- Samsung just announced its brand new
flagship devices in the Galaxy S9 and S9+.
I've gone hands-on with these two brand new devices,
and in this video I give you a first look at some of the
stand out features on Samsung's brand new smartphones.
What's goin' on Tech Squad, Andru Edwards here,
editor-in-chief at GearLive.com.
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As I mentioned, Samsung just announced the brand new
Samsung Galaxy S9
and Galaxy S9+.
These are its two new flagship smartphones
here for the beginning of 2018
and that remain the flagships,
at least until the Galaxy Note 9 is announced
later this year.
Now as I mentioned, I was able to go hands-on
with the Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+.
Big shout out to Samsung
for inviting me to check out the new devices.
I was able to spend some time
with both the S9 and the S9+.
And in this video I'm sharing with you the top features
that stood out to me.
To kick things off, let's get started with the design.
The first thing I noticed
when I picked up the new Samsung Galaxy S9 and the S9+
is just how familiar they feel to last year's Galaxy S8
and S8 Plus smartphones.
Not much has changed with the design of the S9 and S9+,
and I actually see that as a good thing.
A lot of people want to see new designs every single year,
but I'm much more of a mindset that I wanna see refinement.
If you have a great design, hold on to that design,
refine the design, and perfect it going forward.
The S8 and S8 Plus looked great and felt great in the hands,
so Samsung kept that design going forward
and have made an even better phone
with a familiar form factor.
And since it's a similar form factor,
you get the same display size as this year
that you had last year.
That being a 5.8 inch super AMOLED display on the S9.
With the larger Galaxy S9+ getting a 6.2 inch display.
Both devices have an 18 1/2 x 9 aspect ratio
and support Quad HD resolution.
Samsung says that these displays will get 15% brighter
than last year's Galaxy S8 display,
so it'll auto adjust in instances
where a brighter display is needed
such as in direct sunlight.
Samsung did also mention
that the bezels are ever so slightly smaller this year.
So what you end up with is a smaller,
more powerful device with the same screen size.
Now the size isn't something you're gonna notice
right out of the box, holding it in your hand.
You really have to compare them side-by-side,
take an S8 and a S9, put them together
and then you'll see the size difference.
So it's not drastic at all, but it is a welcomed change.
The other design decision Samsung made this year pertain
to color.
Here in the United States,
we're gonna see three colors of the
Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+.
Those being midnight black, lilac purple,
and the return of the ever so popular coral blue.
Now there's also rumored to be a titanium gray model.
They did not show that one to us
when we were there, so I'm assuming that if it does exist,
that's gonna be for international markets
and will not ship in the United States.
You'll also notice along the back
that the fingerprint sensor
has been relocated to a less confusing place,
so now you won't have to worry about
smudging up your camera lens,
since the sensor is beneath the camera like pretty much
every other smartphone with a rear fingerprint sensor.
On the topic of security and authentication,
Samsung does also support both face unlock
and iris unlock on the Galaxy S9 and S9+, as well.
Along with an intelligent scan feature,
they'll use a combo of face unlock and iris detection
for those of you who want enhanced security.
If biometrics aren't your thing,
you also have the standard PIN, pattern,
and password to unlock your phone as well.
Now, with the design out of the way,
let's jump into what seems to be the main difference
here on the Galaxy S9 and S9+
when compared to last year's S8 lineup
and that is the cameras.
Now I've said it many times before,
if you buy a flagship device,
you're going to be getting a great camera.
It doesn't really matter which flagship you buy,
the cameras are, pretty much, superb across the board.
Whether you buy an iPhone, whether you buy a Galaxy device,
whether you buy you a Pixel, etc.
But for many years, people have recognized both the iPhone
and the Samsung's Galaxy S line.
So both have, pretty much, the top of the line
when it comes to cameras until a couple of years ago
when Google slipped in and started changing the game
with the Pixel.
The original Pixel and even more so the Pixel 2
have been stealing the attention
as far as smartphone cameras go.
And Samsung is coming out of the gate swinging
with the camera improvements made to the Galaxy S9 series.
So what sets the cameras apart on the Galaxy S9.
Well, for the first time, in my memory,
a smartphone is shipping that supports more
than one aperture.
So under the fixed aperture, you've got a dual aperture
on the main wide angle lens.
Those apertures being F2.4
alongside F1.5 on the super speed Dual Pixel shooters.
The camera is smart enough to switch
between these two apertures on the fly,
but if you go into the Pro Mode,
you can actually change them manually yourself.
And it's actually pretty cool when you change the aperture,
you can actually look on the back of the phone
and see the camera aperture change right before your eyes.
So what does this mean in plain English?
Well it means, if you're out in a nicely lit,
daytime environment, the camera will know to switch over
to the F2.4 lens so that it will capture that wide color
that's all around you without anything getting blown out.
However, if you're in a low light environment,
maybe it's evening, maybe you're in a dark restaurant,
or a club and you wanna take some photos it will know
to automatically switch over to F1.5 in order to take in
even more light to make sure your photos continue
to look clean and crisp.
And again, if you use the Auto Mode,
or any of the other non Pro Modes on the camera
it's gonna do this intelligently by itself.
You don't have to worry about the aperture at all.
But if you are a pro or wanna use those pro features,
you can go into the Pro Mode and switch it on your own.
And if you're wondering how good the F1.5 mode is,
Samsung actually had a demo where we peeked into a cylinder
that was dark, and we looked in there,
and we didn't' see anything.
Then we took the Galaxy S9, put it on the F1.5 mode,
and then looked through that, and we could see
what was at the bottom of the cylinder.
So this camera is pretty powerful.
Now that's not all for the camera news on the Galaxy S9,
or more specifically the Galaxy S9+,
because Samsung has now taken that second camera
from the Galaxy Note
and moved it over to the Galaxy S9+, as well.
Which means,
the Galaxy S9+ is now a dual camera smartphone.
That second lens is a telephoto 12-megapixel camera
with a F2.4 aperture,
and both lenses support optical image stabilization.
So whether you're taking photos or out shooting video,
you're gonna get nice, clean, crisp images
and smooth, buttery video.
For all you selfie lovers out there,
the front camera is a wide angle 8-megapixel lens
with an F1.7 aperture.
So not much has change there,
but the front camera on the S8 was pretty fantastic,
so you can expect the same on the S9 as well.
Continuing on the camera front,
Samsung is also adding in a powerful, slow motion feature,
which allows you to shoot at 960 frames per second
at 720p resolution.
Now that is actually a crazy stat.
Both the 960 frame per second
and the fact that it's at 720p.
When I heard they were gonna do 960,
I figured it was gonna be a 480p video resolution,
but it's actually 720p high definition.
Now one thing about shooting slow motion video,
sometimes you're trying to catch something particular
in the scene, and when you hit record you actually miss it.
Samsung's also built in a feature
that captures super slow mo when the camera sees
something enter a portion of the display.
So you specify the area,
and you hold the phone up to the scene,
and if something goes through the area specified
it'll immediately capture a 960 frame per second,
super slow motion clip.
And you can see here that I tried it a few times,
and again, the way that it figures out
when to capture the slow motion clip
is when there's movement in the specified area.
So since I started moving around early
it actually fired off earlier than I wanted it to,
but eventually I was able to get it down,
as you can see here, this is
how the super slow motion feature is supposed to work.
One other camera feature
I'm gonna touch on briefly is the AR-Emoji feature.
This is kind of Samsung's answer to Apple's Animoji,
but with Apple they're actually animated
the emoji characters and with Samsung
the AR-Emoji is animating an emoji version of you.
The camera scans your face and automatically creates
your likeness that you can then dress up and accessorize.
I personally didn't find any clothes
I would realistically wear in real life.
And had no clue where my beard went,
but maybe that was buried in the settings somewhere,
and I didn't' feel like looking all over the place for that.
Once you have your Ar-Emoji, you can use it in the camera,
in text messages, and in other places as well to convey
your thoughts and feelings in emoji form.
Now let's step away from the camera for a moment
and talk about one of the other features
that I though was a major improvement, at least for me,
someone who enjoys music
and entertainment on my smartphones.
And that is finally,
the addition of stereo speakers on a Samsung Galaxy device.
Similar to what you'll find on Apple's current iPhone 8
and iPhone 10, not only do you
have the bottom firing speaker,
on the Galaxy S9 and S9+, but you also have the earpiece
now that acts as a second loud speaker as well.
Together they give you stereo sounds
and the speakers are tuned by AKG,
and the phone is also certified
for Dolby Atmos surround sound, as well.
There you have it, guys.
That was your first hands-on look at Samsung's
brand new Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ smartphones.
If you're excited to pick one up,
you can pre order these devices beginning on March 2nd
and they release to the public on March 16th.
So you'll be able to get your hands on these
in just about three weeks.
Now there are even more features
I'm gonna be showing you between now and then.
Those include new additions to what Bixby can do,
as well as improvements made to Samsung's DeX platform.
If you're excited about the Samsung Galaxy S9
and enjoyed this one, please do drop a like on this video,
and don't forget if you haven't done so already,
you can click or tap on my face
when it appears here at the bottom of the screen
in order to subscribe for free to the channel,
so you don't miss any future videos.
Thanks so much for watching as always, guys,
I appreciate your support.
I'm Andru Edwards and I will catch you in the next video.
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