With a single look on the latest Samsung Galaxy S9, it’s apparent that Samsung has not let go of their previous design of the Galaxy S8 on which they built their last year’s success on. Also, design not being the only thing that resembles the S9’s predecessor, people have been questioning whether or not it will be viable to upgrade to the latest Samsung Galaxy S9. People who have bought the Galaxy S8 and are Samsung fans, however, will be ready to jump on the trend and will probably like to see what Samsung has done new in their latest flagship device. Below you can find a detailed comparison of the two closely related devices to help you decide better – upgrade or no upgrade?
The similarities:
Speaking in terms of design, we all can say Samsung has kept the aesthetics and feel of the phone almost same except for a few almost unnoticeable changes. Only a 1.2mm reduction in height and an 8-gram increase in weight are the only physical differences. The screen size remains the same and the standard ratio of 18.5:9 has been maintained for the S9 too. The phone will be slightly heavy and thicker compared to the Galaxy S8.
The curved sides, rounded corner and the Gorilla Glass surely are on the lines of the Galaxy S8. Samsung’s infinity display also looks, expect that some internal tuning. The volume rockers, Bixby button under the volume controls all remains as it is. Also, the 4GB RAM and the usual 64GB storage is expected. On the charging front too, Samsung has not advanced things ahead of the Quick charge 2.0, keeping the technical aspects same with the wireless charging and fast charging.
However, it will be right to say that Samsung has definitely not let go of the good features from the Samsung Galaxy S8 but instead has built upon those to manufacture a device that contains only the best that technology has to offer. Now let’s check what has changed.
The differences:
Samsung’s tagline for the Galaxy S9 has been ‘The Camera Reimagined Smartphone’ and of course the biggest development comes on the camera front for the S9, with a “Super Speed” Dual Pixel sensor and a physically variable aperture which we can clearly notice while changing aperture settings on the device. Samsung focuses on delivering photos with grain reduction and a drastically improved fine edge processing.
The Samsung Galaxy S9 is comparatively farther on the quality grounds compared to the S8 when it comes to low light photography. The f/1.5 aperture is the highlight of the entire camera setup which is going to let in more light in otherwise under-lit settings, giving S9 that extra edge when it comes to low-lit pictures. Also, like we see in the teaser video released by Samsung, the super slow-motion giving us 960 fps is a great upgrade from the last time, providing users with a more cinematic feel. However, the resolution of the 960fps will be limited to 720p, which will be a massive letdown.
Although there hasn’t been any hardware upgrade regarding the battery of the S9 but the processors which the S9 puts to use – Snapdragon 845 or the Exynos 9810 are quite economical when it comes to consuming power for normal daily life usage. Also, other small software updates might contribute to better battery life than what we got to see on the Galaxy S8. Features such as AR Emoji will make the S9 look refreshed, but they might make their way to the Galaxy S8 with a software update.
The audio on the Samsung Galaxy S9 is also a notch higher with a speaker present above the screen providing a very good stereo separation, these are definitely louder and superior than the ones present on the S8. The display of the phone also gets an upgrade with a 15% increase in brightness indicating an impressive development there.
The fingerprint sensor on the S9 has also been brought down from the side of the camera to below the camera. This change although not a game changer but is a commendable and practical change since this new design makes the fingerprint sensor more reachable and avoids the smudging of the camera by mistake.
The verdict:
We believe that presently the Galaxy S9 doesn’t offer any substantial upgrades compared to their last Galaxy S8 which are attractive and worthy enough for the people to go and buy the phone. However, there might be a different demographic which will rather go for the latest S9 because of the newly redesigned camera and the better processor. But overall, the verdict for the users of the Galaxy S8 remains the same – the Samsung Galaxy S9 provides not many reasons to upgrade and very impressive additions given the hefty price tag which justifies it.
