Samsung Galaxy S9+ Pro Reviews

The Galaxy S9+ is a responsive and well-built flagship smartphone that has some serious photographic chops. The wide-angle lens is great, the video quality is impressive and the screen is among the best we've ever seen. Unfortunately, subpar performance from the telephoto lens, a disappointing portrait mode and blurry low-light results hold it back from being a truly standout mobile photographic experience.

The Galaxy S9+ is a good phone with largely iterative updates, and especially if you get the Snapdragon version, offers a decent package to those coming from two-year-old handsets.

The Galaxy S9 and S9+ are subtle upgrades to last year’s S8 line. The most significant improvements are found in the fingerprint scanner position, the new intelligent face scan feature, the AR Emoji 3D avatars, and the camera, but only for the S9+, which gets the secondary zoom camera of the Note 8. In any case, if you’re a current Galaxy S8 user, we’d say an upgrade to the S9 would be completely unnecessary, but that’s expected. For owners of older devices, like the S7 or S6, the Galaxy S9 will feel like a major step forward. Samsung has once again managed to craft desirable handsets with the S9 and S9+; one can hardly find anything remotely as elegant, as advanced, and as polished, all in a single product, on the Android market. The closest it gets to that are LG’s V30 or Google’s Pixel 2, but each of these has certain drawbacks that position them a step below Samsung’s impressive package.

The Galaxy S9+ and the LG V30 seem very similar on the surface. However, there are many things that separate the two, and a $100 price gap is one of them. Right now, the LG V30 can be yours for about $800, while the Galaxy S9+ costs around $900. But you know what, if you're in the market for a large-screen, high-end Android smartphone, spending those extra $100 on the Galaxy S9+ would be worth it. Sure, the LG V30 is a good phone, but Samsung's offering tops it in a number of areas, including display quality, camera performance, and raw processing power. On the other hand, the LG V30 is likely to last you longer between charges, all while being just as fast with day-to-day activities. But all things considered, the LG V30 would be worth picking over the Galaxy S9+ only after a considerable discount.

So, what's the final verdict? We've got two big, beautiful phones, with similar features and hardware specs. How does one make the call on which one to buy? Well, consider two things. First — the S Pen. Yeah, that's the main differentiator here — not the cameras, which are only slightly different, not Android 8 Oreo, which doesn't seem to do much for the Galaxy S9+ and is already en route to the Note 8 anyway. The S Pen is an awesome tool for those that want the freedom of jotting down notes by hand or those who would like to do sketching on the go. If you care about your stylus game, going for the Note 8 is a perfectly logical choice. Second — price. From Samsung's own website, the Galaxy S9+ can be bought for $840 unlocked, while the Galaxy Note 8 still costs $950. Ouch, that's a $110 price hike and you trade the newer hardware of the S9+ for the Note 8's S Pen. You probably see where we are going with this — if you don't see yourself using the stylus, absolutely go for the Galaxy S9+ without question.

The Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus impresses with the brightest camera lens available, a dual aperture, and telephoto lens, both with optical image stabilisation and 4K video.

Samsung's Galaxy S9 Plus is the more robust Galaxy S9, and the one for power users to get.

It's not revolutionary, but the Samsung Galaxy S9+ sets the bar for smartphones in 2018, with the best hardware features you can get.