Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Samsung Galaxy S9 Review: The Perfect… Samsung!”.
Oh hey: what is up guys mkbhd here, and this may all look very familiar to you. This is samsung galaxy s9 uh yeah. This is definitely s9 and uh. This is new you’re, probably wondering if it’s worth your money for an upgrade. You may also just be wondering if it’s a good phone or not, so i think the best way to describe this phone is it’s a nearly perfect samsung phone.
So what i mean by that is, if you’ve liked samsung phones in the past, or you have an old samsung phone and you like what they do with the software, with the great cameras with the awesome design with their build, then this is the best and most Complete version of that that they’ve ever made, but, conversely, if you already don’t like samsung phones like if slow, android updates, aren’t your thing or you just don’t like what they do with the skin, then this isn’t going to change your mind. So it’s a nearly perfect samsung phone. So last year the galaxy s8 had the infiniti display this year again, galaxy s9 has one of the absolute best displays in any smartphone sandwiched between even slightly thinner top and bottom bezels than last time and they’ve even done a slightly better job, hiding the sensors and Things in that top bezel, so the black looks more seamless and that earpiece also now doubles as a second speaker, front-facing speaker. So you kind of have a bit of a stereo speaker thing going on here.
It’S not quite the same, obviously as two big dedicated front-facing speakers, but at least now it’s a bit louder and clearer. If you accidentally block the bottom speaker which can happen, you don’t completely miss. What’S going on so it’s better! Last year, you also had usbc and wireless charging fast charging, all that that is also all still here: usbc fast charging wireless charging, a headphone jack water resistance is great clicky buttons and just overall a plus build quality. Now it’s still glass, which means you’re still going to get smudges.
So if you want to pick up a dbrand skin, this new black camo might not make your phone invisible, but it’ll make all the smudges and scratches disappear. And then the biggest change on the outside has to be obviously the fingerprint reader placement it’s now in the middle instead of up at the top next to the camera, and that makes a huge difference even more than people are giving it credit for it’s perfect. Now. It’S raised slightly, so it’s easy to know when your fingers on it when you’re not looking at it and registering your fingerprint, is now just a slow swipe. Like you roll your finger down the scanner once, which is actually really cool, i thought it was a glitch. Usually you kind of you know: you have to press it on the fingerprint reader a whole bunch of times to enroll your finger, but during this phone setup you just roll your finger down at once and it’s a hundred percent done.
That is awesome and then there’s also now on the back of this phone, a blood pressure sensor in addition to the heart rate monitor so the heart rate monitor, is not new. We’Ve had that for a while, you can measure your heart rate, that’s quick, but the blood pressure sensor. Usually you haven’t been able to do that with anything other than like the wrap and the tools in the doctor’s office to actually get that reading.
In that number, i wasn’t able to get that reading with s health or any of the health apps on my phone, but i like a really good video from dave2d on how exactly this works. There’S a certain way to get it to help you if you do want to use this phone to measure blood pressure, but as of right now it’s just a pretty cool new addition. Last year’s galaxy s8 also had top-notch specs when it came out.
S9 here keeps that up and bumps it up too again for 2018. snapdragon, 845 and four or six gigs of ram, and this does definitely feel like the smoothest samsung phone. Yet it still doesn’t match stock android. You know there’s still little performance hiccups like when opening up bixby, for example, and occasionally and some other samsung apps uh, but in my couple of weeks with this phone.
That’S about it. Everything else nearly matches pixel 2 and smoothness, and i’m really happy about that. And then there is all the samsung software uh again, they’re still really not shy about their colorful look on top of android. So it’s not going to change your mind if you already dislike the samsung stuff, but it’s all better. It still has a ton of advanced features.
It added iris scanning from the note, which is a little slower but more secure than regular facial recognition using the front-facing camera and there’s also a new intelligent scan which combines face scanning and iris scanning, basically using which one works better, depending on light conditions. So i’m really into the new fingerprint reader, so i haven’t necessarily used these as much, but it’s cool to have all the options. It still has a bunch of samsung’s big screen tricks and app shortcuts.
You still get the edge shortcuts and some more customization options with those sometimes with all the stuff it can feel like. Samsung is just kind of dumping as many features as possible on you, and maybe they are, but that’s part of what they do. It still has bixby and the bixby button and everything bixby’s good for okay. I could have just disabled the bixby button from day one.
I know that, but i decided to give it another chance. I’Ve left it enabled since day, one every day using bixby, and it’s still not that great, not only have i triggered it a couple times on purpose, but many times by accident when taking it out of my pocket and every time i open it. I just kind of scroll down hoping to find something useful in these cards uh, but usually i don’t so then i close it bixby voice can still do a lot of those like really intricate digging into the settings and longer strings of commands in the phone that Other assistants can’t do as well, so that’s pretty cool, so uh turn on the flashlight. So if you’re into that, if that’s something you do on your phone, often you’ll like bixby when it understands you, but i’m not that person, so i’m gon na go ahead and disable it for now so yeah. This is clearly still unapologetically a samsung phone in a software department for better or for worse, there’s, still, two browsers out the box.
Two smart assistants, two calendars, two messaging apps, all the classic half-hearted samsung ecosystem push is still there, but it’s also android. So you can get rid of that stuff. That’S annoying! If you don’t want it battery life, i think, is the biggest weakness of these new phones, the s9 and s9 plus it’s not terrible, but among all the other great things about these phones, the battery life is definitely not great, so i spend most of my time With the s9 plus, which has the bigger screen, but also bigger battery 3 500 milliamp hours, and it would be dead by the end of the day and most of my heavy use days with a lot of navigation. A lot of music playing a lot of screen. On time, watching videos and social media, that would be enough to kill this phone in a single day.
I don’t even do that much mobile gaming, but if i were, that would kill it too. The upside of that, as it always is with samsung, is fast charging and wireless charging. It charges really fast with the right charger. The one in the box, of course, uh or one of several other usbc chargers like the macbook pro charger, but it can be kind of picky.
The dash charger, for example, didn’t work if you’re curious, but being able to top up really quickly during the day. For me, i’ve said this before it does offset the slightly weak battery this phone has. It would be great if it had better battery, but for me that’s good enough depends on who you are and then for the biggest most reimagined new change in these phones.
That would be the camera. Let’S break that down. So there’s a new 12 megapixel camera on the back and if you get the s9 plus it gets the second telephoto camera as well, and it’s the first modern smartphone with a variable aperture camera.
It can physically switch between f, 1.5 and f 2.4, depending on your lighting, so it defaults to f 2.4, which is roughly average for a smartphone camera actually, and that’s for your sharp normal daylight photos. Most of the time when you do get to low light under 100 lux that’s when it’s going to switch to wide open, f, 1.5, technically speaking, the mechanism to do this is really impressive, but it only matters if you can see the difference in photos. So does it make a difference so alright, generally photos from the galaxy s9. Camera are pretty damn good photos are a little bit less over processed and a little less over sharpened than they used to be, but it’s clearly still the samsung look.
We’Re used to with the bright vibrant, colors, dynamic range i’d say, is the most noticeable improvement, but that’s something they’ve actively worked on, so it’s good to see something you’ll notice looking through all of these, though, is samsung’s tendency to overexpose still pretty much every photo. I take on the galaxy s9 in auto mode is just a little bit too bright. It’S just just a little bit, but then it can also be a sort of an advantage when you take it to low light galaxy s9 low light photos, look pretty good, and that really is thanks to the f 1.5 aperture, letting in way more light. So the question of is this variable aperture, making a difference well low light shots have seen a real bump up, there’s less smoothing because it gets rid of less grain because there’s less grain because there’s more light being led into the camera. So fundamentally, yes, it’s working! It’S still not the best camera in any smartphone, though that’s still pixel 2 hands down and i’d say it still falls a little bit behind iphone 10. But i don’t think anyone will be disappointed with the third place performance of a great galaxy s9 camera. Something people have also noticed recently. Is it shoots video in the rec 2020 color space instead of rec 709? That’S what happens when you turn on or leave on.
Hdr, if you turn that off, they can be rec 709. So it’s trying to look better again and more saturated on the samsung displays, but you can turn that off. So all right back in the impressions video, i did mention that it seems like galaxy s9 plus. Will have a pretty big advantage over the regular galaxy s9, because you’re getting now more ram, more screen, more battery and more camera, so it turns out. Most of this isn’t actually that big of a deal in the more ram department – yes, galaxy s9 plus, has six gigs of ram, while the regular s9 has four gigs of ram. Both are plenty hardly ever gon na notice. The difference in regular everyday use could be nice for future proofing, though the s9 plus obviously has the second telephoto camera for live focus and for optical zoom, sometimes may or may not ever use that if you do obviously go with s9 plus, but you might not Miss that and then, of course, the size difference means your 5.8 inch display versus 6.2 inch and then your 3000 to 3500 milliamp hour battery again, both of which are somewhat mediocre, so not a huge difference between them. So it’s a toss up if you’re choosing between them, but i think the biggest thing i got out of this galaxy s9 plus existing now at this price point is there’s way less reason to buy a galaxy note. 8 right now. The note 8 is really all about the stylus and it comes in at about a thousand bucks. I would definitely pick the s9 plus over that because of the lower price, even though you get a slightly smaller screen, all the same advantages are there. If you don’t use that stylus and even a lot of the other reasons, people might have gone towards the galaxy note in the past, like your media experience, the huge screen, this tends to do a lot of that just as good, if not better, since you also Get stereo speakers, but that’s just if you’re picking between samsung phones, my point from the beginning of the video stands: this is just about the optimal samsung phone that you can get right now, with all the pros and cons that come with that you get all the Pros and up sides of the samsung experience taken to the max.
The awesome displays the a plus build quality, the checking of pretty much every box, stereo speakers, headphone jack, expandable storage and a pretty damn good camera. But you also get all the cons of the samsung experience too your double apps, your slower android updates your occasional hiccups bixby. So this thing really is great: it’s perfect for the samsung lover, but i, as you probably already know, am not that person. I will be switching back, i think, to my pixel 2 as a daily, so with the galaxy s9, it makes it really easy to under appreciate it because it seems like you know. Oh it’s just a minor upgrade. It’S not that much better! It’S like an s8s and you could say it’s a jack of all trades, but the master of none, but that’s actually what makes this phone so good.
First of all, it is the master of one the display there isn’t really any better than this, but it’s actually so good at so many different things and bad at so few things, especially being so good at the hardware suite. That’S what makes this phone so easy to recommend, and so i do. I recommend the galaxy s9.
It’S really good, so either way, that’s been it thanks for watching talk to you guys in the next one peace .