Visually stunning. Amazing camera. Amazing screen. But as they say, looks aren't everything.
You will noticed that I mention and compare to HTC a lot, and this is because that its my only other point of reference. Its all Iāve had, Android wise, for the past 4 years.
So, mostly in order of things you encounter, I shall try to share my thoughts and feelings. First of all the size. Its fairly large. For people with dinky fingers/hands, I wouldnāt recommend it, Iād go with the regular S9. But the S9+ is perfect for me as I have larger hands and stubby fingers. Iāve always struggled on 4 inches or less especially with typing, Iāll come to that later. The main noticeable difference between the two is the camera setup. Beyond that the S9+ has a slightly larger battery capacity and 2 more gigabytes of ram over the S9.
One of the main things I thought would bug me, is the screen. The rounded corners. Which, overall, costs you 0.1 of an inch of screen real estate. And it hasnāt bothered me at all. Its rather cool and interesting. More interesting than that is the odd aspect ratio. 18:5.9. The .9 apparently accounts for the curvature of the glass at the sides. Which is another thing I thought would bug me. My wife didnāt get the S7 Edge because she thought the curves would be annoying, but these are more subtle and ... less curvy than those models. And it hasn't really been an issue. Sometimes (usually on badly optimized websites and a few pictures) the text spills over the edge no matter what you do, but turning the phone landscape usually makes everything visible. Apps and games all tend to scale themselves to whatever they work best at, but you can have them be full-screen if you wish. It warns you that some apps may no work or behave well when forced into full-screen, but thus far Iāve never had an issue.
The phone has a headphone socket (thank god) and has basically ripped off what HTC was doing with Boomsound. And more specifically, what they were doing with the HTC 10. You see, the Boomsound speakers that were part of the M7/M8/M9 were gone on the HTC 10. At the time (I had an M8), it was like a revelation. Why on earth wouldn't ALL smartphone manufacturers do this? Many of them, including Samsung, put the speaker on the back of the phone which was often muffled by your hand when you were holding it. HTC changed that, although rather than having the two speakers on the HTC 10, they opted to have one at the bottom of the phone, and used the earpiece speaker for the other. It worked, although something was lost in translation. It sounded good, and still a lot better than many of the other phones around at the time,but it never really had clear or consistent stereo or sound. Maybe because the down-firing speaker did the mids and lows, and the earpiece speaker did the highs, which were mostly just tinny and quiet. Rather than just the one speaker now, Samsung has seemingly copied HTCās effort and used exactly the same system. However, it sounds infinitely better. The sound from it is very clear stereo, at times almost like it surrounds you. Partly, I assume, down to the Dolby Atmos/AKG tuning (which also includes some very nice and good sounding headphones in the box). As far as I know, HTC has not included Dolby in their phones since the Desire HD which also had SRS (and was my preferred sound setting).
Weāve also switched to USB C (also present on the S8/S8+) which is a much welcome improvement. In my experience it has been far more reliable and less damageable than Micro USB ever was, indeed after two years the USB C port on my HTC 10 is still going strong.
The physical buttons are something that will undoubtedly become a point of contention, largely because of the Bixby button. Donāt get me wrong, Iām not bothered by Bixbys existence. By and large, you can just disable it and ignore the fact that it was ever there. But the button was placed stupidly. Directly below the volume buttons, particularly on the S9+ where there is a tad more reaching for things, meant that I was pressing it. A lot. Which is a problem. Because initially I disabled Bixby all together. But I didn't really want the button to go to waste. So I searched, and as you would imagine I wasnāt the only one wanting to re-map it. And someone has helped with that, they created an incredibly useful app called bxActions. Which I mapped to the Camera. But of course the same thing kept happening. I pressed the button by accident, and the camera kept popping up. So I disabled it again, and had it play/pause audio when the screen was off. Yes, I do know that there are features like double press and long press, and perhaps it is worth using those instead. However, they are āproā features you need to pay for.
The home button and hardware touch keys are gone. Replaced instead with Androids navigation bar (which is re-mapable by default so you can put the buttons the right way around). The home key is pressure sensitive (what they call 3D Touch which sounds more like an Apple thing). Iāve not really needed to use it, to be honest, or understand what its for. If the phone is locked, you can press the home key (if you can find it) instead of the power button, which takes you to the lock screen and whatever method of security you happen to have (iris of whatever). But I can bypass needing to do any of that by just using my fingerprint. Which is what I tend to do, beyond the āhey look at this, my phone unlocks when I look at itā novelty. Iām also incredibly aware with this phone that it has the potential to get screen burn in. This increases exponentially with things that are on the screen for longer periods of time than others. Such as the navigation bar. What would lower that risk, is having the position of the symbols move a pixel or so from where it was last time, each time the phone is active or each time the navigation bar is on screen.
The phone, like the models before it including the s6/s7 has a glass back. But in Samsung's case, there is a reason for it extending all the way back to those models as well. How big a reason that is, ultimately, is down the the individual user. And I imagine, most of the individual users would rather they didn't have something that was breakable. As if the front of the phone wasn't already enough of a risk for that. The reason for it is Wireless charging. If youāre like me, nothing will ever beat the cable, and wireless charging is fiddly at best. You need to get it in the right spot, and from what Iāve seen, it was never really that fast. Certainly not as fast as the fast charger.
Using the phone is, at this point, pretty intuitive. If youāve used Android for long enough, you know where everything is and how everything works. Software wise, there is not much that you can moan about. There is, overall, less bloatware and what there is, most of it can be uninstalled. Samsung wise, their layout of things is a little ... oddly arranged but you get used to it. At this point its pretty close to the way HTC was laying things out.
One thing that does bug me though, is that there is a lot of content they will charge you for. Such as themes. HTC never had such a system, indeed you could create and customize pretty much each area that you wanted. Wallpaper, lock-screen, app background, icons, ringtones, even the background of sms messages. Whilst Samsung themes will do this, there is no option to create each one individually yourself, and there is no way (at least that Iāve found) where you can apply individual items from certain themes. For instance if I only want the icons, I canāt do that. I need to install the whole theme and the re apply my wallpaper and ringtone afterwards etc. Another thing is the warning you get when you turn the volume up so far. I don't need it every time, yes I know its not sensible, its never for very long, go away! Its as bad as the Netflix "Are you still watching?" Yes. And my controller turned off two episodes ago and is over the other side of the room! Go away!
One thing I have been using that I would normally have ignored, largely because it was already there and I wanted to explore, is Samsung Health (which was previously just called S Health). It will allow you to track a variety of things, including steps every day, excersize, heart rate and stress (there are sensors in the phone that include this, which is pretty normal for Samsung). It even allows you to track sleep, and even has the ability to keep track of blood sugar levels and such for diabetics.
A few of the packaged defaults I have changed. For instance the keyboard. There is nothing wrong, or that I found wrong, with the default Samsung keyboard. I am just far to used to Swiftkey, and my defaults within that, so I installed that. It has a one handed mode just like the Samsung default, so it makes it easier to type with one hand. Also the music player I have used, and will probably always use on Android is PowerAmp. Also use Chrome as well.
The camera is probably the most interesting thing about the phone at this point. It was the most heavily marketed aspect of it (because, ultimately, I suspect there isn't much different from the S8+). Whilst everything thats included in it is, at this point, nothing new ... well, except the variable F-stop, maybe, its the way it has been implemented that is cool. More so on the S9+ with the extra telephoto lens. I was an avid user of the slow motion on the HTC 10 (and the M8 I had before it) and for the S9/S9+ to have that in a supercharged way, is very fun for me, although they arenāt the first to include 960FPS. That honour goes to the Sony Xperia XZ I believe.
The always on display is cool, although Iāve found that, honestly, id rather have it off than have it on, and if I have it on, the design Iād choose is the edge one. Thankfully the risk of burn in from this is minimal, as it changes position and never stays in one place too long.
Beyond the phone, some of the extras that I have found to be useful are the adapters included in the box. Specifically the Micro USB to USB C adapter. Because, more than once Iāve forgotten my charger, and nowhere (at least nowhere cheap) seems to have USB C cables for sale. Theyāre all bloody Micro USB. This adapter means that I neednāt worry if I forget my charger again. I just go into poundland and buy a cable. You also get the standard OTG adapter in the box. Samsung's intended purpose for this, I believe, is for you to connect your old phone to it and copy over your content. But it has many more uses beyond that including game controllers, even charging up other devices and connecting USB sticks to your phone.
