Announced on 25 February 2018 at Samsung Galaxy Unpacked event, the S9 series offers a host of upgrades and new features. Let us take a look at the most notable ones.
Design
The biggest change is the location of the fingerprint sensor; it has been moved form next to the camera to below it. This will reduce the chances of accidentally smudging the camera lens when using it. The central position also makes for a much better experience using the scanner. Since the S8 series was close to perfection, not much has changed design and display wise; only minor tweaks and adjustments were implemented.
Camera system
The camera is the primary focus of the S9 rage, featuring an upgraded camera system.
The new mechanical dual-aperture lens is to give you the benefits of switching between a f/1.5 aperture for better images in dark conditions and a f/2.4 for sharper images under normal lighting conditions. The S9+ also features a secondary telephoto lens with 2X optical zoom.
Thanks to a new Image Signal Processor, the S9 series is able to use multiple photos to help reduce overall noise in post processing. Using DRAM on the camera sensor, the Galaxy S9 is able to capture four times as many pictures at four times the speed.
960 fps automatic slow-motion video
What sets this function apart on the S9 is its automatic mode, which takes the guesswork out of perfectly timing slow-motion footage. Rather than predicting when to start the slow-motion recording, the Galaxy S9 automatically identifies when to record in super slow-motion while recording regularly.
Once you record a super slow-motion video, the Galaxy S9 saves it and creaties shareable GIFs.
AR emoji
Clearly Inspired by the Animoji feature on the Apple iPhone X, AR emoji takes a 3D scan of your face and turns it into an emoji character. You can customise the hair, skin tone, clothes, and accessories of the scan to really have some fun. These can be used on most major messaging platforms.
Live translation
This feature is made possible by an update to the Bixby AI assistant. It allows you to scan words written in another language (such as restaurant menu) with your camera and get a translation in real time.
Intelligent scan
Intelligent scan uses iris scanning as the primary tool for applications that need higher levels of security, such as banking apps or Samsung Pay. For day-to-day unlocking, the Galaxy S9 offers the super fast and convenient experience of Face Unlock.
New stereo speakers
The S9 comes with dual stereo speakers tuned by AKG. This takes the media experience to another level. It boosts the volume and increases the bass and middle tones. More importantly, it gives you a great stereo audio quality when you’re holding the phone to your face. The addition of the Atmos codec to the Galaxy S9 also has a major impact on the sound performance. This allows the phone to offer spatial audio, resulting in a more immersive experience.
Launch date:
The official world wide release date is 16 March 2018, with the retail price of R15,499 for the S9 and R17,999 for the S9+. Check out our smartphones category for the best Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ deals!
