I know. You finally just figured out how to use a certain feature on your Galaxy S8, or you are lucky, you just unboxed your “new” phone or rather still, you are still saving up for one and sorry to rain on your parade but the Galaxy S8 is now old news. Samsung has officially announced the Galaxy S9 and S9+ and if you can’t tell the difference between the old and the new, we won’t blame you.
The Galaxy S9 and S9+ look a lot like their predecessors, save for the back where we have redesigned camera and fingerprint reader placement. The biggest change is that there’s now a huge rift between the smaller S9 and the big brother S9+. In the past, the difference between the two has mostly been screen size and battery capacity thanks to the difference in size but this year, Samsung went the Apple way, in what seems like a move to make you buy the larger, more expensive phone.
Right off the bat, the Samsung Galaxy S9 comes with a single lens at the back and the S9+ comes with a dual camera setup. The two phones come with a new feature that Big Sam is referring to as “Dual Aperture”, which is to say, the device is able to shoot images between two apertures of f/2.4 and f/1.5 using one lens. The phone automatically uses the f/1.5 aperture when it detects low-light and f/2.4 in good lighting.
Still on the camera, the S9 and S9+ also pride themselves as slow-mo pros. The devices can shoot slow-motion video, up to 960fps. If you thought Samsung would skip on “Animoji”, then you’re wrong. The S9 duo come with AR Emoji, which lets you cartoonify yourself. Unlike Apple’s animoji, Samsung’s implementation does not map your facial movements on an animated emoji, rather they animate your face.
Aside from the camera stuff, the S9 and S9+ come with Snapdragon 845 SoC, Stereo Speakers, slightly reduced bezels, 4GB RAM for the S9 and 6GB RAM for the S9+, Android 8.0 Oreo, 3000mAh battery and 3500mAh battery on the 5.8-inch S9 and 6.2-inch S9+ respectively. The devices are still IP68 water and dust resistance certified, wireless charging support and yup, the Bixby button is still very much alive.
We are yet to get word from Samsung East Africa on when the device will arrive in the region but I bet you pre-orders will start the second week of March.
