21 March 2018

The Verge: “Samsung Galaxy S9 review: predictably great, predictably flawed”

Without a new design or other new obvious advancements in technology to distract from Samsung’s usual problems, the software issues on the S9 become more obvious than they were with the S8. The upshot of most of this is that you can ignore Samsung’s marketing-focused gimmicks and really enjoy the Galaxy S9 (and none of them fall to the level of other Android manufacturers’ software problems). You can turn off Bixby, never bother to use AR Emoji or super slow motion, and disable most of Samsung’s apps. That leaves Samsung’s poor software update history as the big sticking point for a lot of people.

The rest of the S9 and S9 Plus is as great as we’ve come to expect. It has a head-turning design, fast performance, a great screen, and a very good camera. Outside of the display, the S9 isn’t a class leader in any category, but it’s good enough in all of them that the whole package makes for a great phone.

Dan Seifert

Ironically, this advice largely applies to recent iPhones as well: “You can turn off Siri, never bother to use Animoji or super slow motion, and disable most of Apple’s apps” – especially outside of the US, where support for voice assistants and Apple services is not great.

The Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus and S9 are all new, but have familiar designs and familiar problems

Sarcasm aside, a new generation of a flagship phone with few changes from last year’s model does present one big advantage: it makes it easier to justify buying the previous flagship, now at discounted prices! (which is what I’m most likely to do soon)

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