number, it should be 184 milliseconds). The system then plays back this recording in just under 6 seconds with a 32-fold slowdown – and that is quite respectable. With good light, cool and impressive super slow motion is always possible. In the evening and at night, however, there is no need to use this function, as the exposure time per image is extremely short, so you can hardly see anything.
Sony started with this super slow motion technology with the Sony Xperia XZ Premium. However, Samsung has extended the technology with a useful automatic mode, which starts the recording if desired, if movements are to be seen in a definable image area. There is also a normal slow motion mode in which you can record actions at 240 frames per second in full HD resolution for much longer. Unfortunately, Samsung hid it well. To unlock it, call up the camera app and then go to “Edit Camera Modes | Main Camera | Slow Motion” via the control dial. It can then be called up in the camera app next to the other modes.
If you like, you can also create a cartoon avatar of yourself that reacts to facial movements. This reminds us of Apple’s Animojis on iPhone X, but didn’t really convince us.
Galaxy S9 duos with excellent equipment
The equipment of the Galaxy S9 is excellent, especially in the duo version tested by us. Besides a fast working fingerprint scanner there is also face and iris recognition. The smartphone is waterproof according to IP-Norm 68, can be charged wirelessly, has a headphone jack, fast USB 3.1 type C, also fast AC-WLAN and Bluetooth 5.0. 49 gigabytes of the nominal 64 GByte memory are free. We think that 128 GB of memory could have been in it at the high selling price. As with the predecessor, the storage space can be conveniently expanded via a micro SD card.
The Duos model, which can be found mainly in free trade, also has a hybrid slot that optionally accepts a second SIM card, so that users can be reached at the same time, for example at home and at work, under two phone numbers on one device. On the secondary SIM card, however, the Galaxy S9 does not support LTE and therefore no voice-over LTE with improved sound quality – this is only possible on the main SIM.
All in all, we really like the Galaxy S9, but with its introductory price of 850 Euros, there are not enough improvements to justify the additional price of currently 300 Euros (as of March 2018) compared to the Galaxy S8. Enthusiasts who don’t look so much at their wallets will undoubtedly get an excellent smartphone.
