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The Samsung Galaxy S9 is an impressive handset, but there’s not enough here to justify the steep price

Pros 

Excellent low-light camera

The fastest Android smartphone yet

Cons 

Slightly worse battery life

More expensive than Galaxy S8

Chances are, you already know all about the Samsung Galaxy S9. Leaks, rumours and educated guesses have been rampant, and there were certainly no gasps of surprise when the Galaxy S9 was finally, officially revealed at MWC 2018.

READ NEXT: The best Galaxy S9 preorder deals

It's true that not all of the pre-release buzz had been entirely positive. But the Galaxy S9 is a serious step up from last year’s effort. In particular, its new low-light camera promises to raise the stakes for smartphone photography.

Samsung Galaxy S9 review: What you need to know

The Galaxy S9 looks a lot like last year’s S8; to an extent, it builds on previous successes, rather than reinventing the entire shebang. However, it features a new 12-megapixel f/1.5 rear camera, which should perform far better in low light than its predecessor – and a new Exynos 9810 processor, which promises drastically faster performance.

Samsung Galaxy S9 review: Price and competition

Samsung’s latest flagship isn’t cheap. SIM-free, the Galaxy S9 will set you back an eye-watering £739 at launch – £60 more than the original launch price of the Galaxy S8.

And at that price, the S9 faces competition from all four corners. There’s Apple’s iPhone 8 of course, which starts at £699, Huawei’s Mate 10 Pro at £529, and Google’s Pixel 2 for £629. Last year’s Galaxy S8 can now be had for just £500, too – which makes it a very tempting proposition, even if it’s no longer the latest and greatest phone on the market.

Samsung Galaxy S9 review: Design and display

At first glance, you’ll struggle to tell the S9 apart from the S8. That's no big surprise, as Samsung has a habit of coming up with flashy new designs once every few years, and only making minor tweaks in the interim.

In this case, it’s certainly not a bad thing: the S9 is one of the best-looking phones I've seen. The top and bottom bezels have been shaved off ever so slightly, so its screen-to-body ratio is slightly higher than the S8’s. Other than that, it’s the same handset we fell in love with this time last year.


That means we're once again treated to a 5.8in 18.5:9 QHD+ (2,960 x 1,440) display – and, since this is one of Samsung’s Super AMOLED panels, it looks fantastic. Our X-Rite colour calibrator found it covered 99.3% of the sRGB colour gamut space, with an average Delta E of 1.94, which means you can expect bright, accurate colour reproduction across the board – albeit images are a tad overexposed in the phone’s default “Adaptive” display mode.

AMOLED technology also delivers unbeatable contrast levels – our colourimeter reported a perfect infinity:1 score – and the S9’s maximum brightness reaches a very respectable 299cd/m2. Switch on auto brightness, and that figure rockets up to a blinding 996cd/m2.

Along the bottom edge you’ll find the same ports as on the S8 too: a solitary USB Type-C port for charging and (huzzah!) a 3.5mm headphone jack; at the right sit a volume rocker and dedicated Bixby button on the right. The microSD and nano-SIM card slot is at the top, the power button is on the right and the whole thing is IP68 dust- and water-resistant.

Samsung Galaxy S9 review: Performance and battery life

The real differences from the Galaxy S8 are on the inside. Like the rest of this year’s flagships, the S9 features an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor – although to be precise, UK models come equipped with Samsung’s own 2.7GHz Exynos 9810 equivalent – paired with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, expandable via microSD. That makes this easily Samsung’s fastest handset ever – indeed, it’s the fastest Android handset we’ve tested from any manufacturer.

To put that into figures, the Galaxy S9 achieved a single-core Geekbench 4 result of 3,659 and a multi-core score of 8,804 – massive improvements of 45% and 25% over the ‘s Galaxy S8. This phone is seriously quick

Indeed, put the S9’s low-light images side-by-side with shots from the excellent Pixel 2 and the S9 is the clear winner, with better colour reproduction across the palette. And in more camera-friendly lighting conditions, heaps of detail is picked up, and shots are well-exposed. The HDR system also does a good job at punching up dark, shadowy areas and softening highlights.

The video hardware gets an upgrade too. The S9 can now record 720p footage at a ridiculous 960fps, stretching 0.2 seconds of activity out into six seconds of video. It's extremely easy to set up: simply draw a box on the screen, and the slow-motion recorder will kick in whenever movement is detected within that space.

Finally, Samsung is also making a hoo-ha about its alternative to Apple's Animoji feature. Unlike the Apple implementation, which maps predefined emoji onto your face, Samsung’s system allows you to create your own avatar, Bitmoji-style, and overlays it onto your face via the IR camera. It’s a neat idea, but the results may or may not live up to expectations. Does my digital self look like me, or Paul O’Grady?