Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus Review
Samsung's Galaxy S9+ is a large, fast smartphone that's jam-packed with photography-focused features. But while it's certainly capable of excellent image quality, we found some issues concerning capturing moving subjects, shooting under low lighting and when using 'Live Focus' portrait mode. On the other hand, 4K/60p video capture is of very high quality with good autofocus, and the screen on the S9+ is the best we've seen on a smartphone to date.
Key photographic / video specs
Dual rear cameras, each with optical stabilization
Wide-angle: 12MP F1.5-2.4, 26mm equiv. focal length, dual-pixel autofocus
Telephoto: 12MP F2.4, 52mm equiv. focal length, contrast detect autofocus
The wide-angle module is the only variable aperture smartphone design on the market
Front-facing wide-angle camera: 8MP F1.7 25mm equiv.
'Live Focus' background blurring for rear and front cameras
'Pro' mode offers manual control in the built-in camera app, and Raw can be enabled
UHD 4K/60p video recording, slow-motion 1080/240p and 720/960p recording (8x and 32x slow motion when outputted at 30 frames per second)
To start, the Galaxy's dual rear cameras are similar to the setup on Apple's iPhone X (one wide-angle, one telephoto), while Google's Pixel 2 makes do with just a single camera on the rear of the phone.
But beyond just the number of cameras, each of these phones takes a noticeably different photographic approach across different shooting scenarios. We're starting to see enough differences between the experiences of using these phones to really warrant consideration of what you want (and like) to photograph, especially if you're choosing your next phone with camera quality as a primary concern.
With the Galaxy S9+, Samsung touts its Dual Aperture technology as an aid to low-light shooting and the included telephoto lens is primarily used for the 'Live Focus' portrait mode. We found that, despite the Dual Aperture, the phone would select exposure settings that resulted in unnecessarily blurry images in the even moderately low light. We also found that, overall, the 'Live Focus' experience using that telephoto lens can give you completely mis-focused images even in bright light, and that it's nigh unusable as light levels start to drop.
Other specs
Android 8.0 Oreo
6.2" Super AMOLED display with 2960x1440 resolution (529 ppi)
Qualcomm Snapdragon 845
6GB RAM
64/128/256 GB storage plus microSD card slot
3500 mAh Lithium-ion battery (non-removable)
$840/890/940 (£849/869/929 in the UK, €949/1049 in Germany and France for 128GB and 256GB models)
We've now had our loaner Galaxy S9+ for several weeks courtesy of Verizon Wireless and taken a critical look at how its cameras perform under a wide variety of scenarios. Let's dig in and see what's what.
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