Galaxy S9 vs iphone X
One of these phones is the Galaxy S9. The other is the iphone X. We worked out how to tell them apart, and then found out which is best…
Flagship fight: Samsung and Apple slug it out
The story of Apple vs Samsung’s flagship phones is a bit like that of Batman and the Joker: it’s been going on for ages and neither can seem to exist without the other. Not convinced? Just think about their last six months of identikit skirmishes. Apple created the iphone X using Samsung’s screen tech to compete with the practically bezelless Galaxy S8, which has now been revamped iphone 6S-style with almost exactly the same form factor and a few tweaks.
If this was two mates you were talking about, you’d be begging them to get a room by now… but they’ve had to settle for my jacket pocket instead. Yep, like a banker with a well-nourished superiority complex or his flush drug dealer, I’ve taken to using both these two phones side by side to find out which is best. It’s a tough and wildly impractical job but, hey, we all get the heroes we deserve.
Oriin story
If you look back at the history of this long and often overblown conflict, it sees two companies starting out with markedly different products that got gradually more similar as time wore on. The bright plastics, bonkers-software gimmickry and times when you could only get a signal by holding your iphone the ‘right way’ have all melted away into the same glass and metal form factor – so much so that the new S9 is a near-on doppelganger for last year’s Galaxy S8.
As someone who still harks back to the time when you could get a luminous yellow Windows Phone with a hulking great 41MP camera slapped on the back, that’s a real shame. Then again, there’s a good reason why Nokia ceased to exist as a phone-maker for four years after coming up with the Lumia 1020. And if you’re down with the whole ‘look ma, no bezels’ thing, no company does it better than Samsung and Apple.
Dare to peer between the thin black lines and you’ll find both of these handsets’ OLED displays are absolute corkers. The S9’s has a slightly higher resolution at 2960x1440 compared to the X’s 2436x1125, while the iphone’s is probably a shade brighter; but both of them really are the absolute business whether you’re bashing out a quick Whatsapp or catching up on the footie highlights. Even if, admittedly, no amount of contrast or colour fidelity is going to make this season’s Southampton team look halfway decent…
A notch above
To notch or not to notch? It’s a big part of your choosing between these two smartphones, which only serves to underline just how similar they really are. First-world problems don’t come any more insignificant than agonising over whether to have a small black border at the top and bottom of your phone’s screen or just a tiny chunk at the top instead.
Having seen this squabble rumble on since November at Stuff HQ, I’m firmly on team Apple thanks to Face ID. You know, the feature where you hold the iphone X to your mug to unlock it? All the sensors that make it work so smoothly (for the most part) are housed in that notch. Samsung’s Galaxy S9 uses a combination of facial and iris scanning called Intelligent Scan and it’s significantly less consistent. That’s why you also get a fingerprint scanner as backup.
So, as much as both phones really are rather handsome to behold and handle equally well, Face ID allows for a cleaner design and makes the iphone X that little bit easier to interact with as well. Plus, I can use it to reconfigure my face in the shape of a cartoon turd thanks to the wonders of Animoji. You can’t put a price on that kind of technological wizardry.
Top dollar
Whether it’s thanks to Face ID, its innovative poo emoji or the fact that the iphone 8 is just so boring, I now can’t take a train into London without an array of vertically aligned dual cameras staring back at me. Such is its ubiquity with suited sorts, the iphone X may as well be the official phone of people who were good with numbers in school.
For me and the many others who struggled with their times tables, it remains a ridiculously expensive proposition for a gadget you’ll be upgrading in two years – especially when you can save over £250 by getting the S9 instead. To my mind at least, this all means the X can’t simply be the equal of Samsung’s latest and greatest – it has to be superior by a full third. That’s just basic maths, right? Pay more and you expect better.
Once, having an iphone opened you up to a world of new apps and features, or at least more polished versions of what you’d find on Android; but that’s no longer the case. I can use near-on identical versions of Whatsapp, Citymapper and Youtube across both of them, with little getting in the way of my videos of celebrities eating excessively spicy chicken. Samsung does remain the more fiddly option, though, with an incredibly needy setup process for the Galaxy S9 and a camera app with at least five too many buttons.
Still, the bottom line is that both these smartphones look great and run like a dream, which means there’s pretty much only one feature capable of separating them: their cameras.
Snap judement
If you’re anything like me, then there are only really two elements that you care about in a new handset: its aesthetics, and whether it can take a great photo. Because for most manufacturers, making a fast-enough phone is simply a case of buying a decent off-the-shelf processor and then pairing it with Android Oreo. Getting your creation to take a decent snap regardless of lighting is a much tougher ask, and
that’s why Samsung’s Galaxy S9 and Apple’s iphone X have taken such different approaches to the same conundrum.
One look at both these phones is enough to tell you they’ve got different priorities. The iphone’s dual-lens camera allows for shots of far-off objects using 2x optical zoom, while the S9 sticks with a single-lens setup that can vary its aperture and therefore the amount of light it uses for photos – just like that proper camera you’ve still got sitting at the back of a drawer somewhere.
While these varying systems talk a good game, I’m not convinced either is good enough to elevate its camera over the other. My iphone’s zoomed shots from the back of a First Aid Kit gig were still indistinct enough that I could probably convince you I was watching an Oasis reunion show. Likewise, the Samsung’s dual-aperture camera is great for Instagram feeds that amount to one great, dimly lit bar crawl, but isn’t quite as hot at other stuff such as flattering close-ups.
What actually separates these phones is the way their innards process your pictures. I’m not a huge fan of the way Samsung’s phones boost their colours and aggressively correct noise to such an extent that pictures ping off the screen in a way that’s almost unnatural. Apple’s preference for sharpness and a neutral tone feels more lifelike, especially if you’re a nerd like me who gets a kick out of tweaking photos on a desktop and then printing out the best-looking ones.
Since most people don’t match up to this elite calibre of nerdery, either of these cameras will prove a fantastic companion for all your point-and-shoot holiday snaps, family get-togethers and drunken shenanigans. Seriously, my oldest, most technophobic mate came back from a trip to Machu Picchu the other week and the photos he caught on his Galaxy S8 were unreal. That both of these cameras are even better than that one is all you really need to know here.
Choosing between the iphone X and the Samsung Galaxy S9 is like having the option of spaghetti or tagliatelle at your local Italian restaurant. Whatever your choice, you’re still gonna end up with lovely stringy pasta for dinner.
If you don’t sweat the small stuff like the notch, occasional bit of software gimmickry and lack of a headphone jack, there’s far more that these two awesome devices have in common than whatever might separate them. So picking one or the other really is a matter of fine margins – aside from one thing that makes it easy for me: price. A grand is just too much money for a smartphone that, while undeniably brilliant, is in effect almost no different from the equally awesome Samsung Galaxy S9.
So, as much as I love each of these phones in its own way, it’s the Samsung I’ll be holding onto for the long run, recommending to my friends and sending to the top of our Top 10 smartphone rankings… at least until an iphone comes along that doesn’t just do more of the same again. Hey, September isn’t that long away now, Apple. You’d best get a shift on.