Samsung Galaxy S9+ first look

Samsung Galaxy S9+ hands-on: Dual cameras, variable aperture and Dolby Atmos speakers make this a beast

Improving on an already near-perfect phone was always going to be hard for Samsung, but the S9+ manages to take the criticisms about our favourite phone of 2017 and fix the problems. It doesn’t alter the design much, but this is still a phone that’ll comfortably go toe to toe with the iPhone X, Google Pixel 2 and anything else its competitors have to offer.

On the surface the Galaxy S9+ looks very much like its predecessor: curvy, built from metal and glass and lovely to hold. The design might be a year old, but it felt so modern then and it feels equally so now. The display remains at 6.2-inches with curved edges and a quad-HD+ resolution. It’s one of the best displays out there without a doubt, and is a real advert for why OLED is so great.

A design change you’ll notice if you used the Galaxy S8 for any length of time is the repositioned fingerprint sensor. Instead of being stuck ridiculously close to the side of the camera sensor, it’s now spaced a bit more thoughtfully below. I’d still like the sensor itself to be bigger and easier to hit, but that’s a minor quibble.
Another fix to one of the S8’s least successful features comes in the form of completely new speakers. Rather than a single speaker sitting on the bottom, there are two of them and they fire the sound at you. The difference is noticeable as soon as you play some music or a YouTube video, and it’s miles better. The audio has been tuned by AKG and the speakers support a form of Dolby Atmos. Samsung said that even media not built for Atmos will still see the benefit, in a similar way to its SDR-to-HDR upscaling.

You’d be forgiven for thinking the focus on the speakers was to make up for the death of the headphone jack, a move taken by nearly every other manufacturer. However in Samsung’s case it’s not, with the 3.5mm jack still sitting proudly next to the USB-C port on the bottom. Having used an iPhone X since launch, I’ve gotten used to finding ways to live with the limited ports, but it’s refreshing to see Samsung keep it. Though I suspect it’ll be the last year it’s a feature on the S series.
So those are the bits that Samsung really needed to address with the S9+, but what about that features that were pretty good already? The camera on the S8 was, and still is, great – but it’s not quite up there with the iPhone X and Google Pixel 2. I’ve got a feeling though that the updates here could once again see Samsung take the smartphone photography crown. 

Instead of having a fixed aperture on the lens, the S9+’s 12-megapixel camera can move between f/2.4 and f/1.5 – giving you ideal optics for both day and night. When the light is good outside it’ll shoot at f/2.4, but when the sun goes down or you’re inside it will widen and utilise f/1.5. That wider aperture lets more light into the lens, helping to give you a sharper photo in return.

We’ve seen software-based ‘variable apertures’ on phones before – both Huawei and Honor push it heavily – but this is the first time in a phone where the lens actually mechanically shifts, rather than being just a ‘bokeh’ filter for emulating shallow depth of field. If this mechanical variable aperture works as well as Samsung’s staged demos suggested, then this could be the phone to beat for low-light snaps.

If you plump for the Galaxy S9+ model over its smaller sibling then you’ll also benefit from a secondary telephoto lens. This works just like it did in the Note 8, giving you 2x optical zoom without losing any detail. Like the main lens it has OIS, but you won’t benefit from the clever aperture-shifting stuff here.
Samsung has also followed Sony’s lead and added in a new super-slow-motion video mode. This lets you shoot very short (less than a second) clips at 960fps in HD resolution. Where Samsung has Sony beat is that, instead of forcing you to hit the shutter button at the exact moment something slow-mo-worthy happens, the S9+ will automatically detect movement and capture it at just the right time. Regular video can also now be shot at 4K60, too.
Around the front is an 8-megapixel selfie shooter which powers one of the S9’s more, well, gimmicky additions. Apple has its Animoji and Samsung now has AR emoji, and really I don’t know if there’s anything else that needs to be said. These work by scanning your face, turning you into a cartoonish-looking character and giving you 18 different expressions to play with. Samsung has built the best support for these into its own keyboard, but you can use them in different apps like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.

It almost seems like the internal specs are becoming less and less important in a phone, as how well they run largely depends on the software. Samsung’s UI is built atop Android 8.0 Oreo, while there’s 6GB of RAM and either a Snapdragon 845 or Exynos 9810. They’re fast, brand-new mobile silicon, but how well they perform depends on how well optimised the software is. The S8 was blazingly quick to begin with, but within a few months it was hanging and lagging. I’ve got my fingers crossed that doesn’t happen again. A 256GB storage option joins the previous 64GB model, though the microSD card slot is, of course, still here.

First impressions

As familiar as the Galaxy S9+ feels the first time you pick it up, it’s hard to knock anything about Samsung’s new flagship. The changes feel so well thought out.
The camera has the potential to usher in a new generation of mobile photography – even if I’d foolishly thought it couldn’t get any better after the Pixel 2.
The Samsung Galaxy S9+ is available to pre-order now, with prices starting £869.
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