Samsung announced the Galaxy S9 flagship smartphone alongside the Galaxy S9+ on February 25, 2018. The Galaxy S series offers high-end smartphones for consumers like the Galaxy S8, S7, etc. The S9 was launch at a price of Rs 49,899, it was cheaper than the larger S9+, which cost Rs 54,999.

Display

The Samsung Galaxy S9 comes with a Super AMOLED screen that displays 16 million colors. The screen measures 5.8 inches, featuring a screen-to-body ratio of 83.6%, a resolution of 1440x2960 pixels, and a pixel density of 570 ppi. It’s protected with Corning Gorilla Glass 5, features HDR10, 3D Touch, and offers the Always-on feature.

AMOLED is short for active-matrix organic light-emitting diode. It’s a type of OLED screen technology, a type of thin-film-screen tech where the electroluminescent material is formed by organic compounds while the active matrix is the technology that addresses pixels. Meanwhile, Super AMOLED is Samsung’s marketing term for its AMOLED screen that has an integrated touch screen digitizer. It’s a layer detecting touch integrated into the screen panel instead of being laid on top. Samsung says that this type of screen reflects only 20% as much sunlight as the 1st-gen AMOLED panel.

To comment on the Galaxy S9 display, we can only say that it’s amazing. In fact, it’s one of the best screens ever made for a smartphone, which is also a strong competitive advantage of Samsung. The contrast is great, colors are vibrant with a more seamless black shade, and the pixel density delivers a smooth viewing experience as images are sharp.

Though the handset can support up to 120 Hz of frame rate, the gaming experience on this screen is a bit disappointing with the Exynos 9810. Gaming tests show that it cannot maintain the frame rate at 40 fps, which mostly drops to 37-38 fps, and even to as low as 27 fps. The graphics, to be honest, doesn’t look like on a high-end phone at all. Alongside the frame drops, there are several lags during the gaming session, very annoying. So, testing proves that the Snapdragon 845 is much better in graphics performance than the Exynos 9810.

Chip

The Galaxy S9 is powered by either the Exynos 9810 or the Snapdragon 845 processor depending on the market. In Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, the Exynos 9810 consists of four 2.7GHz cores and four 1.8GHz cores. In the US, Latin America, and China, the Snapdragon 845 chipset consists of four 2.8GHz cores and four 1.7GHz cores. The GPU paired with the CPU also varies in different processors, Mali-G72 MP18 for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and Adreno 630 for the US, Latin America, and China.

On AnTuTu 7, the Galaxy S9 gets a total of 250,156 points with the Snapdragon 845 and 200,910 points with the Exynos 9810. At the time, the Snapdragon 845 was one of the most powerful chipsets of Qualcomm after the Snapdragon 855. It offers a 30% improvement in graphics rendering and a 30% improvement in power efficiency. The Exynos 9810, on the other hand, offers less powerful graphics performance, with only 96,614 points, as opposed to over 120,000 points of the Snapdragon 845. But its CPU outperforms that of the Snapdragon 845.

As we mentioned before, the gaming experience on the Galaxy S9 with the Exynos 9810 is really disappointing. It’s not surprising because the graphics performance of Samsung’s processor is far worse than the Snapdragon 845. The frame rate drops constantly to very low levels and there are several lags in the gameplay. Though you can still play all types of titles on this handset, you will not be happy with the Exynos 9810.

Storage

When it comes to RAM and internal storage, users have three options to choose from. The first variant features 4GB RAM and 64GB onboard memory, the second one features 4GB RAM and 128GB onboard memory, and the third one features 4GB RAM and 256GB onboard memory.

So, it appears that you are limited at 4GB RAM and can only get more or less storage. Actually, a 4GB RAM capacity is not bad for gaming, but not great either, it’s somewhere in the middle. The average RAM paired with the Exynos 9810 generates in a gaming experience that’s far from good considering this is a flagship phone.

On top of that, the Galaxy S9 heats up pretty quickly within minutes since the start of games. The heat mostly concentrates on the front of the phone instead of the back.

Battery

The Samsung Galaxy S9 packs a 3,000mAh battery that supports 15W fast charging and wireless charging. As tested with a video playing, it can last for 15 hours and 30 minutes. So the smartphone should be able to get you through an entire working day. If you play games non-stop, it may survive a few hours.

Since the heat generated from gaming concentrates on the front of the phone, it’s not likely that there’s a problem with the battery. At least, you won’t have to worry about the battery exploding when you’re playing.

Camera

On the back of the phone, there is a single 12MP wide-angle lens supported by an LED flash. The camera offers a panorama and auto-HDR modes. It also lets you record video at 4K, 1080-pixel, or 720-pixel resolution with a frame rate of 960, 240, 60, or 30 fps.

On the front, there is a dual-camera setup, consisting of an 8MP wide-angle lens and a 2MP secondary lens. The camera module allows for dual video call and auto-HDR mode. It also lets you record videos at 1440 pixels and 30 frames per second.