You Tube Reviews 2018 Google 2xl Vs Samsung S9

The Samsung Galaxy S9+ ($839.99 as tested) is the best phone on the market. It hasn't been reinvented from last yr'southward model. At that place's no radical new feature that will transport you running to the store, no change in the game or shift in paradigm. But it has the best screen, the best connectivity, the best speaker, and three of the best cameras available. There's no reason to cast aside your year-one-time smartphone for an S9+, but if you lot're shopping for a new phone, this is the one to become, and our Editors' Choice.

Notation that this is a review of the Galaxy S9+, which we think edges out the Galaxy S9 because it gives you lot dual rear cameras, more than RAM, and a bigger battery. That's a switch from last year, when nosotros preferred the smaller S8 because nosotros didn't experience the S8+ differentiated itself enough.

A Petty Better Every 24-hour interval

The Galaxy S9+ looks a lot similar the Galaxy S8+, to the point that it's difficult to tell them autonomously. Like the S8+, the S9+ is a smoothen phone with curved edges and a screen cascading downward both sides of the curved glass. In that location'due south a lilliputian chip less top and bottom bezel than there was on the previous model. Yeah, in that location's nevertheless a dedicated Bixby button on the left, ready to launch yous into a secondary home screen. Turn the phone over and you'll see a deviation: two cameras instead of one, and a fingerprint scanner below the cameras, rather than next to it.

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That fingerprint scanner location is a fiddling bit of a middle finger to those who complained about the S8'southward scanner, because it'southward non whatsoever better. The S8's scanner required you lot to experience around the back of the phone, possibly putting your finger over the camera lens, and that's still the case. The solution now is merely to slide your finger up from the bottom rather than in from the side.

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The Milky way S9 measures 5.viii past 2.vii by 0.3 inches (HWD) and weighs five.viii ounces. The Galaxy S9+ measures 6.two by 2.ix past 0.3 inches and weighs 6.7 ounces. Both are slightly shorter, wider, and heavier than their predecessors (respectively 5.9 by 2.7 by 0.3 and five.5 ounces, and half dozen.three by 2.ix by 0.three inches and 6.one ounces), only not so much that you find. The S9+ is obviously larger than the S9, but it's narrower than the iPhone viii Plus (3.1 inches), making it easier to hold. The phones come in black, blueish, or regal.

On the bottom, you find the same USB-C port and traditional 3.5mm headphone jack equally on the S8+. The phone comes in 64, 128, and 256GB storage versions, and there'south likewise a microSD carte slot. Information technology supports both fast and wireless charging and it's IP68-certified water resistant. And then far, then much like last year'south phone.

Ultimately, though, everything's a little better. Start with that screen, 6.2 inches on the S9+, and 5.8 inches on the S9. According to Ray Soneira of DisplayMate Labs, it'southward a little brighter, has better automated brightness settings, and has amend colors than last year'due south phones. The well-nigh dramatic new feature is a user-settable white signal—if you think the screen is as well blue, well, you tin can adjust that.

The phone's dual speakers, one in the earpiece and one on the bottom, pump out sound that'due south noticeably louder and more full than the Milky way S8+. We got 90db of pink noise at a 6-inch altitude, as opposed to 83db on a Galaxy S8+. That affects not only media playback, but also the speakerphone. The Galaxy S8+ boasts the all-time call quality in the business organisation; the Galaxy S9+ is just as proficient, and now louder.

Samsung milky way nine pre brief 8

Left to right: Galaxy S9+, Galaxy S9

The telephone supports both vox-over-LTE and Wi-Fi calling, although y'all may need a carrier-specific unit of measurement to get those features. The unlocked model supports Wi-Fi calling on T-Mobile and Sprint, simply you'll need a carrier-branded unit for Wi-Fi calling on AT&T and Verizon.

Hot Fries

The Galaxy S9+ runs Android eight.0 Oreo on the first Snapdragon 845 processor we've seen in the U.s.a.. This model has 6GB of RAM, while the smaller S9 has 4GB. The Snapdragon 845 has four cores running at 2.8GHz and four at ane.7GHz. It doesn't appear to bring massively more CPU power to the table, simply the improvements on graphics, LTE, and Wi-Fi are quite noticeable.

The Snapdragon 845 benchmarks better than any other Android phone; how it compares with the iPhone depends on which benchmark y'all're using. On Geekbench, which focuses on CPU operation, the iPhone Ten beats the S9+ with scores of 4269 single-cadre and 10403 multi-core, compared with the S9+'s 2278 and 8379. But Antutu shows the opposite outcome: the Milky way S9+ got 267,233 compared with the iPhone X'due south 233,592, largely because of a ameliorate 3D operation score. Cantankerous-platform benchmarks are not terribly useful. And on PCMark, well, our score of 7273 is similar to the Pixel ii phones, although it'south noticeably college than the 6800 we got on the Galaxy S8.

PCMark test results

Browser benchmarks show a pocket-size improvement over Snapdragon 835-based phones. Those normally get about 63 to 65 on the Jetstream Javascript benchmark and 250 or and then on Browsermark; here, we got 69.97 on Jetstream and 270 on Browsermark.

Graphics benchmarks comparison the S9+ with other Android phones, though, are heartening. On the GFXBench Car Crash exam, the S9+ got 35fps offscreen, while Snapdragon 835 phones only become 24 to 25 fps. That'southward a really overnice performance bump.

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The telephone has a Category 18 LTE modem that can hitting maximum theoretical speeds of 1.2Gbps, 20 percent faster than the previous generation of high-cease phones. We tested the unlocked variant, and were happy to see that it has all the bands used past each of the US carriers, including (for AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon) the new 5GHz LAA band that recently gave us speeds of over 500Mbps on T-Mobile. The phone has 4x4 MIMO antennas on bands 2, 4, seven, xxx, 41, and 66. (If you're curious about the total LTE ring listing, including roaming bands used mostly in other countries, it'southward 1, 2, 3, four, 5, 7, eight, 12,xiii, eighteen, 19, 20, 25, 26, 38, 39, 40, 41, 46, 66, 71.)

There's skilful news here for all carriers. The phone can support 12 streams of data to previous devices' 10, and can practise 4x4 MIMO on three bands simultaneously compared with the previous devices' two. That means more flexibility to squeeze greater speeds out of each cell site on every carrier.

On AT&T, 4x4 MIMO on Band thirty is new. On Sprint, the S8+ lacks 4x4 MIMO on the critical Band 41, so you'll see much faster speeds on an S9+. On T-Mobile, the S9+ brings in the new rural Band 71 for extended coverage, which isn't on the S8+. The S7 doesn't have either of these features, and no iPhone has them, either. When a carrier SIM is put in the unlocked phone, the phone adapts to whatever that carrier'due south bands and assemblage strategies are.

To examination RF, we brought the S9+ and a Galaxy Notation viii to a T-Mobile cell site of verified quality. We got slightly better signal and latency on the S9+ than on the Note 8. Now, that could be hardware, or it could exist software, and we program to look into this further, only in that location's no question that we're talking pinnacle-of-the-line LTE performance.

We were as well very pleasantly surprised by the S9+'due south stellar Wi-Fi performance when compared with the S8+ on the 5GHz band. In good signal conditions on a 150Mbps symmetrical connection, we got 130 to 150Mbps downwards on the S8+, but only 70 to 80Mbps upwards. On the S9+, we got 135 to 150Mbps upwardly. And as we went farther from the router and through walls, the S8+'due south connexion rust-covered before the S9+'southward did: With a middling link, nosotros got 77Mbps down and 40Mbps up on the S8+, simply still a solid 154Mbps down and 130Mbps upward on the S9+.

As far as battery goes, the S9+ has a 3,500mAh jail cell. It outran our 10-hour streaming YouTube video, with five percentage life, which bodes very well for bombardment life. We'll post more battery results as we run them.

Android-wise, Samsung'south extensions to Google's operating system here are identical to those from last twelvemonth. Beyond the camera modes, which nosotros'll discuss beneath, the S9+ has Samsung's "border" functionality to drag in widgets from the side of the screen, and supports Samsung'southward DeX docking stations to turn the telephone into a desktop PC. Both features are useful, but probably won't be used as frequently as Samsung would similar.

Brighter Vision

The Galaxy S9+ has two primary 12MP cameras, stacked on top of one another on the back. Both the S9 and S9+ have new, dual-aperture lenses that snap from f/2.4 or f/1.5 depending on lighting conditions. At calorie-free levels under 100 lux—basically indoor lighting—they'll pop open to f/1.five, letting more low-cal in. Yous can likewise control the modify manually in the camera'southward Pro mode. You tin actually see the iris open up if yous look closely at the photographic camera.

The front end-facing f/1.vii, 8MP camera is completely identical to the Milky way S8'south in our testing, although it has a new wide selfie mode that combines selfie with a partial panorama, and a software-operated selfie bokeh fashion.

From a hardware perspective, the S9+ delivers on its promises. Its bright lens and sensor deliver images that exceed other smartphones in dim light, and on-sensor autofocus locks onto subjects very speedily. But the software employs some very aggressive sharpening nosotros're non big fans of.

On the S9+, the dual-discontinuity lens is the pinnacle one. The lesser 1 is an f/2.4 lens at 2x zoom. Both accept optical image stabilization. The camera UI is a little slippery and sticky. I'k confident this will get worked out in a firmware update, but scrolling across the different photographic camera modes—Pro, Auto, Slow-mo, etcetera—sometimes jumps ahead and sometimes feels stilted, which is frustrating.

The idea behind the dual-aperture photographic camera choice is simple: crisper images when shooting in bright light with an f/2.4 prime, and lower ISOs in very dim atmospheric condition with f/1.5. An f/1.5 lens captures about 2.half dozen times the light as an f/2.4.

Of class, you'll probable compare it with other handsets every bit opposed to dedicated cameras. The Notation eight sports an f/1.7 prime number, giving the S9+ a more minor xxx percent advantage in gathering light. The iPhone 8, viii Plus, and X have an f/one.viii main lens, which means the S9+ gobbles upwardly about 45 percent more than light. This translates into either a shorter shutter speed, lower ISO, or combination of both when working in dim light. Smartphone photographic camera image quality suffers at high ISO settings, so this is a definite plus when snapping pics of your dinner in a fancy restaurant, or a shot of your bestie at the trendiest cocktail lounge in town.

A brighter lens is great, but due to some software choices by Samsung, the bodily results are mixed. At its default, JPG output setting images are significantly oversharpened. Close exam shows odd artifacts, especially in loftier-contrast areas—say a nighttime object against a vivid heaven, a mutual situation in mural and architectural photography. Fifty-fifty when viewed at screen resolution y'all can encounter modest halos in these areas. This is fixable in software.

It's not a problem with the sensor. We looked at Raw photos too and they look great. Take a wait at the comparison above, at a pixel level, with the JPG output at the left, a mostly untouched Raw in the centre (we dialed downwards the exposure by a half-stop to better friction match the JPG), and a Raw processed to taste (+25 Contrast, -40 Highlights, +35 Shadows, -25 Blacks, and +xv Clarity) in Lightroom at the far right. You lot can definitely get more natural photos, with crisp lines and without the too-sharp look, with a little chip of processing.

The effect is more pronounced at lower ISO settings. Every bit we move to the high ISO range—the S9+ tin be set manually up to ISO 800—nosotros see how the sharpened images, coupled with improvements in the underlying sensor technology, actually deliver more item than the cameras from the S8+/Note 8 and iPhone viii/Plus/X. But it's not but the JPG engine that's doing it—the Raw sensor output from the S9+ shows more detail and less dissonance at ISO 800 than the Annotation 8 or iPhone 8 Plus chief cameras—which means information technology's also better than those phones in dim light.

While the S9's hardware is meliorate than any competing phone, Samsung's software choices in JPG encoding mean the JPG output from competing phones, including Samsung'due south own Annotation 8 and S8, the Google Pixel 2 Forty, and this yr'due south iPhones, all look more natural. We've include a side-past-side comparing of an image of the same subject above, with the S8+ on the left and S9+ on the right (click for a larger version). Even at screen resolution the difference is clear—the S8+ captures a ton of detail, simply does so without showing unnatural edges. The S9 is crisper than real life, like it's pushing a clarity aligning slider all the way to the correct.

Luckily, serious smartphone photgraphers can get around this. Yous tin shoot in Raw and process photos using a telephone or desktop app—I'm a big fan of the film looks offered by VSCO, which is bachelor for Android, just there are dozens of options out there. Or you can tune the JPG output in the Pro camera fashion to one of several preset looks: Breezy, Bright, Nostalgic, Soft, and Serene. Breezy is closer to what Samsung did with the S8 and Note 8 in color tone, but still a bit too sharpened. Nostalgic, Soft, and Serene dial it way back, but they're more special effect than an everyday shooting look.

Videos are nicely optically stabilized, both at 1x and 2x, in upward to 4K at 60 frames per second. The device doesn't capture 4K HDR, though, and 4K60 capture is express to five minutes per video.

Samsung besides put retentiveness right under the prototype sensor, the same way Sony has, to enable 960fps slow-motion. The GS9+ can capture upward to 20, 0.2-2d clips at that super-dull-mo level; it needs a moment to flush the memory buffer out after each clip. Because information technology'southward really difficult to estimate which 0.ii-2nd you're going to want, the photographic camera also has an motorcar-detect style where it starts recording normal video, then kicks into super-slow-mo when information technology detects motion in the frame. The super-slo-mo prune becomes a short video, merely the GS9 also creates three 4MB highlight GIFs that have much smaller file sizes than the video, and are easier to share. That'south some pretty nifty handholding for anyone who wants to post their slow-mo quickly to social networks.

I popped some balloons in slow-mo, and it worked fine. One thing to be aware of, though, is that the super-deadening-mo mode only records at 720p, and the images tin be very soft in indoor lighting. The more than low-cal yous have at this speed, the better.

The Uncanny Emoji Valley

Samsung'south AR Emoji are a cross between Apple'south animoji, which I haven't seen in the wild for months, and the cartoonish Bitmoji, which are a hideous plague on the net. The idea is that they construct a custom cartoon grapheme from your face that tin lucifer your facial movements for photos and videos. The characters, though, live firmly in the uncanny valley, that creepy land of somewhat-realistic dolls and zombie creatures that brand you lot wince, not laugh.

When I created a character for myself, it initially didn't look at all similar me because it had the wrong hair and no spectacles. Tweaking the hair color, skin tone, and glasses helped a lot, but the animation nonetheless floated in that creepy realm between cartoonish and photorealistic. After thinking on information technology for a while, the trouble wasn't that the face didn't await like me—it's that the slight slackness and lag of the motion capture created the trouble. That's office of why Apple'due south Animoji are all cartoon characters, which you don't expect homo expressions from.

After getting over the initial shock, I realized that the AR Emoji aren't bad at all when they're turned into GIF stickers. The phone auto-generates a range of GIFs from your image, and while they're ridiculous, they aren't agonizing, as yous tin run into hither.

You can too use the S9's motion capture prowess with iii cartoon characters and a diversity of Snapchat-like masks for your selfies. They all move a little stiffly, because the S9 doesn't have the 3D face-tracking photographic camera the iPhone Ten has on its front. Branded Disney characters are coming, Samsung says, but the animations will take to get more fluid and mobile to be compelling.

Samsung's software story continues in the S9's new Bixby camera modes. Bixby is Samsung's take hold of-all term for AI software features. Information technology'southward a voice banana, an extra habitation screen with informational widgets, and a agglomeration of intelligent camera modes. On the S8+, Bixby'south photographic camera modes identifies vino bottles and other products, reads QR codes, and translates languages. On the S9+, you tin can count the calories in food and shop for makeup by putting it on your face as a Snapchat-fashion filter.

The camera modes' quality varies, but they all feel like gimmicks yous'll speedily forget nigh. Unfortunately, the most useful one, linguistic communication translation, doesn't work well on many languages. Information technology gave me a sense of Castilian and French in tests, simply totally failed on Bengali, Hebrew, and Russian, even though it says it supports those languages. The calorie counter mode is an awesome party play a trick on and works surprisingly well, but it's of limited utility. Ultimately, in that location's just cipher in Bixby that would make you buy a telephone, and picayune that is better than a combination of Google Banana and some tertiary-party apps like Microsoft Translate or Bitesnap.

Comparisons and Conclusions

I don't think the past 12 months brand a cracking innovation twelvemonth for smartphones. That doesn't mean nosotros're seeing bad phones, it just means nosotros aren't seeing game-changing phones. With in-display fingerprint sensors coming at the end of 2018 and 5G networks coming at the kickoff of 2019, we're going to see some existent innovation soon. For now, the S9+ just makes everything a trivial bit improve.

It brings yous dual cameras, a big bombardment, and lots of retention for $839.99 unlocked. We think that's worth paying $120 more than than you will for the smaller S9, and it'due south less than you'll pay for the Galaxy Note eight or the iPhone X. Wireless carriers are charging more for this phone, just unless you demand Wi-Fi calling on AT&T or Verizon, you should get the unlocked model—information technology has no bloatware, better resale value, and supports all US carrier bands.

This is an excellent phone, if an emotionally unexciting ane. It's our Editors' Choice considering information technology's the best at almost everything that other Android phones do, and not far from the best at the residue (by and large, camera JPEG encoding).

If you accept a Milky way S8, it's hard for me to argue that you toss away information technology away for a collection of meaningful but largely incremental improvements. If you have a Galaxy S7 or S6, on the other mitt, this is a major upgrade, especially in terms of connecting to your carrier's fastest network. Compared with the Note viii, get the Note if you're going to apply the pen. Get an S9+ if you aren't.

The S9+ doesn't change the "iPhone or Android?" calculus much. It puts the Galaxy line on par with the iPhone 8 Plus in terms of having dual cameras, but the song remains the same. I prefer the Galaxy line over iPhones right now because they accept better radios, a existent headphone jack, and what I think is a more than attractive form cistron, and the more I look at the iPhone X notch, the more than I don't similar information technology. A lot of people still honey iOS for its elegant 3rd-party applications and Apple's absolutely unmatched network of high-quality service and support. They're not wrong.

Other Android smartphones can absolutely bring a quality experience for less money. They're too not quite as proficient. The Google Pixel 2 Twoscore, for instance, lacks the GS9+'s secondary camera, has a slightly slower processor, a slower modem, and doesn't have as gorgeous a screen. Information technology does, even so, encode better JPEGs.

The Galaxy S9+ is the top of smartphone innovation correct now. Like the Galaxy S8 did last year, it sets the bar for smartphone quality, and it'southward going to brand life difficult for companies like Motorola and Sony that are also trying to sell $700+ smartphones. If you need a phone, price is no object, yous aren't going to use a pen, and aren't set on an iPhone, this is the one for you lot.

Jim Fisher contributed to this review.

Samsung Galaxy S9+

Cons

The Bottom Line

It'southward not revolutionary, but the Samsung Galaxy S9+ sets the bar for smartphones in 2018, with the all-time hardware features yous tin go.

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Source: https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/samsung-galaxy-s9-plus

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