In the Android world, there is no bigger result than Samsung's yearly launch of their latest Galaxy S devices. It is as well one of the earliest on the twelvemonth cycle with the Milky way S9 and Galaxy S9+ arriving at Mobile Earth Congress in late February. Both devices nowadays iterative updates for 2018, with upgrades on nearly fronts along with some nifty feature additions as well as more gimmicky ones.

This review focuses on the larger of the two devices, the Samsung Milky way S9+. Most of the hardware inside the S9+ is the same every bit the S9, with the exception of the larger 6.ii-inch display (versus five.eight" on the S9), the dual rear photographic camera solution, and a larger battery.

Equally with previous Galaxy S handsets, there are 2 variants of the S9+ for unlike markets. The United States, Japan and China get a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 inside, while the residue of the world gets Samsung'southward latest Exynos 9810. Usually there's been trivial departure between the two chips -- our review unit came with the Exynos SoC inside -- however it appears that'south not the case this year with reports about significant differences in performance and battery life between the two, on favor of the Snapdragon version.

The Galaxy S9+ sports a 6.2-inch 2960 x 1440 Super AMOLED display, 6GB of RAM with storage ranging from 64 to 256 GB, a 3500 mAh battery, a rear fingerprint scanner, USB-C, a 3.5mm headphone jack and more. The camera organisation is a 12-megapixel chief sensor with a dual aperture lens, paired with a 12-megapixel telephoto zoom photographic camera, both with optical image stabilization.

From a design perspective, Samsung hasn't made whatever meaning changes with the Galaxy S9+, for better or worse. The blueprint still sees glass on both the front and rear, with a metal edge around all sides. On the front and dorsum the display and glass curve in to the edges. And like with the Galaxy S8, the 18.5:9 aspect ratio display occupies a significant portion of the front panel without the need for a ridiculous notch.

Samsung has come a long fashion on improving their phone designs and it'due south made some of the all-time handsets on the market for the past few years. The Milky way S9+ is a cute handset, the curved glass looks fantastic, the metal edges feel great, and in that location's a near seamless high quality structure.

However the slipperiness of the Galaxy S9+ remains a concern, as it did with the Milky way S8. Having drinking glass on both sides and such sparse metal edges makes it hard to go a firm grip on this handset at times, and if you identify the device on whatsoever even remotely smooth surface, the Galaxy S9+ tin slide around with ease. In that location hasn't been a lot of thought to improving the grip, with Samsung instead continuing to favour dazzler over office.

Such large glass panels lead to the same durability concerns I had with the Galaxy S8 line, especially due to the curved edges that expose the glass when dropped. The Galaxy S8 was one of the well-nigh fragile phones I'd e'er seen: forums and social media are littered with complaints of relatively pocket-sized drops leading to shattered displays and expensive repair bills. I can't meet the Galaxy S9 being whatsoever different in this regard.

Unfortunately this means I take to make the same recommendation every bit last time: the Galaxy S9+ requires a case. Well-nigh other phones I'm comfortable using without protection, but the Galaxy S9+ with its curved edges need additional protection to save yourself from the pain of a cracked screen. When you're spending near a thousand dollars on this handset, you really don't want information technology to break from minor incidents, and as Samsung's pattern doesn't protect against this, you're left with no option but a case that unfortunately hides some of its dazzler.

And while I'm at information technology, I may as well bespeak out the ports along the lesser edge are not properly aligned. This is a small nitpick, but on a premium handset that's otherwise well designed, it'south disappointing to see a few alignment bug. On the other hand, I'grand glad to come across the use of both USB-C and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Samsung remains one of the few companies that haven't caved into removing the headphone jack.

Samsung has made a handful of meaningful design upgrades. The fingerprint sensor on the rear is now in a sensible location below the camera: you won't smudge the lens every time yous try and use it now. There's too facial recognition that uses a combination of the iris scanner and front facing camera, which is not bad to have just not as fast as the fingerprint scanner. Face unlock needs to exist every bit fast and accurate every bit Face ID or Windows How-do-you-do to brand it worth using; the Milky way S9+ is not quite at that place notwithstanding.

The other major change is the upgrade to stereo speakers, using a combination of a bottom firing driver and the smaller speaker above the brandish. These are some of the best sounding speakers I've used on a smartphone, with ameliorate clarity than a telephone like the Pixel 2 40, which has pretty decent front end facing speakers. There is a slight balance issue with the Galaxy S9+, as the bottom speaker provides more than bass than the top speaker, however information technology's not as noticeable equally I expected, even in a landscape orientation.

The ideal implementation is still dual front facing speakers, every bit information technology'south still reasonably easy to block the bottom edge speaker when holding the Galaxy S9+ in either orientation. That said, it'southward difficult to go by the quality the Milky way S9+'s speaker solution provides.

It'due south not bad to see Samsung continuing to provide IP68 h2o resistance for submersion in upwards to 1.5m of fresh water for 30 minutes, though you shouldn't apply the phone in salt h2o. At that place'south still a microSD card slot to complement internal storage options (peculiarly great when you tin add 128GB for a mere $40! have that iPhone owners) and there's also still a eye rate monitor for use with Samsung Wellness.

Unfortunately there'southward however a Bixby button that cannot be remapped in the stock software to anything useful, though it can be disabled. The amount of times I accidentally pressed the Bixby push button was quite high, so I'd rather this push button either didn't exist, or could merely exist programmed to open whatever application I like. Bixby is improving, but it's not practiced enough to warrant a defended hardware button on a infinite-limited smartphone.