Earlier this year, Samsung has updated their flagship lineup with the Samsung Galaxy S9. It still features almost the same design of last year but they really had some improvements inside the smartphone. The Galaxy S8 was my favorite flagship smartphone last year but how about the Samsung Galaxy S9? Check it out on my review of the smartphone below.

Design and Hardware

The design of the Samsung Galaxy S9 is very similar to the previous generation. Actually, for some, they might not even distinguish when you look at the front of the smartphone. There’s no notch on the smartphone but we do have a thin and minimal bezel on the top and below of the smartphone.

The smartphone is purely made out of glass and is still very premium to hold. The design is one of the things that we love on the Samsung Galaxy S8 and it still doesn’t fail to amaze me on the Samsung Galaxy S9. I just love the curves of the smartphone and also its design. Lovely and really sexy.

The smartphone still sports a USB Type-C and yes, there’s fast charging on this smartphone and thankfully, they still retain the headphone jack despite most of the smartphones in the competition ditched it in favor of a headphone jack. When it comes to the speaker quality, I was really happy with the Samsung Galaxy S9. It’s loud and pretty clear.

One of the things that Samsung has fixed in the Samsung Galaxy S9 is the fingerprint scanner placement. They now placed the fingerprint scanner of the smartphone just below the camera which by the way works really fast. But in case you’re not a fan of the fingerprint scanner of the smartphone at the back, the face unlock of the Samsung Galaxy S9 works great too.

Display

The Samsung Galaxy S9’s display is the best one in the market. Samsung still reigns as supreme when it comes to display quality and even without the notch, I was really happy to see that the color reproduction was really great thanks to the beauty of Super AMOLED along with its contrasts.

Wherever you use this smartphone, you’ll be really happy with the display. It’s clear, it’s good, and it’s really awesome. Even when you use the smartphone under the sun, the display is clearly visible and the display will adjust to the condition.

Battery Life

The Samsung Galaxy S9 has a 3000mAh battery inside which is the same as last year but in my usage, I was actually pretty happy with it. It’s longer than last year’s Samsung Galaxy S8 and I was actually able to use the smartphone for a whole day despite doing a little gaming. However in my PC Mark Battery test, it was only able to get 6 hrs and 45 minutes which is far from what I experience. The Samsung Galaxy S9 is truly power efficient thanks to the optimization of Samsung and also the Exynos Processor.

Performance

In case you’re buying the Samsung Galaxy S9 in other countries such as the US, you might be able to get the smartphone Snapdragon 845 Processor but if you’re buying one here in the Philippines, you’ll be able to get the Exynos 9810 with Mali-G72 MP18 GPU.

And Goddamn, these smartphones are the most powerful that you can get right now. For the Galaxy S9, you’ll be getting a smaller 4GB RAM while the Samsung Galaxy S9+ will have a larger 6GB RAM. If you’re just a normal smartphone user, you won’t feel the difference between and when it comes to gaming, the Samsung Galaxy S9 will be able to run anything without a problem. In Antutu, we got a very high score of 240206 which defeated 99% of Antutu users. Yep, that fast.

Software

The Samsung Galaxy S9 runs on Android 8.0 Oreo. The smartphone is swift and buttery smooth and the software that is included are mostly useful and are not cluttered. Apps loads really fast and I still love the animations and the smoothness of the UI of the smartphone.

Camera

The camera of the Samsung Galaxy S9 is insane. It’s the smartphone’s biggest upgrade compared to the predecessor and the Galaxy S9 and S9+ both sports an f/1.5 aperture for lowlight and f/2.4 aperture for bright conditions. Yep, you can change the aperture of the smartphone so you can have better shots depending on the conditions.

Unfortunately, only the Samsung Galaxy S9+ will sport a dual-lens camera that sports optical zooming and live focus while the Samsung Galaxy S9 will just rely on selective focus. Nonetheless, both smartphones have a great camera.

Thanks to its aperture, the Samsung Galaxy S9 can shoot really great bokeh shots and most of the shots that I took using the smartphone were really great. Check out the shots that I took using the smartphone below.

One of its highlighted features is that the Samsung Galaxy S9 can now shoot 960fps slo-mo. It’s better than most smartphones with slomo and with the Samsung Galaxy S9, the 960 slomo works really great as the videos are of great quality and you’re not limited to only 10 seconds.

AR Emoji is also one of the new features that you can only find on the Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+. It’s not as good as the one on the iPhone X but at least with the Galaxy S9, you can create your own emojis and send it to your friends.

Verdict

The Samsung Galaxy S9 is definitely a flagship smartphone to look at. It has a great design, excellent camera, and a powerful hardware inside, however, the Samsung Galaxy S9 now starts at a more expensive price compared to the starting price of last year’s Galaxy S8.

Not only that, if you also want to experience live focus, you’ll have to shell out more for the Galaxy S9+ but if you’re just contented with the single-camera then this one would be enough as the Galaxy S9 is still powerful and still has a great camera but don’t expect the same battery life and performance of the Galaxy S9+.