The Galaxy S9 is a bit like the weather report in a sunny state or country: another boring, beautiful day. It's yet another fantastic smartphone from Samsung, but it's not especially exciting. The new features Samsung announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona felt like the mundane "waterskiing squirrel" story of a news station that has no news to report. AR Emoji? Waterskiing squirrel. Variable-aperture camera? Double-backflip waterskiing squirrel. Still, Samsung made some improvements where it counts, and the S9 is a better phone than its predecessor, the Galaxy S8. Samsung keeps reminding us that it listens to its customers, and that shows in the Galaxy S9.
But Samsung is also stubborn with certain things like the Bixby button, which is still, unfortunately, present on the Galaxy S9.
You've seen the design before, but it's still a beautiful phone.
But Samsung is also stubborn with certain things like the Bixby button, which is still, unfortunately, present on the Galaxy S9.
The Galaxy S9 shares most of its design with last year's Galaxy S8, and that's a great thing. The Galaxy S9 is just as pretty, if not prettier. You get the sleek, curved-glass edges on the front and back, while the phone feels solid to hold and use. Samsung also narrowed the bezels on the top and bottom of the display ever so slightly compared with the Galaxy S8, and the Galaxy S9 looks even better for it when the screen is on. Despite the bezels, the Galaxy S9 looks every bit as sleek and modern as the bezel-less iPhone X. It's one of the best-looking smartphones you can buy.
The S9, the most feature-packed smartphone you can buy, is likely to have what you're looking for.
If there's something you want that the Galaxy S9 doesn't have, I'd love to hear it. It's just about the most feature-packed smartphone you can buy at the moment.
It comes with:
Wireless charging.
Fast charging (no separate accessories required — it comes included with the phone).
Facial recognition.
Iris recognition.
A fingerprint scanner.
A headphone jack.
A heart-rate monitor.
Water resistance.
That's a longer list of hardware than most other smartphones on the market these days.
The Galaxy S9's facial and iris recognition are better than Face ID on the iPhone X.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Galaxy S9's facial and iris recognition offered a much better experience than the iPhone X's Face ID.
In the week I used the Galaxy S9, I never had to use my PIN to unlock the phone. Meanwhile, I consistently had to use it to unlock the iPhone X when Face ID didn't work, and it failed far too often for my liking.
Most of the time, I used Samsung's Intelligent Scan feature, which combines facial and iris recognition to unlock the phone. It works surprisingly well — and quickly.
And when that didn't work — which was rare — I simply used the fingerprint sensor on the back, which is also accurate and fast.
Samsung fixed the fingerprint-sensor placement.
One of the major complaints with the Galaxy S8 was the poor placement of the fingerprint sensor: right next to the camera. It was hard to reach and hard to tell apart from the camera, which made unlocking the Galaxy S8 a frustrating experience if you opted for fingerprint unlocking. But Samsung fixed that with the Galaxy S9. The fingerprint scanner under the camera is much easier to reach, and I can find it far more easily than I could the sensor on the Galaxy S8. The Galaxy S9's fingerprint sensor is fast, but not as fast as the Pixel 2's. Still, it's good enough that I wasn't clamoring for the Pixel 2 XL I've been using.
As expected, the camera on the Galaxy S9 is very good.
Photos I've taken with the Galaxy S9 so far have looked fantastic, but I'll need to compare it with other top smartphone cameras, like the Pixel 2 and the iPhone X.
I don't normally comment on smartphone speakers, but the Galaxy S9's are some of the best I've heard.
