Last year, Samsung walked out of the ashes of the Note 7 debacleand launched the Galaxy S8, which was one of the best phones of 2017 and one of the best products Samsung ever made. So it’s not much of a surprise that this year’s Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus, which will be available for preorder on March 2nd and arrive in stores on March 16th, aren’t hugely different from the S8 phones.
In fact, the Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus are so similar to their predecessors that on passing glance, they look and feel exactly the same. The S9 pair maintain the S8’s attractive and efficient design, with extra tall 18.5:9 screens, curved sides, and glass front and backs. The 5.8-inch (S9) and 6.2-inch (S9 Plus) screens are the same Super AMOLED panels with 2960 x 1440 pixel resolutions, though Samsung says they are slightly brighter this year. Also interesting, though the phones look and feel the same as last year’s models, they have slightly different dimensions and weigh a little more, so don’t expect to be able to use an S8 case on an S9.
The other reason you won’t be able to reuse cases is the one major exterior change: Samsung moved the fingerprint scanner from the right of the camera to below it, which should make it much easier to use, especially on the larger S9 Plus. Though it’s not an in-screen fingerprint scanner, as some might have hoped for, it will likely be a noticeable improvement over the old design. Otherwise, the button layout (including the dreaded Bixby button) and other hardware features, such as the 3.5mm headphone jack, remain the same as before. You won’t see the difference with the S9’s new speakers, which now produce stereo sound and are 40 percent louder, according to Samsung, but you’ll sure be able to hear them.
If you’ve been following the numerous leaks of the S9 ahead of today’s official announcement, none of the following will be a surprise, but I’ll confirm the specs for you here: the S9 runs Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845 processor (in North America, other markets can expect to see Samsung’s latest Exynos processor); has either 4GB (S9) or 6GB (S9 Plus) of RAM; comes with 64GB of storage and support for microSD cards; has a 3,000mAh (S9) or 3,500mAh (S9 Plus) battery; is IP68 dust and water resistant; and supports both fast wired and fast wireless charging. Like the S8, the S9 is a gigabit phone, but this year it can support speeds up to 1.2Gbps and supports 600MHz frequencies for T-Mobile.
The big, highlight new feature is the S9’s new camera system, which comes as a single lens on the S9 and a dual camera on the S9 Plus. The new camera is Samsung’s first with a mechanically adjustable aperture (not counting the China-only flip phone launched late last year), which can switch between a very bright f/1.5 to a smaller f/2.4 depending on exposure conditions. The bright aperture lets in 28 percent more light than the S8’s f/1.7 lens, and the f/2.4 aperture is said to help prevent overexposure in bright scenes, such as a sunny outdoor day. The camera app is able to switch between the apertures as necessary, or you can manually control them using the pro mode in the app. Of note: the aperture can switch between f/1.5 and f/2.4, but cannot be set to values in between. Still, two aperture options are basically twice as many as you get with any other phone.