We all agree that the Samsung Galaxy S9 is an iterative update to the S8. Samsung took a second look at the S8 and saw the need to make some much-needed improvements – This is to say that the S9 is a more desirable phone compared to its last year counterpart but if you’re still second-guessing yourself, here are five reasons why the Galaxy S9 might just be better than the S8:
For those who prefer reading to watching, here’s the written version:
Dual Stereo Speakers
The biggest improvement the S9 has over the S8 are those dual speakers you will find on the newer version, well, at least according to me. The S9 sounds so good and is much louder compared to its predecessor, thanks to Samsung adopting the style of repurposing the front-facing earpiece as a loudspeaker for audio playback. So now we have music coming from the bottom-mounted speaker and the front as well, for richer sound.
Fingerprint Reader
Samsung rectified the S8’s biggest flaw, the fingerprint reader placement. With the S9, the reader has been placed right below the camera thus making it easier for users to scan their fingers without smudging their lenses.
Improved Build Quality
One underrated improvement the S9 has over the S8 is its build quality. Samsung made the aluminium chassis on the S9 stiffer while using thicker glass to protect the display, thus making the S9 20% more likely to survive drops than the S8.
Better Camera
The S9 has a 12MP camera with dual-aperture. Meaning that the camera is tailored to serve both well-lit and low-light situations. Aside from the dual aperture, the S9 also a sort of gimmicky feature, super slo-mo that records videos at 960 frames per second, stretching a two-seconds clip to 6 seconds. Even better for S9+ users who get a dual camera set up, that will allow users to take portrait shots and 2x optical zoom. Oh, there’s also portrait shots on the selfie camera, despite the lack of a secondary lens, all things we don’t get on the S8.
Intelligent Scan
At this point, we agree that Apple did set the trend for the return of facial unlock as a desirable feature on smartphones. We have seen several Android phones try to emulate facial unlock by simply using the selfie camera without any fancy sensors like the 3D depth sensor that the iPhone X packs. However, Samsung took a different route and implemented Intelligent Scan, which combines their face scanning technology with iris scanning to present the user with a more reliable and secure facial unlock method. The best part is that intelligent scan works well even in darkness.
As a bonus, we get AREmoji on the S9. It’s not that great but it’s a good enough feature to either impress your friends or freak them out.
