 Here's the new Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus from Samsung. Now if you squint, even slightly, you might think you're looking at last year's Galaxy S8 because the differences between it and the S9 are, well, minimal at best. But this is the Android phone that more people will buy than any other this year, and it does come with a few new things that those people appreciate. And besides, it's not like the S8 is a bad phone to start from. The overall design of the S9 is unchanged from last year. It's still a glass and metal sandwich, it still has curved glass in the front and back, it still has an extra wide 18.5 by nine display and minimal bezels. It's really nice and it's really well made, but the glass back is kind of a fingerprint magnet and it can be slippery to hold. The smaller S9 has a 5.8 inch screen, while the S9 Plus has a 6.2 inch display. Both are Super AMOLED panels with 2960 by 1440 pixels of resolution, both are really nice to look at with vibrant colors, sharp resolution, and excellent viewing angles. They're also slightly brighter this year, which is always appreciated, if not always noticeable, and they still remain the best displays you can get on any Android phone. They're even up to par with the screen on the iPhone X, provided you don't mind slightly more saturated colors. The S9 has the same fast wired and wireless charging as before, the same IP68 water resistance as before, and the same 3.5 millimeter headphone jack as before. Now if you're looking for a high end phone with a headphone jack in 2018, your choices are fewer than ever, so it's kind of great to see Samsung stick with it for the S9. Now the big design change is the placement of the fingerprint scanner, which has been moved from the side of the camera to just below it. It's much easier to use than the S8s, especially if you're using the larger Plus model, but it's still weirdly small and too close to the camera. I frequently swipe on the camera lens when I'm trying to use the fingerprint gesture to see my notifications, which is kind of annoying. And then of course, there's that dreaded Bixby button, which is still there, still in the same spot, just below the volume buttons on the left side. Now you can disable it from launching Bixby now, which is progress, but Samsung still doesn't provide a native way to reprogram it to something more useful. Now at its worst, it's annoying, and at its best, it's a little fidget button that you can press without having to worry about doing anything, if you actually disable Bixby. The other new hardware feature here is stereo speakers, which basically catches Samsung up to what everyone else has been doing for a couple of years. They are noticeably louder and fuller than the single speaker on the S8, and they're really great for watching video. I'm not gonna say they're the best phone speakers I've ever heard, but they're still great, and I'm happy to see them here. The rest of the hardware improvements are all on the inside. It's got Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 845 processor, either four or six gigabytes of RAM, depending on which model you choose, and a new LTE modem that supports even faster gigabit speeds. Now those are specs we're gonna see in virtually every Android flagship this year, but Samsung is the first out of the gate with them. Performance, at least during my review, has been great. Everything is really fast and responsive, and the network performance is just as impressive as last year's, and to be honest, noticeably better than the iPhone's. Now unchanged are the size of the battery in the internal storage. You get a 3,000 milliamp hour battery in the S9, and a 3,500 milliamp hour battery in the S9 Plus. Both of them have 64 gigs of storage, and micro SD card support. I really would have liked to see Samsung increase the battery size this year. It's not to say that the battery life is bad on either model, but it's not the best you can get, and heavy users are gonna even deplete the S9 Plus battery after a long day. So despite all of that sameness, Samsung did upgrade one important aspect of the S9, and it did so in a pretty big way. The S9's rear camera is all new. It's got an improved sensor, and a new variable aperture lens that can physically switch between a really bright F1.5 and a smaller F2.4 aperture. The S9 Plus gains a second telephoto lens for portrait mode stuff, like Samsung used on the Note 8 last year. On top of that, everything is optically image stabilized. Samsung claims significant improvements in low light photography over the S8's camera, and it's true that the S9 definitely can take some really great photos in low light. The F1.5 aperture lets in more light than last year's F1.7 lens, and the improved processing helps reduce noise overall. Now I'm less impressed with this switching aperture feature. It feels more like a parlor trick than anything else. Now since a digital camera can just compensate its shutter speed for how much light is in the room, I don't really ever feel like I would ever need to shoot at F2.4. Now if you are in the pro mode of the camera app, you can actually switch between the two modes. So here for an example, I'll shoot this image at 1.5, and then I'm gonna shoot this image at 2.4. And overall, there really isn't much difference between the two images. The F1.5 has a slightly blurrier background than the F2.4, which has a little bit longer depth of field, but in terms of sharpness, there really isn't any difference there. So I'm not sure why I would ever shoot at F2.4 on this phone. I'd probably just leave it at 1.5 and forget about it. The S9 Plus's second telephoto lens is similarly gimmicky. Samsung's live focus portrait mode just isn't as good as Apple's or Google's at separating a subject from the background. And in challenging lighting conditions, the image quality is kinda bad. The S9 can shoot 4K video at 60 frames per second, or slow motion 1080p video at 240 frames per second, which catches it up with what the iPhone can do. Now both modes produce nice quality video, but you have to make sure you have plenty of light for the slow motion mode, where you'll see a lot of noise in the video. Overall, the S9's camera is definitely an improvement, and it's very good on its own. But if you weren't a fan of Samsung's image processing before, you still won't like it now. Sure, there's less noise than before, and the colors are pleasing, but all of the images definitely have Samsung's look to them, which is different than what Apple or Google's cameras produce. At this point, it really comes down to personal preference, but it's definitely something to be aware of. And one thing I wish Samsung did spend some time on is the front camera on the S9. It's the same eight megapixel camera as found on the S8. It does have autofocus, which no other front camera has yet to replicate, but its portrait mode just isn't as good as Google or Apple's. So all of that stuff is great, and it's gonna keep the S9 at the top of phone rankings for most of 2018. But there's a ton of other things that Samsung is pushing with the marketing for the S9 this year. And to be honest, you'll probably never use them. It's almost as if Samsung just couldn't help itself. Now first up is AR emoji, Samsung's take on the iPhone X's Animoji feature. Here's how it works. It scans your face, and then it produces a Bitmoji-looking character based on 100 points of your face that kinda maybe sometimes looks like you. Then it takes this character, and it creates a bunch of reaction gifts with it that you can then send in messaging apps. Then there's also some weird-looking animals that you can create video clips with, like you can do with Animoji on the iPhone. Now there's a couple of issues with Samsung's AR emoji. First off, Samsung isn't using any special tech to capture your face or movements. It's just relying on the camera, so tracking is pretty bad. Second, the characters it creates are just the wrong kind of creepy, and nobody I've tested it with has been like, oh, that's something I like. And then the animals on top of that are just kinda weird. It's definitely something that Samsung built just to compete with Apple, and frankly, it's not very good. Now Samsung is also trying to ape the iPhone X's face ID with its new intelligent scan feature. It combines iris scanning and face detection to unlock the phone. But it's still slow, and now it shines a bright red light in your face when it scans. The good thing there's a fingerprint scanner that's easier to reach on the back, because that's faster and more reliable than Samsung's face scanning options. Next is the new super slow motion mode in the camera. The S9 can shoot up to 960 frames per second, which sounds really neat, but it can only do so for.2 seconds at a time, and only at 720p resolution. Now there's two ways you can shoot it. You can try to manually trigger it to capture the.2 seconds of action you want, or you can use an automatic mode that looks for specific movement in an area of the frame, and then capture a slow-mo when it detects it. But in practice, both are really hard to use, and they're really more frustrating than anything else. Worse, you need a ton of light to make it work, and even if you have lots of light, image quality is kinda crappy. And if that wasn't enough, there's the awful music the app overlays on the clip automatically if you don't bother to edit it after the fact. ["Sweet Home of the Sunset"] Now Bixby, it's not new, but it's still here, and it's still bad. It's gotten a fresh coat of paint, and it's slightly faster than before, but it's still way slower than the Google Assistant, and isn't as good at parsing my voice commands. There's a couple of new features, like an integrated makeup store that lets you try makeup out virtually, and then buy it directly from Sephora or CoverGirl. But I really can't imagine anyone using that more than once. Anyways, here's what I look like with a face full of makeup. And then there's the perennial complaint with Samsung software. Why are there so many duplicate apps? The unlocked S9 I've been testing has two email apps, two gallery apps, two browsers, two app stores, and two payment apps. Now a couple of Samsung's apps are good, mostly the Samsung Browser and Samsung Pay, but the rest are inferior to the Google apps that are also installed on the phone, which just makes them kind of annoying. And if you care at all about software updates, Samsung is one of the worst manufacturers when it comes to delivering new versions of Android. As of this review, last year's Galaxy S8 still doesn't have Android 8.0 in the US, and that was released by Google over six months ago. Okay, so it sounds like I just took a huge dump on the S9, but like I said, most of these bad things can be ignored. You can turn off Bixby, never bother to use AR emoji or SuperSlowMo, and disable most of Samsung's apps. The only real sticking point for some people will be Samsung's poor update history. But that leaves the rest of the S9, which is actually really great. Still has a modern design, has great performance, a great screen, and a very good camera. Outside of the display, the S9 isn't a class leader in any category, but it's good enough in all of them that the whole package makes for a great phone. Chances are, if you're spending between $700 and $900 on a new phone this year, the S9 is gonna be one of the best options you can get. But if it doesn't do it for you, you might wanna wait for Samsung's next big thing. Sick! Wasn't that cool?