The Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ Review: Exynos and Snapdragon at 960fps
by Andrei Frumusanu on March 26, 2018 10:00 AM ESTConclusion & End Remarks
The conclusion for the Galaxy S9 is always the toughest part to write as it’s where we have to reconcile all the pros and cons of the device and making a verdict on its value as a product to customers.
In terms of design, the S9 iterates on the S8 and I think that’s definitely a positive until Samsung somehow produces a better design overhaul. The changes we find here aren’t exactly ground-breaking and most people will get used to them very fast. The fingerprint scanner location is among the biggest ergonomics changes and while for me personally it didn’t do much, there’s plenty of people who find it an improvement.
The speaker sound quality of the Galaxy S9 is a massive improvement and this is now by far the best sounding smartphone device. The stereo speakers as well as the audio processing tuning along with the improved main speaker design all just provide a much better experience. I may not have covered this in the introduction, but Samsung’s choice to retain the 3.5mm jack is absolutely the right thing to do. I’ve got very strong feelings about companies’ rationales behind removing the headphone jack and find their reasoning either misguided or outright misleading, and just very anti-consumer choice. Here’s to hoping that Samsung sticks with it in the future, and as absurd as this is that I have to praise them for it, I have to do it to ensure that companies listen.
The screen of the Galaxy S9 holds very little surprises as it has only marginal improvements over the S8. It’s still among one of the best screens on smartphones, and honestly there’s not much more to say.
The camera of the Galaxy S9 for me had some high points and some low points. The high points are that the variable aperture of the S9 has real benefits and direct advantages in picture quality in day-light shots. The S9’s reduced usage of sharpening provided the cleanest pictures among all smartphones and thanks to its improved sensor its effective spatial resolution is actually higher than some higher resolution camera devices. The low-light shots also come with a quality improvement over the S8 – although it will depend on the lightning and scene to notice them at their full effect. Right now the S9 has the best low-light camera.
While the hardware of the S9’s camera definitely deserves praise, the software has notable issues in daylight shots. The Galaxy S9 has a very bad tendency to overexpose and compress the image’s dynamic range. In Pro mode these issues largely go away, but for the Galaxy S9 to offer a better point-and-shoot experience than the S8 or the new iPhones, Samsung needs to rework its camera calibration in Auto mode as right now it can be the odd one out in terms of results.
Finally, the biggest story for the Galaxy S9 is its big contrast in terms of SoC hardware. Ever since we first heard about the Exynos 9810 we had very large expectations and we knew there would be some tangible differences between Exynos and Snapdragon variants. The expectations couldn’t be more shattered than the results we got. While the Snapdragon 845 variant of the Galaxy S9 performed largely as advertised and as we had been told to expect by Qualcomm, the Exynos 9810 failed to live up to its hype in real-world scenarios. Effectively, the Exynos 9810 variant and as evidenced by all the data we collected, is the slower variant of the two. The root cause here has been identified as the extremely conservative scheduler and DVFS mechanisms which essentially nullify any advantage the new M3 cores have in synthetic benchmarks.
In 3D benchmarks, the Exynos 9810 posted very healthy efficiency improvements and even sometimes managed to catch up to last year’s Adreno 540 – something I hadn’t expected. Qualcomm’s new Adreno 630 raises the bar in terms of peak performance, however the promises of increased efficiency have not materialised in the commercial hardware as the performance boost comes at a cost of increased power. Effectively, when looking at sustained workloads, the Snapdragon 845 isn’t any faster than the Snapdragon 835 in its GPU department. Fortunately for Qualcomm, they’re still in the lead and this is not a deal-breaker for the Galaxy S9.
While the performance advantage of the Snapdragon 845 variant over the Exynos 9810 variant is something we could live with, the battery life results of the Exynos is definitely a deal-breaker. I’m not sure of the root cause here and whether it’s something that can be fixed by software, but showcasing such a battery runtime regression over its predecessor is universally something that we can all agree on as not acceptable for a flagship device. Based on our testing, it’s especially in heavy use-cases where this will most evident. The Snapdragon 845 variant performed as expected in the battery life tests.
Finally the recommendation of the Galaxy S9 will be based on which market you are in and which variant you’ll be able to purchase. The Snapdragon 845 variant in the US, China and Japan is a healthy upgrade over its predecessors and I don’t really have much to say against it as a phone, besides the camera exposure issues. Here Samsung iterated and perfected over the S8, and whether the S9 is worth to you as an upgrade is something you’ll need to decide based on its individual parts, because as a package, the Snapdragon S9s don’t disappoint.
For readers in markets with the Exynos variant I need to take a slightly different tone. Make no mistake as I say that the Exynos S9 is by far not a bad phone. If you come from older generation devices you will see significant upgrades, but as a flagship coming at a price premium we expect a no-compromise device, and here is where the Exynos S9 doesn’t tick all boxes. The battery life regression that we measured is the single most concerning aspect of the device. Here buyers will need to consider the device with caution and well-thought out consideration and should maybe apply a wait & see approach over the coming months – for one to see if Samsung resolves the issues via software, and secondly, to await the release of competitor’s new product lines for possible better alternatives.
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peevee - Friday, April 6, 2018 - link
Essential 2?Given small real-life difference between 845 and 835, Essential PH-1 is still a great device. And very appropriately priced. Nothing to wait there.
StrangerGuy - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
All the S9 did was made me appreciate my S8+ more, of which I only bought because of generous employer benefits. Without which I wouldn't even have cared about these overpriced flagships.Valantar - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
I pointed this out in your S9 launch article, and apparently I have to make my point again: neither light nor depth of field is the reason for the aperture change - it's purely to combat distortions and lack of sharpness in the image due to the combination of a large aperture and tiny, tiny glass.Why? When it comes to depth of field, one needs to factor in not only the aperture, but also the crop factor (sensor size relative to standard 35mm film). As such, f/1.5 on a standard cell phone 1/2.3" sensor is roughly equal to f/8.4 on a 35mm sensor, or f/5.6 on an APS-C sensor. This is one of the main photographic advantages of large-sensor cameras: that you can get shallow depth of field with lenses that are actually possible to manufacture.
An example: https://dofsimulator.net/en/?x=EAyAeuF3AAAIJEwkAAA...
As you can see here, with a 1/2.3" f/1.5 sensor, focusing on a subject 3m away gives you an in-focus area of ~43m - this is NOT too little, not by any measure. Moving the subject to 5m gives you effectively infinite focus, with everything from 1.9 to infinity being in the focal plane. You'd need your subject at less than .5 meters for DoF to be an issue - which it would be with most cameras at that distance.
On the other hand, it's well known that for large apertures, anything but the best glass will lead to aberrations and distortions in the image, and a general loss of sharpness across the frame. Look at even a single DSLR lens review - they're _always_ sharper when stopped down. With a lens stack this tiny, there's no feasible way to control this - it's likely physically impossible to avoid aberrations and distortions at an aperture number like this. Hence, the variable aperture.
Now, AT is usually very accurate in their reporting. Could you PLEASE correct this? Pretty please? Since you claim to be doing a deep-dive into the camera, this is not a good look.
Valantar - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
To clarify: You say that "The F/2.4 aperture in day-light shots is not a gimmick and very much an advantage to the S9 as its deeper depth of field is noticeable in shots, producing sharper images than the F/1.5 aperture." This is a misunderstood conclusion. The added sharpness is largely not due to a deeper depth of field, but rather due to the stopped-down aperture resulting in a generally sharper image. This conflates two different characteristics, focus depth and lens/optical sharpness. These are not the same. If you did a more rigorous test where both cameras focused on the same spot (ideally not in the centre of the image) in a scene with sufficient depth, or conversely shot against a flat target with a lot of detail, you'd likely see this pretty clearly, as _even the focal point_ would be sharper at f/2.4. If this was due to depth of field, both settings would be equally sharp at the focus point, while what you're saying here is that f/2.4 is sharper _across the image_. That's a typical effect of a smaller aperture improving sharpness, not of the smaller aperture restricting DoF.peevee - Friday, April 6, 2018 - link
" _even the focal point_ would be sharper at f/2.4"If it is the center, it might not be so because with such tiny sensor, at f/2.4 maximum resolution is diffraction-limited. Need the exact size of the sensor to confirm, but I am almost sure than even at f/1.5 Airy disk is bigger than a pixel.
Takethis - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
Any chance they Samsung could fix their “slow-and-steady” DVFS approach with software updates? Given the actual state of things, Snapdragon 845 phones are the one to buy this year (I'm thinking Oneplus 6)Ankurg - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
With due respect to the author and the site, I have to believe that most of the extensive tests and their results will not affect the avg day-to-day usage of this device.I am already seeing the panic this review has created on reddit, with many people now re-thinking whether to purchase or not...
Yes, most youtube/site reviewers don't go as deep as this, but a problem so steep would have been felt.
I would advice my fellow mates here not to lose sight of the fact that this is the best android phone you can buy right now.....irrespective of the choice of chip.
SirCanealot - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
"With due respect to the author and the site, I have to believe that most of the extensive tests and their results will not affect the avg day-to-day usage of this device."While I'm happy to have a super-fast phone with crappy battery life, I'm not happy to have an average-speed phone with crappy battery life. IE, I have a Exynos Note 4 which is fast with crappy battery life and it still does the job...
The crappy battery life is going to effect every single user and every one of your friends in America is going to get a better performing phone with better battery life. Day-to-day I'm getting worse performance and battery life; this means I can re-consider my options now I have all the data.
Why shouldn't this review make you reconsider? That's what it's meant to do. Unless you're a Samsung shareholder, I wouldn't pay any attention to this completely normal thing of human society...
id4andrei - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
The author himself stated that you will not see any difference as an ordinary consumer. Some slight circumstantial scrolling stutters are all he noticed.Still the Exynos underperforms relative to its advances in chip design.
peevee - Friday, April 6, 2018 - link
"The author himself stated that you will not see any difference as an ordinary consumer."Nope. The fast core only winding up after 0.4s is VERY noticeable as good phones will already finish launching an app or rendering a local HTML in Webview by this time, some time ago.