A VERY Different Galaxy S9/S9+ Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,776 words · ~8 min read
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this is a look at my morning with the samsung galaxy s9
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i wake up very good time am i always on OLED
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display and hit the snooze button
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just like i did with my s8
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i eat breakfast and read the news silently appreciating the tall 18 and a
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half by nine aspect ratio just left by good with my ass right
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i grabbed my keys and jacket and asked bixby what my schedule for the
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day oh man no no i'm just kidding about that
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last one but but but seriously as someone who legitimately loves the
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galaxy s8 what exactly do the s9 and the s9 plus
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apparent carbon copies of the last gen
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really change and does any of it matter
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let's find out after i tell you today's video is
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okay so
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here are the improvements to the s9 family on paper
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you get a faster octocore processor of the snapdragon or exynos variety
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depending on your region some more memory but only on the plus a brighter
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screen a bump to maximum cellular data rates and a camera with two yes two
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aperture sizes and then all of this other stuff is
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basically the same with some of it like thickness appearing to get worse
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so this means by my calculations here the days of
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big generational improvements to cell phones
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these are officially over however
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unlike a lot of the tech press i am not going to crucify samsung over
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this the s8 and the s8 plus are a year
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old now and still competitive with much newer devices like
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the 5t from no longer that budget brand oneplus even
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if the pixel 2 and the iphone 10 have edged them out in dxomark and besides
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while the improvements are small a lot of them are pretty meaningful
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so in order of importance to me personally one the audio setup is great
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and i'm sure there are discerning audiophiles out there who take exception
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to samsung's choice of dac but as far as
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i'm concerned the retention of the headphone jack at all and the inclusion
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of an amplified earphone speaker that gives me stereo sound on the better than
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ever OLED super wide display make the s9
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and especially the plus variant the ideal movie watching phones period
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second and this is a close second is the camera even if
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in practical terms the difference between f 1.5 and f 2.4 physical
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apertures is less than it sounds like
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with how wide the main shooter's lens is you're not gonna suddenly see like a
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huge difference in true boca past you
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know six inches away like you would on a real dslr you're still relying on
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software selective focus on the s9 and
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dual capture with processing on the s9 plus which is better than this one but
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still has issues with that said it is
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still more than a full stop meaning that at
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1.5 a lot more light hits the sensor
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physically while at 2.4 the image should
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be sharper letting samsung in theory have their cake and eat it too
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now subjectively the pixel 2 xl's color processing looks more true to life to me
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here here here here and
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well in most situations but
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this is a characteristic of the samsung camera experience that i've mostly come
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to accept especially if i get something worthwhile back in exchange and i do
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this challenging high contrast shot in direct sunlight reveals that one
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modern phone cameras are getting really good across the board and two that when
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we do pixel peep the s9 whether you love
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or hate their more aggressive sharpening filter captures more detail
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and in this shot of my cat sleeping next to me in bed the iphone 10 holds up
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reasonably well but the pixel 2 gets curb stomped i mean for some of you this
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is probably a meaningless edge case but i'm not a wannabe photographer i just
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like capturing cute pictures when i'm spending time with my kids and because i
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live in raincover six months out of the year that takes place inside my house a
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perpetually dim environment thanks to my dark floors so it makes a really big
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difference to me moving on to the fingerprint sensor location this never
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really bothered me on the s8 however on the s8 plus and on the note 8
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next to the camera up there is basically unusable with my small hands so the s9
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plus is an enormous improvement
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then the last big one for me is the structural changes that samsung has made
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under the hood the new phones are made of more durable aluminum with thicker
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glass giving them spectacular rigidity
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other than a dbrand skin i prefer no
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protection and so it's comforting to know that my chances of surviving a drop
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are better but some trade-offs were made here the
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increase in weight won't be noticeable to any but the
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daintiest users but in spite of a
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thickness jump the battery capacity of
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both models is unchanged from last year now samsung
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has been quoted as saying that their eight-point battery check will give the
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s9 family 95 of their day one battery
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life after two years and if that holds true then that's swell
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or not as it were but as a heavy user the
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s8 had middling battery life from the get-go once all my stuff was installed
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so i'm on the pixel 2 xl my galaxy s8
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something i have installed on it is making the battery drain really fast i
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haven't had the time to deal with it as much as i loved the form factor i just
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couldn't keep using it so
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my new daily driver is going to have to be the s9 plus then
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and that's about it pretty much every other complaint that i
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have about this phone is either in software or has a simple solution like
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the bixby button nothing personal against bixby she can actually do some
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really cool stuff that it baffles me that google assistant and siri can't do
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you can actually do much more advanced things like this go to the home screen
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boom but the placement of this button
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directly opposite the lock button was and still is an ergonomic disaster
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however samsung supports disabling it outright
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and you can use third-party software to remap it now intelligent scan where the
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phone chooses iris or facial recognition
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depending on the scenario isn't as consistent as face id
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but it doesn't have to be because they
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didn't pull off the fingerprint reader
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you can just use whatever you want which
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honestly for me is like okay look here
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did you know that the s9 has nine yes
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nine different ways to take a selfie
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now most of them are weird gimmicks that i never used and neither will you
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but i guess that's the samsung experience in a nutshell
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packed full of features some of which are seemingly random like
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do you guys remember that thing they were doing where the screen would scroll
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with your eyes and then this year's half-baked
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inclusion is a crude rip-off of animojis but but with lots of things that are
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great panorama selfies so that i can fit all
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of my friends in the frame awesome faster fingerprint registration
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with a swipe well it doesn't come up very often but heck yeah landscape mode
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on the home screen like a tablet why did that take so long
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launching two apps and split screen from a single button sure why not
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well okay actually i can think of one reason why not so that you could have
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your software team spending more time maintaining the latest software on your
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existing devices instead of creating fluff that no one
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asked for the s7 is still in the testing
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phase for Android 8.0 oreo just one year ago that was samsung's
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flagship phone think about that
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so the s9 looks solid especially at the
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unlocked price and the s9 plus gets a straight up recommendation to buy i
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would take it over the more expensive no date for sure
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but with the caveat that until samsung makes
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a real commitment to support at the very
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least its flagship devices the way that apple does
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i can only unequivocally recommend them to people
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who upgrade every couple of years and they're never going to truly stand
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out from other Android manufacturers until they address this which
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given the way that they're catching up in key areas like camera image quality
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means that samsung you guys got to be paying attention because the window is
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closing on finding a new way to differentiate
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so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if
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it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button let us know in the comments
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what you think of this slightly different format or if you even noticed
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check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured in the video description also link down there is our
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merch tour which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum which you should totally join
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kind of messed up my outro there that's okay
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i don't think anyone cares does anyone still watching at this point
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okay feel good
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so we still have the green screen and