Where Samsung's tagline for the S8 family was that it was "unboxing" the phone, the S9 series is meant to be all about "reimagining" the camera. It's the key plank of the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+'s value proposition, although not all the parts of the camera experience are equal.
The clear winner in the "gimmick" stakes has to be Samsung's take on Apple's Animoji, which it has dubbed "AR Emoji". Creating an AR Emoji is a simple enough affair that involves using the Galaxy S9+'s front 8MP f/1.7 camera to take a selfie of yourself. The S9+ then converts that into a cartoon avatar that you can use with a range of pre-defined animated emoji or optionally create your own.
There are a couple of issues here, but the key one is that the faces that AR Emoji creates are terribly generic and highly reminiscent of the avatars that Microsoft tried to force on owners of Xbox 360 consoles, right down to the limited selection of "hip" clothing styles. It's feasible to create a version of yourself that looks mostly like you, but only in a Taiwanese wacky news broadcast kind of way.
Even when you choose to map your own expression, you're limited in the ways that AR Emoji will read your face, including limits on how open your eyes are or where your teeth are positioned. Trying to match your AR Emoji to what you're saying is an exercise in limited functionality.
Sure, you'll probably play with it at first just because it's there. Certainly, when I showed the feature to a number of finder staffers, they were initially wowed, but this was quickly replaced with complaints about the limited visual styles or how badly it handled certain ethnicities.
Samsung might make AR Emoji much more capable in later software, but in its current iteration, will we see a flood of AR Emojis all over the Internet?
The front camera is also used for Samsung's latest take on biometric unlocking, which combines a facial data map and iris scan for what it calls "Intelligent Scan". It's designed to get past the issues of Samsung's simple facial recognition, which isn't terribly secure, and the slower speed of iris scanning.
Intelligent Scan mostly works for unlocking the handset, but like Apple's FaceID, not always, and when it doesn't, you're left wondering why you didn't simply opt for a fingerprint unlock in the first place.
Flipping around to the rear cameras, you come to one of the most significant differences between the Galaxy S9 and the Galaxy S9+ because only the Galaxy S9+ features a dual camera array. Both feature Samsung's new dual aperture camera, but it's only on the Galaxy S9+ that you'll also get the benefit of a 2x optical zoom secondary lens. Given the strong focus on camera features as a key selling point of the new phone experience, it makes the S9+ a much more appealing prospect.
Samsung has also incorporated new slow motion video features in the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+, although, strictly speaking, they're only "new" to Samsung phones. While plenty of phones have offered 240fps slow-mo previously, the Galaxy S9 features 960fps shooting, albeit only for 0.2 seconds at a time, stretched out into a six-second clip.
That's a feature already present on the Sony Xperia XZ Premium, and one that's outdone by the upcoming Sony Xperia XZ2 because that phone will offer shooting at up to 1080p quality, where the Galaxy S9 only allows for 720p video shooting.
Slow motion video can be a lot of fun if you get it right, and the Galaxy S9 attempts to automate this process with a selection square that fires up slow motion if it detects movement within the square.
However, in my tests, this was very hit and miss as to whether it got the moment that was desired. You can opt to manually select when you want the slow motion effect to kick in, and while that has a learning curve, it's generally much better.
Switching to slow motion also requires much better lighting than regular video, so if you're in a darkened area, expect significant noise in your final video. We've assembled some examples of the S9+'s slow motion video prowess below:
Finally, there's the question of still photography using the rear lenses. The Galaxy S8 was no slouch in this regard, but it was essentially just a slightly tweaked version of the camera that was already in the Galaxy S7. Clearly, work needed to be done in the highly competitive premium smartphone space, and the Galaxy S9+ doesn't disappoint.
Samsung's key point of differentiation is in having a variable aperture lens that switches between f/2.4 and f/1.5 to try to capture the sharpest images in any given circumstance. If you're shooting in auto mode, the Galaxy S9+ handles aperture switching automatically, but you can opt for a specific aperture within the camera's pro mode with just a couple of taps.
The Galaxy S9+'s camera performance is exceptional in the right circumstances, although as with any smartphone camera, it's possible to take more ordinary photos as well. Switching between apertures to pick between low light and sharpness works well, and while it's not exactly going to threaten the DSLR market, it shows just how far we've come in smartphone photography. Here's some sample pics taken from the Galaxy S9+:
| Samsung Galaxy S9+ Sample Photos | | |
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