 Hey, this is Dan from The Verge, and this is the new Galaxy S9 and the Galaxy S9 Plus from Samsung. Now if you're looking at these, you probably think they look pretty familiar, and that's because they do. They basically look exactly like the Galaxy S8 from last year, except for one major difference. We've been complaining about the placement of the fingerprint scanner on the Galaxy S8 since it came out. So for the Galaxy S9, Samsung fixed it and moved it from next to the camera to below the camera, which is way easier to reach, even on the larger model. Now otherwise, they are very similar in design. You've got a 5.8 inch display on the S9, 6.2 inch display on the S9 Plus. They're still super AMOLED screens. They still have the same high res displays. They still have the curved sides that Samsung calls this infinity display that spills over the edge. And Samsung has actually made the bezels the same. The bezels are the same size, but they're a little bit better masked than last year's models, so they don't quite stand out as much. You still have the power button on the side, you've got the volume rocker over here, and then of course there's the Bixby button that hasn't gone anywhere. And on the bottom, there's still the headphone jack, which you get on both models. Now a lot of the new things you can't actually see, but they are appreciated. It's got stereo speakers now, so the earpiece speaker works in conjunction with the bottom speaker to produce stereo sound. The camera has been new and improved, and we'll get into that in a minute. It's got a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor inside of it. There's 4GB of RAM in the small model, there's 6GB of RAM in the bigger model. 3000mAh battery here, 3500mAh battery here. Both of them have fast charging, both of them have fast wireless charging, both of them have IP68 water and dust resistance. Both of them have 64GB of storage, both of them have microSD card slots, and both of them have Gigabit LTE. So a lot of those things are familiar to S8 owners. But the big difference that Samsung is touting this year is the cameras. And you can see on the S9 it has a single camera, and on the S9 Plus it now has a dual camera, which is very similar to the Note 8's dual camera. So it's got a wide angle lens and a telephoto lens which lets you get closer to your subject or do different types of blurring, what Samsung calls live focus effects. On both models you do have a new variable aperture lens, which means that the aperture on the camera goes from 1.5, which is brighter than last year's phone and one of the brightest lenses on the market, and you can close it down to f2.4 if you're in a very bright environment, if you're outdoors, sunlight, and you've got too much light, you can shut down the aperture for better quality photos there. You can do that automatically through the Samsung's camera app, or if you go into the Pro mode you can actually switch between the two, which is pretty neat. This is the first phone we've seen with a mechanical, physically changing aperture, which is very interesting. It is locked at 1.5 or 2.4, it doesn't do any values in between, but it still is more than pretty much any other phone offers you. In terms of the camera quality itself, it's still a 12 megapixel sensor, but Samsung says it now has next generation dual pixel autofocus, so it's got faster, more reliable autofocus, it does more processing on chips, so you get better noise reduction than the prior generation, up to 30% so in certain situations. And then the other features that are new are on the video side. It can shoot 240 frames per second slow motion like it could do last year, but now it can do up to 960 frames per second at 720p for short bursts for a super slow motion mode. Now Samsung says that the S9 is going to have better low light performance thanks to improved multi-frame noise reduction algorithms where it combines multiple frames together to reduce the amount of noise in the actual image. We're going to be testing this out once we have a review in it, but so far the early impressions are pretty promising. Now the camera app has also been redesigned, so it's a little bit easier to use. You can switch between modes by just swiping, which is way easier than Samsung's older user interface, and you can quickly switch there. There is of course the pro mode which gives you full manual controls over white balance and aperture and shutter speed and such. So the other thing that's new in the camera is Samsung's new AR emoji, which is basically its take on the iPhone's Animoji feature. It creates a 3D animated image based on 100 points of your face when you look at the camera, and it then turns that into animated GIFs that you can share through the camera app in various messaging apps. You can also customize the appearance, so you can change the hair color, add glasses, change the outfit, and do these other things that you can't quite do with Animoji. It's not quite the exact same thing, but it provides a very similar effect. Samsung has also improved and upgraded its flagship features like Bixby, which has a new user interface design, it has a couple of new features. It can also take a picture of food and estimate its calorie count that you can then link to S-Elf as well. Samsung's also upgraded the DeX feature, which lets you use your phone as a full desktop environment with various open apps and things like that. It used to be using a docking station with the Galaxy S8, now it has a new accessory called the DeX Pad, which is basically a flat pad and lets you use the phone as a track pad or keyboard if you don't happen to have an external mouse or keyboard with you. Now there's a lot more in the Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus that we'll be diving into as we spend more time with the devices, but initially it's going to be available for pre-order on March 2nd, it'll be shipping on March 16th. It's going to come in three colors in the US, black, purple, and blue, and the pricing should be about the same as the Galaxy S8. For more on the Galaxy S9 and the S9 Plus, be sure to check out theverge.com and subscribe to youtube.com slash theverge.