Samsung Galaxy S9 review: This phone’s a hot number

Smartphone consumers have come to expect miracles from phone manufacturers.

For years, there was enormous pressure on companies like Samsung, Google and Apple to outdo each other with bigger and better phones. That’s not sustainable. After a few successful years, phone companies start slowing down on their phones’ design changes as features become refined and even familiar. It’s like the old saying — everything old is new again.

If you are familiar with last year’s Samsung Galaxy S8, you’ll certainly recognize this year’s Galaxy S9. The S9 looks almost exactly like the S8, which is not a bad thing.

So what’s new? The S9 has a faster processor (the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845) and is a bit wider and heavier. The button placement is the same, but the S9’s buttons are a bit larger and have slightly different spacing, so S8 cases will not fit the S9.

The S9’s operating system gets a bump to Android 8.0 (Oreo) and a new audio system powered by AKG. The new setup has two speakers and features surround sound with Dolby Atmos. The sound is impressive, but a side-by-side comparison with the iPhone 8 Plus was a tie.

The biggest improvement in the S9 is in its camera, which boasts a 12-megapixel sensor and a dual-aperture lens that has a wider opening, which collects more light. It’s outstanding with low-light scenes. Video is captured at up to 4K resolution at 30 or 60 frames per second. The S9 really excels at slow motion, including a mode to shoot 720p HD video at 960 fps, which is really, really slow motion.

The S8 unlocks via facial recognition or fingerprint. The S9 raises the bar by adding a mode called Intelligent Scan that combines iris scan and face recognition for enhanced security, both of which are absurdly easy to set up.

Samsung is trying hard to get some traction for its intelligent assistant Bixby. The S9 has a dedicated button for Bixby, who can do cool things, like language translation (point it at a sign and get an instant translation) and photo recognition of places or items (point the camera a local landmark). You can point the camera at your favorite bottle of wine to learn more about it or a pair of shoes to find more like them online.

The S9 is like an old friend. Take all the goodness of the S8 and add increased security, a better fingerprint sensor location and a much-improved camera, and you have a flagship smartphone that’s hard to beat.

— The Dallas Morning News (TNS)