Gadgetory

and here it is the latest version of the venerated Samsung Galaxy S line hey it's Josh of agarra what's going on everybody and this is the Samsung Galaxy S 9 in this case the s9 + if you had oldness took this phone for the Samsung Galaxy s8 that came before it we actually wouldn't really blame you the glass on glass designed is so common now for samsung devices and really only a couple of elements have changed all of the buttons are done the same places including the bixby button over on the left and as far as the ports in the bottom gulp the headphone jack of course remains the phone does have a little bit more heft to it compared to the previous generation which is nice and the main change that you're going to see is on the s9 plus particularly because on the back you now have a dual end setup and the fingerprint reader is in a much better spot the fingerprint reader is below the camera module now which is the same for either of the devices but of course it's pushed down even more due to the dual end setup of the s9 plus okay there are a couple of caveats I want to give with the design of this device and one of them you're probably expecting already because this is a glass on glass design well you're gonna get fingerprints and smudges on it incredibly easily and this is a phone that I'm constantly having to clean for this very video but another issue did arise and it's with the gorilla glass on the front the very top layer of the Gorilla Glass 5 is already eroding for a phone that's supposed to be really high build quality and has the price point to match it you wouldn't think that this would be a common problem but this is something that I've had happened to a couple of other Samsung devices in the last couple of years but speaking of that screen you still get a beast of a display in the infinity display this Super AMOLED quad HD resolution display with so many features to pack with it there's still that immersive experience with the sides curving downward into the body of the phone but it doesn't bleed all the way down anymore the way it did in the last two generations the reason why is because Samsung didn't want there to be any palm presses anymore so this does minimize that accidental touch the Samsung Galaxy S 9 has a 5.8 inch screen and this s 9 plus has 6.2 inches in its screen which means that there's a lot of screen real estate for work and play and the AMOLED screen provides great vibrance and wonderful colors the saturation is exactly where you might want it to be but of course you can dial that back in the settings and then there's everything else that the screen can do the OS on display is customizable you can put a number of different elements on there including an image that you provide yourself and you're able to get to those in the lock screen menu in the settings underneath that the lock screen can be set to a 15-second video so if you're able to edit it in such a way that it fits perfectly on the vertical screen then you have an even better looking lock screen and something that is incredibly personal and you're still able to enjoy everything from media to work to even gaming on here as I've definitely played my share of games on the galaxy s 9 plus so far and speaking of gaming performance is still where it should be with the best possible specifications that are available right now underneath the hood you have the snapdragon 845 and the galaxy s 9 plus gets the added benefit of 6 gigabytes of RAM over its 64 gigabytes of on-board storage that is expandable with an SD card speaking of the RAM multitasking is still a treat on here there are multiple ways of having more than one application running and you can have plenty of them running in the background but Android or EO is what brings picture-in-picture to here so you can have a YouTube video just floating above your workspace and you can always have that media playing whenever you want so a theme that you're probably familiar with in the review of any galaxy device is the fact that Samsung is really trying to please just about everybody and when you look at the hardware that's certainly the case with the s9 dual stereo speakers certainly bring the volume but the sound is also pretty rich and full thanks to Adobe Atmos certification it certainly passes the shower test and on top of all of that you can actually use this as your Bluetooth speaker in a way because this phone has ip68 certification so it's not going to die under the water but if you want to use headphones the headphone jack still returns and it provides a lot of options inside of the menu you are able to change the sound using equalizers Dolby Atmos enhancements and you're still able to adapt the sound so it will automatically figure out the best way to output that audio and on top of that the phone comes with a gray pair of AKG headphones just like the last couple of iterations you get all of the proper connections on here including NFC for payments for example and of course Bluetooth which provides apdex HD audio support which means that bluetooth streaming on here is going to sound really great and if you have a good pair of bluetooth headphones then you'll be able to enjoy audio coming from this phone wirelessly we already mentioned the fingerprint reader and yes it is in a much better place but so there is also an array of front that allows for other biometric meters two of the main ways of doing that face unlock and the iris scanner have now been put together into what is called the intelligent scan intelligent scan basically means that when you turn on the phone you wake the phone before unlocking it it will scan for your face to begin with and then it will move to an iris scanning if the conditions aren't really met where this makes a lot of senses in low-light situations like at night or right before bed when you want to use your phone but it's not able to recognize your face because it's too dark to do so the infrared light comes on and then it starts scanning for your iris and then it will be able to unlock it fairly quickly after that now as we get into battery life it is important to note that we did not have a galaxy s 9 unit to really test here we had the larger s9 plus that has 3500 million hours in its battery compared to the 3000 in the smaller unit the short story here is that the battery life is exactly where you would expect it to be if nothing exceptional nothing extraordinary here what you can expect is that the phone will last an entire day maybe a day and a half if you don't really use the phone a whole lot but in the days that I have been using the s9 plus I have really put this thing through the ringer now that's considering that the battery was being used not only by having the screen on but also by the camera app and in conjunction I was able to get about three hours of screen on time while running around Casa bio in Barcelona recording everything that you see later in the camera section but on other days when I was doing more media based stuff like watching YouTube and Hulu or doing video calls I was able to get six hours of screen on time which is a little bit more expected for a big battery despite the big screen on this phone now when you do get a little bit low on battery life you can always turn on the power saving modes which not only bring down the clock speed of the processor a bit but the main thing it does is it lowers the resolution of the screen you can get all the way down to HD plus resolution which obviously makes things look a little bit weird but at least you're going to get at least an hour maybe two hours more of battery life depending on your usage and then of course there's the ultra power saver that minimizes the UI and a lot of the features down to just its bare minimum with a few applications like Twitter that you might use if you absolutely need it but thankfully it is easy to charge this phone pretty quickly you're able to get a bit of the battery back in no time at all using the included charger with the full charge maybe taking about 90 minutes there are a number of other ways to fast charge this including fast wireless charging or my favorite power delivery which is the standard built into USB type-c alright so that finally brings us to the main focus no pun intended of Samsung's enhancements to the s9 and the s9 plus that's of course the camera let's start off by doing something kind of fun so here I am coming to you as my AR emoji now this may or may not look like me you can always let me know in the comments down below what AR emojis are basically the way for you to express yourself as a digital avatar this is Samsung's take on the nmo G's from the iOS side of things however what the way that you do this is by detecting your face using either camera and from there it will create a caricature of your face it may or may not be completely accurate that you can then customize with different hairstyles different skin tones different hair colors eyeglasses of some sort and also a few different options for clothing one of the main things that is nice about this emoji is that it provides 18 different gifts that you can use to send to pretty much anybody on any platform so since we're on the topic of self-expression let's talk about the front-facing camera the front-facing camera is an 8 megapixel shooter that is very similar to the one you found in to the previous generation one particular addition is in the form of selfie focus which is its take on the front facing cameras portrait mode you take the picture and then the software will figure out where the cutout is of you and it will be able to blur the background in a nice depth of field or bouquet manner so between that and the AR emoji there are some enhanced Beauty mode features the main one being a co-opting of the big speed a our makeup feature you're basically able to put on a full face of makeup in augmented reality and then just look fabulous when you hit that shutter button and I've mentioned this before but on top of those new enhancements and the auto focus in this a megapixel shooter you're still able to record 2k video on the front which is great for vloggers like myself so the finally brings us to the rear cameras and on the s9 plus like I've mentioned a couple of times already you get the enhancement of a second lens the telephoto lens comes in at F 2.4 aperture and it supplements what enhancements are put into the main shooter the 12 megapixel main Lance with multiframe processing made possible by actual RAM built into the camera module again this is kind of in the same Avenue but still different from the Google pixel - which uses a lot of the same functions but has the ability to use Google photos huge database for that same amount of data processing you're already seeing some great results as I'm talking right now with all of these photos that I took out in Barcelona and also back home but there is a feat of hardware engineering at work here and it's in the form of the dual aperture the 12 megapixel camera now has actual blades in it that can close down the iris 2f 2.4 aperture but that's not the main story the main story is that the wide aperture is at F 1.5 F 1.5 aperture allows for a ton of light to come into the sensor and in low-light situations it is heads and shoulders above anything Samsung has made before but the question remains why would you want to have two different apertures on here well it's basically Samsung's way of undercutting what F 1.5 means yes it does allow for great low-light shots but it also provides very fine focus sometimes you don't want that to be the case especially in broad daylight shots so f 2.4 aperture just undercuts at that little bit so that you don't have too many things just incredibly blurred out in the background but of course you're able to change between these two apertures by going into the pro mode and just swapping the two sightings out anyway so the main lens does a great job and in auto mode that aperture will change without you even knowing it however some extra optimization might still be required when you're using different apertures the rest of the settings have to change accordingly and it seems like this camera app still opts for slower shutter speed over higher ISO and when you do that the slower shutter speed could mean that you have some motion blur in some pictures so the Samsung camera may not be perfect but it does its best to get the job done for just about everybody and if you really want to have every tool possible for your smartphone photography the s9 plus is probably the one you want to look at and that's because the telephoto lens provides something that the s9 proper does not have a proper portrait mode this live focus mode uses both lenses to get a narrow focal length while making it easier for the camera to figure out where the cutout is this is different from the selective focus mode that you only get on the samsung galaxy s 9 where it's software-based and the cutouts on there can be pretty hit or miss just like with the selfie focus on the front-facing camera and finally when it comes to video you have 4k 60 frames per second video capture on the rear which is great to have if you want to have beautiful motion in your videos however when you do the math that 60 frames per second video capture means that you can get 960 frames per second super slow-mo at 720p resolution and in those cases when the moment is tough to capture the camera app can go into an auto mode and tries to figure out when it should trigger the slow-motion capture what's great about this camera is that Samsung found a way to please just about everybody the casual user will really love a are emoji and probably get a kick out of super slow mode but seasoned photographers are going to find ways of exploiting and taking advantage of the dual apertures and overall it just shows that you can get the best of both worlds in the s9 or the s9 plus if you really truly need that zoom capability speaking of trying to please everybody we can finally talk about Samsung's version of Android 8.0 Oreo now 8.1 is where we're at in Oreo right now and it's just not found on this just yet which might mean that Samsung has a bit of an update problem but they don't have a problem when it comes to features because this is still incredibly stacked there are the obvious redundancies with a number of applications developed by Samsung that are pretty much covered by Google anyway like Google Photos or the Samsung gallery I will give the gallery app some credit however because it does come with a couple of extra features not only are you able to change the different ways that you can present the bouquet in the background of a live focused photo but you are also able to create gifts out of it essentially a six-second capture out of any video that can be made into a quick gift big speed is still in that button on the left that you can deactivate you can't really change it to anything else still but Bixby does have a few added features on top that might entice you to use it you're still able to hold it in order to do voice commands but there are some live augmented reality based features that have been added in like live translation and the ability to have live food recognition even if the live food recognition is a bit hit or miss I have to give it some credit because it's really trying even at this bakery I was able to figure out that this was an egg tart even if it thought that my coffee was just a cup of milk and this is all on top of things like the game launcher that provides a do not disturb mode and locks the buttons for example and you'll still have Samsung held Samsung notes and pretty much any other app that you've already seen on the most previous Samsung Galaxy S or Galaxy Note devices even if these redundancies are kind of annoying it is nice to see that if one doesn't work the way you wanted to you still have the option of using the other and so there you have it - the Samsung Galaxy S 9 and the S 9 plus the S 9 and the SN plus are on pre-order right now at prices of 719 and 839 dollars respectively that's a really hefty price point especially for phones that definitely have some quirks but if you had to choose between the two of them I'd actually recommend the galaxy s 9 both are great phones it's just that you get a small bump down in some specifications and if you really want to have them then you can go ahead and pay that extra 120 dollars but a lot of what Samsung put into these phones that is new you get in either phone anyway the AR emojis the dual aperture in the main lens and if you don't need the telephoto lens for things like a proper portrait mode then you don't really have a whole lot enticing you to get the larger less easier to handle and definitely more expensive s9 plus but as is generally the case with samsung galaxy releases they do tend to be the best phone for most people out there and that's because Samsung has this unwavering desire to create phones that appeal to just about everybody and it seems that with the galaxy s 9 and the S 9 plus they've probably succeeded in doing that better than ever before so as always thank you guys very much for watching hope you enjoyed this review of the Samsung Galaxy S 9 plus in particular we'll get our hands on the smaller galaxy s 9 and do some more testing on that but you'll also get a lot more coverage on this Samsung flagship device as we put it head-to-head to other phones in the Android space and potentially against the iPhone 10 in a more comprehensive review we would love to hear what you guys think about the galaxy s 9 and the s 9 plus so make sure you sound off in the comments down below and we will probably respond to some of your comments in a future video where you react to Samsung's newest flagship latest and greatest device so keep it tuned to Android authority for that and even 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