Was this helpful?
- Yes it was, thank you
- No, I still need help
DISCLAIMER: I have been given a Samsung Galaxy S9 by Telstra free of charge to review. The comments expressed by me reflect my user experience and personal opinion.
My previous phone was a Lumia 950 XL. My last Android phone was the Nexus 4 so it will be interesting to see how far Android has advanced in the last 5 years.
Unboxing
On opening the box I was delighted to discover that among the accessories was a USB C to USB A adaptor for connecting USB drives to phone. There was also a USB C Male to USB A male cable for connecting phone to PC and connecting phone to USB Charger.
The phone was protected in the box with a soft protective caser which can be use as a protective case. A case is essential as the shiny body attracts finger prints and scratches.
This is the full list of items in the box.
- USB Charger
- SIM / Micro SD tray ejection pin
- USB C male to USB A female
- Wired earphones
- USB C male to USB A male cable (Charging and connection to PC)
- 4 spare ear buds
- Soft phone case (Part of phone packaging)
- Quick Start Guide
- Warranty Card
- How to transfer content to your new Galaxy Phone leaflet.
- Galaxy S9 Phone
Below are Pictures of the Packaging included accessories and documentation.
Setup
Setup is fairly easy
I installed a Nano SIM and Micro SD card first. I found it very fiddly getting the SIM and Micro SD card to sit in the tray.
Next charging battery took 50 minutes to charge the phone from 69% to full charge.
Connecting to WiFi Network, signing into Google and restoring backup Apps and Data from another device took about an hour including updating pre-installed apps.
While apps were being installed and apps updated I was taken to the “Protect your phone” screen. See image below. All the selections are self-explanatory except for Intelligent Scan.
Intelligent Scan is a combination of Face recognition and Iris Scanner. It first scans your face. If that fails to unlock the phone, the device then checks your irises. If both fail, Intelligent Scan will try to authenticate your identity using a combination of the two.
I elected to set up “Finger Print Scanner” which was easy to do using the online instructions.
A Pattern Pin or password must also be set up.
If you need to change protection mode go to Setting menu and then go to Lock screen and security
After setting up protection there is a prompt to set up a Samsung account which I skipped.
Everything went smoothly apart from the time zone setting which although set to auto was set to a time zone in the US. This was rectified by going to Settings > General management > Date and time.
Shortly after setting up the phone I was prompted to download and install a 500 Mbyte system update this only took 20 minutes compared to an hour on the Windows phone. Most of this time was still able to use phone.
In my next post I will be reviewing the camera. I will either examining the camera interface and settings and posting a few sample pictures of photos taken using the Galaxy S9 and as a comparison using my Lumia 950XL. With S9 wide aperture F1.5 and variable aperture I am expecting to see some great pictures especially in low light conditions.
I picked my S9+ up from the Telstra Shop in Traralgon today (Thanks guys, great customer service). So, yes, this is not a Telstra sponsored post, it is my personal phone and purely my personal opinion.
Upgraded after my 12 months was up on my Galaxy S8 purely because of the camera on my daughter's S9. Haven't taken too many shots yet as I'm still setting up my apps and getting connected to all my other devices, but if they come out like this one (had to crop it because the filesize is too large for Crowdsupport), then I'm going to have lots of fun with this.
If anyone wants to have a look at the originals that I have taken, go to http://reviews.bakerweb.id.au/gallery and take a squiz.
In this post I will review the phones camera and review the rest of the phone in my next post. I did this because a lot of people will be buying the phone based on the camera alone although it does have a lot of good features.
Camera Interface
Rear Camera has the following operating modes.
- Food: In this mode the vivid colours of the food is emphasized.
- Selective Focus: In this mode the focus point can be selected by tapping on the area in the image,
- Panorama: This mode is used for taking wide landscape photos.
- Pro: In this mode all the camera settings can be adjusted manually
- Auto: This is the default mode for the camera, all camera settings are set to auto.
- Super Slow Mo: In this mode a 0.2 second clip is taken at 960 fps when motion is detected.
- Aremogi mode: This mode is for making a customized Emoji’ using a photo of your face as a starting point
- Hyperlapse: When in this mode pressing the camera button takes a series of rapid photos until the Camera button is pressed a second time. These pictures are converted into mp4 video which will play back at either x4, 8, 16 or 32 times the original speed
- Slow Motion: FHD video at 240 fps which plays back in slow motion.
- Sports: Mode for taking photos were there is a lot of movement.
The last two modes are not available by default. To enable these modes go to Camera settings > Edit camera modes > Shooting Modes > Rear Camera >
To launch the Camera App tap the Camera app icon or quickly double press the power button
By default the camera will open in Auto Mode (See image below)
In auto mode taking a picture or recording video is just matter of aiming the camera and pressing the capture or record button. There was virtually no delay between aiming the camera, pressing the button and the camera taking the picture or starting to record.
The only setting available in Auto Mode is exposure which can be set by swiping left or right at the bottom of image in portrait mode and right hand side of the image in landscape mode.
A continuous burst of images can be taken by pressing and holding the camera button These images are saved as a series of individual photos or a motion GIF.
Image of Camera in Pro Mode Iso Control selected
In Pro Mode you have full control over the camera.
These are the settings available in Pro Mode
- 50 – 800
- Shutter speed 1/2400 - 10 seconds
- Tone (Colour Temperature, Tint, Contrast, Saturation, Highlights and Shadows)
- Manual Focus
- White Balance
- Exposure -2 - +2
In practice I found it almost impossible to use pro mode due to the short period of time that the activated control was displayed and also over sensitivity of the selfie vertical swipe gesture, The slightest vertical movement of the finger on the screen and the camera switches from the rear to the front camera.
Image of of camera app in Super Slow Mo mode
In Super Slow Mode has two modes auto and manual. In auto just aim the camera and press the record button. Normal 720P video at 30 fps is recorded until motion is detected the camera then records at 960 fps for 0.2 second after 0.2 seconds the camera continues recording at 30 fps until motion is detected and then records another clip of Super Slow Mo video.. The camera will continue to do this until the stop button is pressed. In manual mode tapping the Record button captures a short Super Slow Mode Clip.
Image of the Super Slow Mo Video Editor.
Below are the settings for the camera app. These settings are divided into Rear Camera, Front Camera and Common settings.
Rear Camera Video resolutions and Photo sizes supported
Front Camera Picture sizes and Video resolutions supported
Camera Samples
All the pictures have been taken without the assistance of tripod. The full size images have been reduced in size. Could not post full sized images due to limitations of this site.
The following photos have been taken at night.
Following photos were taken on sunny day
The following picture was taken at night using flash
Below is a Super Slow Mo clip sample.
Camera Conclusion
If you are looking for phone with a good camera this is the phone to get
.
The only criticisms I have with the camera are:
- The camera's user interface could be improved by reducing the sensitivity of the swipe up gesture and also increasing the time that settings are displayed on the screen.
- Video shot in UHD tended to stutter when panning.
The camera takes very good photos in both low light and normal sunshine. The pictures are sharp with few artifacts and have a high dynamic range. In low light conditions there was a huge difference in the quality of the Galaxy S9 and those taken by the 950XL
In the next post I will review the rest of the phone
I found the fingerprint sensor location on the S8+ (to the side of the camera) was a much better location than the S9+. On the S8+, my finger was naturally in that position as it is where your finger tends to sit (off centre) to support the phone. The sensor below the camera is just awkward for me.
I think you'll find that the hard case will actually make it easier to find the fingerprint sensor as you get a bit of a guide from the case (at least that's what I've found with my daughter's S9 and Otterbox Defender case combination - great case btw, I'm very happy with it). I haven't got a case for my S9+ yet, I really should order it.
The Samsung Health app is great, I've been using it for a few years to keep track of my blood sugar and blood pressure. It also acts as a pretty good pedometer, so you can keep an eye on how much walking (or how lazy you've been) you have been doing.
I have had Bixby for just over a year and I still don't use it. I'm still an "OK Google" person. I'm sure Bixby will mature into something useful eventually, but for now it's more of a hinderance.
And finally, a tip on the camera on the S9+. With the 2 cameras on the back, to switch between the 2, you will notice a number 1 (or 2) on the screen. If you tap it, it switches between the 2 lenses. Not intuitive at first glance (took me about 90 seconds to figure it out), but quite a simple control. Defintely give PRO mode a go. If you want great looking photos without having to do editing on a computer, try it out. Also, the Live Focus feature works very well (see below). They are the same shot taken at the same time with different lenses.
DISCLAIMER: I have been given a Samsung Galaxy S9 by Telstra free of charge to review. The comments expressed by me reflect my user experience and personal opinion.
In this post I will be reviewing the following on the Galaxy S9
- Call quality
- Cellular Performance.
- Display
- Phone Features
- User Interface
- Samsung Apps
- Connectivity
- Wifi
- Battery
- GPS
- Performance
- Summing Up
Call quality:
During calls the speech is loud and clear both when using the earphone and when using the speaker. Speech was still clear in noisy environments. The ringer is load and easily heard in a noisy environment.
The included earphone produced loud and clear speech during voice calls.
The speech quality in the send direction is also good.
Both call diversions and call waiting work
Cellular Network performance:
Cellular performance was good. Even in areas shown as 3G only on Telstra’s coverage map the phone still connected to 4G at speeds of 8.5 Mbps down and 5.6 Mbps up. The position of my hand on the phone had no effect on reception.
In my local area cellular data speed varied between 38 -87 Mbps down and 10 – 39 Mbps up.
Display
The Galaxy S9 has the best display I have come across. The colours just seem to pop out of the screen. The edges of the screen are curved which makes it possible to view the display from very low angles. There is only a slight de-saturation of the colours when the screen is viewed from very low angles. I did not notice any colour shift. The screen is bright and even in direct sunlight the display is clearly legible. There is good dynamic range the blacks appear black not grey.
Screen brightness can be manually adjusted to suit your needs. The screen will then automatically adjust to suit the lighting conditions. In my opinion the auto adjustment was too aggressive dimming the screen too much in dark conditions and increasing screen brightness too much in bright light conditions.
There is an option to filter out blue light either manually or using a timer
The screen native resolution is 2960 X 1140 (WQHD), this can be changed to 2220 X 1080 (FHD+) or 1440 X 720 (HD+). By default screen resolution is set to FHD+. In practice I found no difference between WQHD and HD+ so I set the screen to HD+ to conserve battery. (Setting > Display > Screen Resolution).
Phone Features
- Finger print scanner: On the back of the phone just below the camera is the finger print scanner. Once set up this can be used to unlock or wake the phone. In use I found it very reliable recognizing my finger every time. I would have preferred it be a bit further away from the camera to prevent the finger accidentally touching the camera lens.
- Heart rate and oxygen sensor: To the left of the camera is the Heart Rate Sensor. In practice I found it a bit fiddly to use at first but found it easy to use after some practice.
This sensor can also be used to capture selfies. Tapping the sensor when camera app is in selfie mode takes a picture. - Iris Scanner: To the right of the earphone/speaker is the iris scanner. In order for this to work the phone has to be held in the correct position. I found it easier to use facial recognition or the finger print scanner
- Stereo Speakers: There is a bottom facing speaker at the bottom of the phone and the earphone at the top doubles as the second speaker. In practice these produced good sound quality.
- Bixby Button: On the left of the phone is the Bixby button which when pressed opens the Bixby Home app. I found myself accidently pressing the button so I disabled button in the Bixby Home app.
- Echo Cancelling Mike: There is an echo cancelling mike at the top of phone.
User Interface:
The phone operating system is Android Version 8.0.0 with Samsung Experience version 9.0 installed on top of it. I found the user interface easy to navigate and a big improvement over earlier Android versions.
A couple of differences I have noticed are:
- Navigation Keys. The recent apps button and the back button locations have been swapped. I prefer the standard Android layout so I changed position by going to Settings > Display > Navigation Bar > Button Layout.
- All Apps Draw: On this version of Android there is no All Apps icon on the home screen. Swiping up from the bottom of the home screen reveals all the installed apps.
Pressure Sensitive Virtual Home Button: When Navigation Bar is hidden, pressing on screen where home key is located when its visible brings up home screen even when the phone is in sleep mode. - Split Screen This phone supports split screen but doesn’t use the normal long tap on the recent app button.to turn split screen on.
On the S9 to activate split screen press the recent apps button. Apps that support split screen will have an extra icon to the left off the close icon. Tap on this icon.
The screen is split in two with the app open in one of the windows. The other Window contains apps that support split screen mode.
.
Select the second app you wish to open by tapping on it..
The amount of space each app occupies can be adjusted by dragging the divider.
The normal Android long press of recent apps button to initiate split screen mode can be enabled by going to Settings > Display > Navigation bar > Long press home button
Lock Screen
By default the lock screen is always on. I switched this off and halved the battery drain in sleep mode.
(Settings > Lock Screen and Security)
Emergency phone calls can be made by dragging the phone icon towards center of screen and the camera app can be opened by dragging the camera icon towards the center of screen.
Samsung Apps
Samsung has preinstalled some of its own apps. There is even a Samsung store app. Some of the apps are duplicates of the Google preinstalled apps and some of the others require a Samsung account. A good thing about the Samsung apps compared to Google pre-installed apps is they can all be uninstalled except for the “Galaxy Apps” which is the Samsung store
These are the apps I found most useful
- Galaxy Apps: The Samsung App store. You Need a Samsung account to install apps from this store.
- My Files: Phones file manager also has direct access to any cloud storage accounts that you have signed into on the phone. I found this app very useful for transferring files from my old phone. Using the supplied USB adaptor and a USB micro SD card reader.
- Smart Switch: This app is for transferring data, contacts and text from your old phone. I was unable to use the app to transfer media files from my old Windows phone because the app failed to detect the media files.
- Samsung Health: This app can be used to measure heart rate and oxygen level. It can also be used to keep track of your exercise routine. The app uses GPS to keep track of how far you traveled. I found the constant notifications from the tracking annoying so I disabled the notifications.
- Voice Recorder:, Not only can this app be used for recording audio it can also be used to convert speech to text. I found it to be very accurate in converting my voice to text. The text can be copied to the clipboard and then pasted into a word processor app.
Connectivity:
- USB C: The USB C connector supports USB 3.1 Gen1 it also supports OTG. Among the phone accessories is a USB C Male to USB A female adapter. This enables USB peripherals such as USB drives, mice, keyboards and USB hubs to be connected to the phone:
- Bluetooth: The phone has Bluetooth v5.0 (LE up to 2 Mbps). My Bluetooth speakers and a Bluetooth track pad and keyboard connected to the phone and both worked with no problems.
- WiFi:11 a/b/g/n/ac 2.4G+5GHz, VHT80 MU-MIMO,1024-QAM
- WiFi Direct: Is a quick and easy way to transfer data from two WiFi Direct enabled devices. It took 40 seconds to Transfer a 1.2 Gigabyte file from phone to a tablet.
- Earphone Jack: There is a 3.5 mm stereo earphone jack at the bottom of the phone.
- NFC
Wifi
The range of the 2.4 GHz band is only average topping out at 30 meters.
The 5 GHz WiFi band had a range of about 20 meters.
I noticed the strength of the WiFi signal depended on orientation of the phone. There is a10 dB increase in WiFi signal when phone body is parallel to WiFi source compared to when phone is head on to the source.
My internet connection tops out at 36/12 Mbps. Speed test using Home dashboard app returned bandwidth and speed results of 450, 36/12 (5GHz) and 116, 33/12 (2.4 GHz).
A speed test at the local library returned speeds of 180 Mbps down and 102 Mbps up using the 2.4 GHz WiFi band..
Battery
The battery is quick to charge. From 32% to 82% took only 44 minutes and it took another 30 minutes to fully charge the phone
.
I was initially disappointed with battery performance especially in sleep mode, fortunately there are plenty of settings that can be tweaked to conserve power. By tweaking these settings the phone lasted almost 48 hours without recharging.
These are the settings I tweaked.
- Turned always on display off (Settings > Lock Screen and Security).
- Changed Screen resolution to HD+ (Setting > Display > Screen Resolution).
- Added any app that did not need to run in background to the “Always Sleeping Apps” List. (Settings > Device Maintenance > Always Sleeping Apps > Add App)
These are the results the phone achieved doing the following tasks:
- Sleep mode: In sleep mode with Bluetooth Off, WiFi, Location and Cellular data Enabled the battery was drained at 0.5% per hour
- Browsing Internet: 1 hour of WEB Browsing at 33 % screen brightness drained battery by 10%.
- Watching Video: 1 hour of WiFi streamed HD video at 45% screen brightness drained battery by 11%
- Hot Spot: One hour using the phone as a hot spot drained battery by 7%
- Bluetooth: An hour of music played back via Bluetooth drained the battery by 6%
- Voice call: Battery drained at 7% per hour
- Recording Video: Recording 5 minutes of UHD video drained battery by 3%. Extrapolating this gives a battery drain of 36% per hour.
GPS
The GPS is accurate and quick
The main problems I have with GPS are:
- Privacy: I don’t want Google and third party apps tracking my every move so I have set Location to “Phone Only”. Because of this Geo tagging in the camera app is not available and every time the phone connects to a WiFi network the message below pops up
In Phone Only mode Location services uses the inbuilt GPS of the phone which contrary to what Google tries to make you believe is far more accurate than either cellular triangulation or proximity to nearby WiFi networks. - Data Connection required: A data connection is required to use the default Map app. Maps of small areas can be downloaded for use off line but these are limited in size and not all the functions of the Maps App is available in off line mode.
- Compass Calibration: I found calibrating the compass a difficult task. To calibrate the phone has to be moved through a figure eight with the top of the phone pointed in the direction of motion and the phone screen facing in towards the center of the circle but also gradually rotated vertically so that phone is horizontal at the junction off the two circles.
On the Windows phone the phone just has to be moved through a horizontal figure 8. The orientation of the phone did not matter.
Items 1 and 2 are common problems with all Android devices and were one of the main reasons I switched from Android to Windows phones. There are third party apps such as “Here We Go” that allow the phone’s GPS to be used offline but there are still the annoying pop ups when connecting to WiFi.
If Location services are disabled by toggling the Location switch to off in the Quick Access settings Draw and an App is opened that requires location services there will be a pop up asking if you agree to enable Location services. If you agree the location services will be turned on and set to High Accuracy instead of the previous Phone only mode. Google only reveals this if the down arrow is tapped to reveal extra details.
Performance
I found the performance of the phone was very good.
The phone only took 5 seconds to power off and 50 seconds to power back on.
Apps and Web pages opened quickly.
The only problem I noticed is when viewing videos in the Stan app and apps were being updated in the background. Every time an up was installed the video paused for a few seconds. This happens on all my android devices and only happens when viewing videos in the Stan app. It does not happen on the Windows Phone.
Summing Up
The Samsung Galaxy S9 is an excellent phone. There are only a few things I disliked about the phone but there are many excellent features that I liked about the phone
What I didn’t like
- Googles insistence on tracking your every move (This is a fault with all Android devices running latest operating system)..
- Non removable battery
- Bixby button cannot be reprogrammed to something more useful.
- Over sensitivity of the switch camera gesture in camera app.
What I liked
- Terrific screen,
- Good camera especially in low light conditions.
- SD Card slot
- 5 mm earphone socket.
- Reliable and fast bio metric unlocking sensors.
- Heart rate and blood oxygen sensor.
- Included Accessories (USB C to USB A adapter, soft phone cover and AKG Earphone)
-
Hello -
Set it & forget it
With direct debit there’s no need to give paying your bill another thought.
Avoid queuing up and never worry about late fees again.
Setup direct debit
Manage your services and take advantage of offers while you’re out and about with the Telstra 24x7® App Find out more
Avoid queueing up and never worry about late fees againSet up direct debit
Need a hand or want to share your expertise?
Register for CrowdSupport and get involved