How Samsung’s Galaxy S9 compares to the iPhone X
LONDON: Samsung’s Galaxy S9 (and a larger S9 Plus), successor to the Galaxy S8, is coming out in March. The phone is critical for the company.
Samsung needs to show it has the hardware and software chops to maintain its leadership in the Android market, while proving Apple with its latest top-end iPhone—the iPhone X—isn’t king of smartphone design.
Here’s how the Galaxy S9 and the iPhone X compare.
CAMERA
Great pictures are essential for any top-end phone. Samsung has equipped the S9 Plus with two cameras: a wide-angle, and a telephoto (like the iPhone X) and both capture at a resolution of 12 megapixels (also like the iPhone X). Samsung even mounts the two lenses of the S9 Plus vertically — something Apple also does with its flagship.
But the big difference may come with low-light performance. When you take a picture with the S9, you actually capture 12 images simultaneously. The phone then compares all exposures to create a single shot that includes all the detail you want, but with as little grain and noise as possible.
Samsung’s decision to expand this technology in the S9 complements the physical camera lens, which has a wider aperture to let in more light — an f1.5 aperture compared to Apple’s f1.8. In the camera world, that small change can make a big difference.
SCREEN AND DESIGN
The S9 Plus uses a 6.2-inch display, and the S9 a 5.8-inch one (the iPhone X also sports a 5.8-inch display).
There is one big difference though. Apple’s famous “notch” atop the iPhone X’s display is not something Samsung adopted. Instead, the S9 screen is an uninterrupted rectangle. The bezels at the top and bottom of the display are thin, but Apple’s are thinner. Consumers will have a choice: slimmer bezels with a notch, or no notch but slightly larger bezels.
HORSEPOWER
In the US, Samsung will equip the Galaxy S9 with Qualcomm’s latest and greatest chip, the Snapdragon 845. In other regions, such as Europe and India, Samsung will use the lates of its own Exynos processors. Both the Qualcomm and the Exynos variants will have eight cores.
Until the phone gets released for review it’s impossible to say how well the Galaxy S9 will perform compared to the iPhone X. Apple’s phone uses its own A11 Bionic chip, which uses six processing cores.
FEATURES
Apple has never let customers expand internal storage of the iPhone with removable SD memory. But Samsung does with the S9. It’ll have 64GB built in, but it supports Micro SD cards with up to 400GB of additional capacity.
Samsung has also taken the idea of Apple’s animated emojis, which use the front-facing camera to let users animate facial features of a unicorn and more by moving their own face.
Samsung is introducing a similar feature with the S9, but rather than using existing emojis it will let you create an avatar of yourself and animate that instead. These can be shared as videos of animated GIFs via email or text message.
PRICE AND VERDICT
The new models are cheaper than the iPhone X, which starts at $999. In the US, prices range from $720 for the S9 to $930 for the larger S9+. These phones are the most expensive flagships either has made within their categories, and on paper they share remarkable similarities.
As for the customer on the fence over whether to defect from one manufacturer to another, it’ll be a trade-off between screen format and bezels, expandable storage, low-light photography and physical look and feel. Elsewhere we’re still in the realm of very attractive slabs of glass and metal, despite record highs in cost.