Samsung Galaxy S9: Review

                                             Samsung Galaxy S9
                                        Is it a good phone all round?

Samsung Galaxy S9 & S9+

The Galaxy S9 looks a lot like last year’s S8; to an extent, it builds on previous successes, rather than reinventing the entire shebang. However, it features a new 12-megapixel f/1.5 rear camera, which should perform far better in low light than its predecessor – and a new Exynos 9810 processor, which promises drastically faster performance.

At first glance, you’ll struggle to tell the S9 apart from the S8. That's no big surprise, as Samsung has a habit of coming up with flashy new designs once every few years, and only making minor tweaks in the interim. In this case, it’s certainly not a bad thing: the S9 is one of the best-looking phones I've seen. The top and bottom bezels have been shaved off ever so slightly, so its screen-to-body ratio is slightly higher than the S8’s. Other than that, it’s the same handset we fell in love with this time last year.

That means we're once again treated to a 5.8in 18.5:9 QHD+ (2,960 x 1,440) display – and, since this is one of Samsung’s Super AMOLED panels, it looks fantastic. Our X-Rite colour calibrator found it covered 99.3% of the sRGB colour gamut space, with an average Delta E of 1.94, which means you can expect bright, accurate colour reproduction across the board – albeit images are a tad overexposed in the phone’s default “Adaptive” display mode.

The S9 isn’t a radical departure from last year’s blueprint, but if you're a keen smartphone snapper then the camera improvements will be very tempting. Pair that with a noticeable performance jump and this is, no doubt, a formidable smartphone.

The only hitch is the price – and the fact that the S9 also has to compete with its own stablemate, the Galaxy S9 Plus, whose dual-camera arrangement promises even more stunning shots.

That makes it hard to wholeheartedly recommend the Galaxy S9, either as a general-purpose smartphone or as a best-in-class camera phone. There’s some impressive technology here, but Samsung needs to offer something more to justify a wallet-wilting £739.