Samsung’s ultra- premium Galaxy S9, S9+ launched

The wait for the Samsung flagships has finally ended. The Galaxy S9 and S9+ have finally being launched in India after their global debut at the MWC last week. Samsung’s latest flagships will start at ` 57,900 for the smaller Galaxy S9 with 64GB storage and go up to ` 65,900 for the 256GB variant. The Galaxy S9+ meanwhile starts at ` 64,990 for the 64GB variant and goes up to ` 72,900 for the 256GB variant. Samsung has tied up with Paytm and HDFC bank to offer up to ` 6,000 off on the MRP of both the S9 models.

Both the Galaxy S9 and S9+ are essentially substantial updates to last year’s Galaxy S8 and S8+. Therefore, the design may look familiar, but is actually tweaked — Samsung says that the display has slightly reduced bezels on top and bottom whereas the screen is a little brighter when compared to the old S8. Those narrow bezels also house a stereo speaker setup. The S9 gets a 5.9- inch Curved Super AMOLED QHD+ display whereas the S9+ gets a bigger 6.2- inch QHD+ display.

For the Indian market, the S9 is equipped with a 10nm Exynos 9810 chipset. The S9 has to make do with 4GB of RAM as standard whereas the S9+ is blessed with 6GB of RAM. Both the models are available in storage capacities of 64GB and 256GB, with expandable storage up to 400GB. They run Samsung’s latest version of Samsung Experience 9.0 custom UI based on Android 8.0 Oreo. Bixby also makes a comeback as Bixby 2.0 with new capabilities such as identifying buildings, translating text from an image and identifying nutritional levels from food articles.

Samsung’s biometric authentication system now uses the iris scanner and the facial recognition setup for added security. The S9 is backed by a 3000mAh battery whereas the S9+ gets a 3500mAh battery. Another surprise — the 3.5mm headphone jack has been retained as well, making it one of the few flagship smartphone to carry on with the universal audio port. However, the S9 and S9+’ s

party piece is the camera — both models get a variable aperture rear camera sensor. The S9 has a 12MP Dual Pixel camera with a variable aperture between f/ 1.5 and f/ 2.4, aided by OIS. The S9+ gets a 12MP Dual Camera Dual Pixel setup with the similar variable aperture setup on the wide- angle lens of f/ 1.5 and f/ 2.4 and a fixed f/ 2.4 aperture telephoto lens — both aided by OIS. The cameras have a lot of Augmented Reality tricks. Samsung’s AR Emojis can scan faces from a 2D image and map 100 facial features to create an animated 3D model, which can be sent to anyone in a GIF format. They also get a new 960fps slowmotion recording, the results of which can be used as a GIF or even as live wallpaper.