Verdict
Following on from the S8, the Samsung Galaxy S9 seemed to be a case of Samsung playing it safe, with not enough changes for our liking to make this a truly stand-out phone. With the launch of the Galaxy S10, the S9 has to be re-evaluated, particularly as its price has dropped. Now, with many similar features to the S10, including the high-quality OLED display and fantastic camera, the S9 is now a great alternative choice for people that want flagship specs but at a lower price, making it arguably a better choice today than it was at launch.
Pros
- Fantastic display
- Feels great
- Much improved speakers
Cons
- Average battery life
- Dual-sensor only on Plus model
- Some lag with Samsung’s software
Key Features
-
Review Price:
£739
-
5.8-inch OLED quad HD+ Infinity Display
-
Snapdragon 845/Exynos 9810
-
4GB RAM & 64GB/256GB storage + microSD up to 400GB
-
12 megapixel single rear camera with mechanical variable aperture of both f/2.4 and f/1.5
-
8MP front camera with f/1.7 aperture
-
Super slow-motion 960fps video in HD
-
163g
-
Dolby Atmos support
-
3000 mAh battery, wireless fast charge
What is the Samsung Galaxy S9?
When the Samsung Galaxy S9 was first released, I didn’t think that it made much progress over the Galaxy S8, but today we have to look at it in a different light. While the Samsung Galaxy S10 is clearly the better handset, with Samsung making big strides forward and adding new features, price has to be taken into account, with the S9 a far cheaper handset. There’s also the rumoured upcoming Samsung Galaxy S20 and Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra – both of which look set to be announced on February 11.
Related: Samsung Galaxy S10 vs S9
Samsung Galaxy S9 – Design
With the 2017 Galaxy S8, Samsung introduced a shift in phone design that followed through market-wide. A big bezel was out, to be replaced by a larger screen that pushed right to the edges. It was a much-needed change in a market where phones had started to feel stale.
Related: Samsung Galaxy Watch Active review
The Galaxy S9 retains this familiar overall look, which is hardly something to complain about when you consider that, a couple of years on, the S8 is still one of slickest phones around.
The S9 sees the bezel thickness above and below the display reduce further. In addition, the fingerprint scanner has been moved to a more suitable location beneath the camera, rather than being tucked tightly beside it. However, it still feels a tad on the small side, and there’s noticeable lag as it jumps you to the homescreen.
The metal and glass body retains its curved display, IP68 water-resistance rating and microSD card slot. The aluminium rim has been strengthened and the Gorilla Glass 5 coating the screen has been thickened. As someone who smashed a Galaxy S8 after knocking it off a bed onto a carpeted floor, this is a welcome upgrade.
Related: Best smartphones
You’ll find a dedicated Bixby button below the volume rocker, with the lock-switch on the other side. I dislike the fact that the extra button can only be used with a virtual assistant – I turned it off completely after a day of use – but Bixby remains a huge push for Samsung and, hopefully, it might get a bit better when version 2.0 hits later in the year.
Having used both the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus, I much prefer the smaller model over its larger brother. I think the 5.8-inch display is big enough, while the phone itself is perfectly sized to use in one hand. There are lots of Android phones that are bigger than this, but the S9 sets itself apart by fitting all the high-end specs into something a little smaller.
Read our Samsung Galaxy S10 review
Samsung Galaxy S9 – Screen
Like all of Samsung’s recent flagships, the S9’s display draws you in instantly with its rich colours and fantastic contrast. It’s still a slightly curved 5.8-inch AMOLED quad-HD+ panel, and even though little has changed aside from a slight bump in brightness, it’s one of the best displays I’ve seen.
What impresses most about the screen is the customisation options on offer. In its default ‘Adaptive’ mode colours are saturated and rich, with a dominant blue hue – personally, I find this slightly too much. Switch to DCI-P3 colour gamut covering ‘AMOLED cinema’ mode and everything feels easier on the eyes. It’s even possible to customise the colours, reducing the amount of blue, green and red.
Related: What is HDR?
Related: OnePlus 6T Review
There’s full support for mobile HDR10 and the S9 can stream HDR content from sources such as Netflix and Amazon Prime. This provides movies and TV shows with better contrast and enables them to use a wider gamut of colours. Watch a programme that features numerous dark scenes, such as Altered Carbon, and you’ll notice the difference right away. This is far from the first phone to boast HDR support, but I haven’t yet seen a phone display it as well.
A blue light filter mode makes this super-bright screen much better for viewing before you sleep by turning everything orange. This can be scheduled to automatically turn on each night.
Viewing angles are good, as is outdoor visibility, but you’ll notice a slight blue shift along the curved edges of the display. This is one of the downsides of OLED; you’ll see it on most phones using the tech. Samsung’s displays do deal with the issue far better than those produced by LG – and used on the Google Pixel 2 – and you’ll really only notice the blue if you go looking for it.
Samsung Galaxy S9 – Performance
The Samsung Galaxy S9 is a very fast phone, churning through everything I could throw at it with minimal fuss. For a phone that costs £739/$739 this shouldn’t be a surprise, and you’ll find phones that feel just a fast for a lot less money.
At the phone’s heart is either a Snapdragon 845 or Exynos 9810 (which will change depending on your region; us Brits will get the latter and that’s the version I’ve been using for this review) but, whichever version you get, expect them to function similarly. Aside from the typical speed-boosts to the GPU and CPU, the new SoCs can handle new features such as improved facial recognition and the 960fps slow-motion video recording.
Related: Samsung S9
Accompanying the chip is 4GB of RAM – 2GB RAM less than the S9 Plus variant. It’s odd that Samsung isn’t keeping parity between the devices, but don’t let this tempt you into splashing out on the bigger model. I didn’t notice any real difference in RAM-heavy areas; my only issue would be how it holds up after a few months of use.
In terms of benchmarks in our usual test apps, there’s a bump over the Snapdragon 835/Exynos 8890, but the Galaxy S9 can’t match the iPhone 8 or iPhone X for numbers. See the benchmark table below for the full scores.
| Single-Core | Multi-Core | AnTuTu 7 | |
| Galaxy S9 | 3690 | 8757 | 251,205 |
| Pixel 2 | 1917 | 6312 | 184,336 |
| iPhone X | 4257 | 10364 | 235,607 |
| Galaxy S8 | 2013 | 6659 | 174,439 |
Benchmarks are handy for providing a general overview of performance, but I’m more concerned about real-world usage. I didn’t notice a huge difference between the Galaxy S9 and S8, with apps opening quickly and games playing without lag or dropped frames. Even Google Play titles I’d consider as being power-intensive – Asphalt 8, Hitman Sniper – run perfectly. There’s so much power available here that it would be good to see app devs make more use of it.
Things don’t run perfectly all of the time, however. Like I mentioned in the Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus review, there are certain areas where lag is common and highly irritating. Bixby, for example, judders when you swipe to its homescreen and some of Samsung’s own apps feel sluggish.
A big complaint levelled at Samsung phones in previous years has been their poor speakers. The down-firing mono speaker that sat along the bottom edge of the Galaxy S8 was awful – thankfully, it’s a better story here.
The speaker at the bottom remains, but there’s now one at the top too. The audio has been tuned by AKG and supports a form of Dolby Atmos. Atmos is a technology that’s normally employed in a room with supported speakers positioned above you, offering an immersive experience when you’re watching a film.
On the Galaxy S9 it’s more a software boost, a button you press to simulate a 360-degree sound, rather than actually supporting Atmos content. It sounds okay and there’s a volume-boost when you enable the mode from the quick-settings bar, but it feels very artificial.
The sound can still distort at high volumes, plus it sounds better when playing videos than it does for music – but I will take it.
Call quality is fantastic and comfortably better than the iPhone X, with strong signal both on 4G and Wi-Fi. There’s also support for 1Gbps LTE download speeds (where available) and Bluetooth 5, and storage starts at 64GB – although this can be increased through a microSD card.
Samsung Galaxy S9 – Software
In the same way that little has changed in the way the Galaxy S9 works over its predecessor, the same is true when of Samsung’s software too. It’s still slickly designed, offering attractive icons and fluid movement between your app drawer and notifications panel, but it’s very different to the way Google envisions Android.
Duplicate apps are a big problem: there are two browsers, galleries, email clients and app stores. Of those I’d say it’s only the browser that’s better than the Google alternative – it’s surprisingly fantastic thanks to extension support and a night reading mode.
You can disable and hide some of these apps, but very few can be completely removed from the device. The same can be said of Samsung’s virtual assistant, Bixby; it can be switched off, but the button that launches it can’t be remapped to another function.
Bixby wasn’t particularly impressive when it launched with the Galaxy S8 and very little has changed here. There’s now voice support for asking basic questions, but try anything remotely taxing and Bixby will fail. Even basic questions such as ��What’s the weather like today?’ are often met with no response. Samsung teased the launch of Bixby 2.0 later in the year, so hopefully things will improve.
However, where Samsung’s software does impress is in the customisation options available. I like being able to tweak performance and the resolution of the display (which is 1080p by default) to stretch the battery further, and having proper control over the screen calibration is fantastic. Samsung’s general battery-saver modes are also some of the best on any phone.
There are plenty of security options, too. There’s the ability to have duplicate messaging apps if you use the phone for work, and a great Secure Folder for private files. These kind of features just don’t exist in vanilla Android.
Samsung’s Health app remains too, and there’s still a handy heart-rate sensor on the back. I tested the HRM against an Apple Watch and a Fitbit, and while the results weren’t quite as accurate as those dedicated bands, they weren’t far off. You can also log the food you eat through the Health app – I took a picture of a Reuben sandwich, which it correctly identified – and your blood oxygen levels too.
Instead of going all-in on facial recognition as Apple has done, the Galaxy S9 sticks to iris and facial-scanning alongside the fingerprint scanner. They work well, but they don’t feel as polished as Apple’s effort. I often encountered a judder as the lockscreen scanned my face; a bright red beam shines out in a distracting way. A new ‘Intelligent Scan’ feature combines facial and iris scanning together, and will defer to you face if it can’t match your iris.
Samsung Galaxy S9 – Camera
The biggest area of innovation in the Samsung Galaxy S9 is the camera. It’s the only feature of the Galaxy S9 that genuinely feels new and unique.
Instead of having a fixed aperture lens, as is the case with pretty much every other phone camera, the S9 can shift between f/2.4 and f/1.5, providing ideal optics for both day and night photography. If it’s bright outside, it will shoot at f/2.4; when there’s less light available, the lens will widen and utilise f/1.5 to let in more light.
Related: Best Samsung Galaxy S9 deals
If you stick to the default ‘Auto’ mode then you’ll likely never notice the aperture shift (aside from in the results, hopefully), but you’ll have more granular control if you switch to ‘Pro’. Here you can manually change between the two apertures, while also being able to tinker with exposure and white balance. If you look closely at the camera then you’ll be able to see the lens closing and widening when you flick between the available apertures – it’s pretty cool.
Software-based variable apertures have featured on phones such as Huawei and Honor before, but they’ve essentially been ‘bokeh’ filters that give an artificial look to photos. It’s important not to confuse those with what Samsung is doing here.
Aside from the variable aperture, the camera features a single 12-megapixel sensor, some added memory and OIS. That extra memory lets the camera capture multiple shots every time you shoot and it will combine the shots together without you even noticing.
Low-light shots taken with the f/1.5 option are certainly bright, and it’s possible to achieve superb shots in situations that phone cameras would normally struggle. The photos I took in dimly-lit restaurants and bars looked much better than those taken with any other phone, but zoom in on the image and you’ll notice lots of smooth edges. Portraits taken in poor light again appear super-bright, although skin looks pasty and the detail breaks down on closer inspection.
Most handsets, especially models at this price, can take excellent daylight shots – and the Samsung Galaxy S9 is no exception. Photos are detailed and colourful, noticeably more exposed than both the Pixel 2 and iPhone X, with good contrast and dynamic range. Samsung does seem to do far more post-processing on its images than others, and as a result colours can sometimes look a bit off. I’d assume this is to make the photos look more pleasing to the eye – and they do look great on Samsung’s calibrated screen. View them elsewhere, though, and they lose a bit of that vibrancy.
In my opinion, the Google Pixel 2 takes better shots overall, as does the Huawei P20 Pro. They deal with dynamic-range better and manages to retain plenty of detail when you zoom in. Nevertheless, I doubt anyone will be unhappy with the pictures produced by the Galaxy S9.
Another big new camera feature is super slow-motion recording – a feature you might remember from the Sony Xperia line. This lets you shoot a 0.2-second burst of 960fps footage and stretch it out to 6 seconds. When you find the perfect scene to shoot, the results are very cool – but not everything looks good slowed down to this rate. Water and falling liquid is a real winner; shooting cars not so much. It’s also important to have good lighting and to remember the camera will record only in 720p – both of which will impact your footage.
A new AR Emoji feature appears to be Samsung’s response to Apple’s Animoji. These AR faces look a little more like Bitmoji with a human touch than typical emoji, but like Apple’s feature they map your face with the 8-megapixel selfie camera and replicate your movements on-screen. In my opinion this is nothing but a gimmick, which produces pretty creepy-looking results.
Related: Best smartphones
The one slight disappointment with regards to the camera is that the Galaxy S9 Plus is the only one of the duo to receive the secondary telephoto lens first seen on the Note 8. This, along with the Live Focus capabilities and portrait modes it brings, would have been welcome on the smaller device too. I can see Samsung’s thinking here: Apple restricted its dual sensors to the Plus versions of the iPhone. Nevertheless, this changed with the iPhone X, and the Galaxy S9 needs to compete with that.
There is a software-based ‘selective focus’ mode for faux bokeh effects, but the results are poor. It’s also possible to get that blurry depth-of-field effect by manually widening the aperture before taking a portrait. The difference isn’t quite as pronounced, but it does work.
Samsung Galaxy S9 – Battery Life
Battery life on the Samsung Galaxy S9 is almost exactly the same as last year’s S8. Even with the switch to a more efficient mobile chip, it’s a shame Samsung hasn’t really been able to squeeze any more juice from the 3000mAh battery.
It’s also a shame that battery size hasn’t increased, especially since it now has a more power-hungry screen to deal with.
Obviously, battery life will vary wildly depending on your usage, but unless you’re a really light user, you’ll be unlikely to make it through the day without a degree of battery-anxiety. During the review period I normally found myself reaching for a charger by around 8pm.
Related: Best Android phones
It’s worth noting that there are lots of features on the Galaxy S9 that can be a drain on the battery.The Video Enhancer mode boosts the brightness of the display to create a faux-HDR effect when using apps such as YouTube, Netflix or Google Play Movies. With this on, however, an hour of video-watching depletes the cell by nearly 20%.
Related: What is HDR?
If you want to eke out more juice then you’d be wise to reduce the resolution of the display or limit performance. There are some fantastic power-saving modes on offer, which make a real difference to power consumption, if you can live with the sacrifices. Conversely, juggling with these modes can make it appear that you’re not getting the most out of such a powerful device.
Charging the Galaxy S9 is via the USB-C port, or through a Qi/PMA wireless charging pad. Samsung’s own fast-charging is supported – both wired and wirelessly – but you’ll always get the fastest speeds through a cable.
Why buy the Samsung Galaxy S9?
The Samsung Galaxy S9 ticks most of the boxes with regards to what most folk want in a phone: good camera, attractive design, stunning screen and plenty of interesting features to play with.
Yet it feels like Samsung could have done more. I’m not talking about another complete redesign – that was never going to happen – but with the iPhone X being such a radical departure for Apple, and the Pixel 2 having such an amazing camera, it feels like Samsung has played it safe.
Samsung seemed to think so, too, with the Galaxy S10 changing a lot from the S9. In that regard, the newer Galaxy S10 is the better phone and, if you’re after a flagship, then it’s the model to buy. While the Galaxy S9 wasn’t an exciting phone on launch, age has meant that its price has dropped, and the S9 is now a good-value alternative to the S10 offering many similar features at a more wallet-friendly price.
How we test phones
We test every mobile phone we review thoroughly. We use industry standard tests to compare features properly and we use the phone as our main device over the review period. We’ll always tell you what we find and we never, ever, accept money to review a product.
- Used as our main phone for the review period
- Reviewed using respected industry benchmarks and real world testing
- Always has a SIM card installed
- Tested with phone calls, games and popular apps
Trusted Score
Score in detail
-
Performance 8
-
Design 9
-
Battery Life 7
-
Value 7
-
Software 8
-
Calls Sound 8
-
Screen Quality 10
