Samsung S9 and S9+ Really Are Faster

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
Staff member
Joined
May 18, 1997
Messages
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When you see things come straight out of the Samsung Newsroom, you have to wonder how much of it is PR, marketing, and just fluff. And today Samsung is proclaiming "the Galaxy S9 and S9+ are the Fastest Phones Ever." I will tell you that I am not much of a phone nerd, but lot's of folks are. While I am not sure if Patrick Moorhead is a paid "analyst" for Samsung or not, he does have some interesting things to say on Twitter to prop us Samsung's claims. 42% faster download speeds on the same networks is not bupkis.


With download speeds up to 42% faster than the closest competitor, long-lasting battery, and more storage, the Galaxy S9 and S9+ are the high-performance smartphones consumers are looking for this summer
 
i can't complain my S8+ wifi is stellar.

C1mGf2n.jpg

Edit :
damnit how do you shrink the image ?
nvm figured it out -.-"
 
I can't bring myself to care.

I don't play games on my phone. It is a web and email device.

I also don't care about camera quality. I have a DSLR for that.

There was a time when smartphones were new that phones didn't age well, and you constantly needed the latest and fastest or the experience would slow down to shit. That time is long since gone.

Even comparatively ancient Android phones are still good enough for what I need them to do. The only problem is that most of them don't get software updates anymore, and the batteries may be old and difficult to replace.

My current first gen Pixel is getting closer and closer to that magic 2 year old mark, and it's showing no sign what so ever of being inadequate or slow. I'll probably be keeping it until the day Google no longer releases security updates for it, and then, if LineageOS gets an official release, I'll probably use that for years to come. Unless I drop it in th etoilet or something, this phone and I have a long future together. There simply is no point in upgrading phones anymore, provided they get security updates.

If I were forced to buy a phone today, I wouldn't bother with any of the latest or greatest expensive phones I'd pick up a used phone from craigslist or Swappa from the LineageOS Devices List, like the unlocked international version of the Galaxy S7, and happily use that for years to come.
 
that's neato, but not neato enough to give up my Pixel XL which is amazingly fast already. First smartphone I keep for 5 years. I'm already 2 years in. I plan to replace the battery Next year, its still pretty good right now.
 
Got my wife an S8 and she hated it, so dumped it for Pixel 2 and she's in love with her phone again.

If I ever go back to Android it'll be stock google android and not the crappy manufacturer loaders and apps that you can't get rid of. Or I'll just root it and use a custom rom. That's not gonna happen on the wife's phone though, too much hassle and WAF is a big deal
 
As long as it's still stuck with a Samsung launcher and forced software none of that matters.

This. And every time you patch Samsung loves to reinstall all the shit that you've worked so hard to kill. I don't have an Anusbook or Instagram account, and every time a patch comes in I'm flooded with prompts on how to set up my instagram, or how to set up Samsung pay.

I do use my phone to listen to music, and I hate hate hate hate that every time I start my music player I can't turn the volume up past 50% without acknowledging that loud music might damage my hearing.

Google should mandate that every Android phone has the right, should the customer desire, to be run with a generic copy of the OS.
 
The Galaxy S7 already supports 4x4 MIMO 256 QAM cellular connections. So the S8 AND S9 would be fluff at best. See here, where they already saw a huge performance increase with the S7:

https://www.rcrwireless.com/2017011...work-finds-significant-performance-boost-tag2

The S7 also supports 2x2 802.11 AC, which is enough to max-out most people's WiFi networks.

Why are we spending money again to upgrade?

THIS JUST A FLUFF PRESS RELEASE TO GET PEOPLE TO SPEND MONEY, disguised as a "legitimate" Twitter post. Shows you just how little shit on Twitter is unpaid.

There are per-network MIMO tweaks for different bands in newer phones since the S7, but the speed improvement is going to come down to which provider you're using.
 
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Why the hell does anyone care? No one is going to be downloading a 100GB 4K Dolby Atmos 7.1 Blu-Rays or backing up their NAS through a fucking phone. Facebook/Twitter/Instagram and even Pornhub HD are not going to feed you data at that speeds, even on their best days. Once you reach a certain bandwidth on a phone, you're going to have diminishing returns due to the type of content they consume. Reducing latency becomes more important at that point.

Make that capability as an add-in card for a laptop, desktop, or even hooked into a home router? Now you got my attention.
 
I made the mistake of getting an 8+. Its much better than my old s5 but the lack of ability to remove the battery means i cannot replace it as the wear level begins to become unacceptable.

Today its not bad but if i choose to keep using the phone 6 months from now at the current rate of wear it may be unacceptable..
 
Samsung is basically saying that VTec kicked in... bro.

Stop buying into the phone upgrade treadmill, problem solved.
See, he gets it. Now lets talk about physical qwerty keyboard phones again, cause I FUCKING HATE THESE IPHONE COPYCAT SHIT.

Give me this shit now, but with actual buttons. Spend that marketing money on designing QWERTY phones again you cheap fucks.
skinny-qwerty-slider-phone-concept.jpg
 
How many people have a 4x4 AP? We have them at work, but I doubt most people will have those at home any time soon.
 
Samsung is basically saying that VTec kicked in... bro.


See, he gets it. Now lets talk about physical qwerty keyboard phones again, cause I FUCKING HATE THESE IPHONE COPYCAT SHIT.

Give me this shit now, but with actual buttons. Spend that marketing money on designing QWERTY phones again you cheap fucks.
View attachment 74093


Only smartphone I ever had with a physical buttons was a blackberry curve, and I absolutely fucking hated that keyboard.

I literally could not type the number 7 because it required pressing the altabutton and the zz7 button at the same time. They were tiny buttons and right next to each other, and my fingers were too big.

I'm open to the idea of a physical keyboard, but it would have to be a GOOD physical keyboard. If it were something like that blackberry I'd rather just keep the on screen stuff.
 
How many people have a 4x4 AP? We have them at work, but I doubt most people will have those at home any time soon.

Better question: who the hell has any need for that kind of bandwidth on their phone? It's not like it's a full fledged PC or anything...
 
The Galaxy S7 already supports 4x4 MIMO 256 QAM cellular connections. So the S8 AND S9 would be fluff at best. See here, where they already saw a huge performance increase with the S7:

https://www.rcrwireless.com/2017011...work-finds-significant-performance-boost-tag2

The S7 also supports 2x2 802.11 AC, which is enough to max-out most people's WiFi networks.

Why are we spending money again to upgrade?

THIS JUST A FLUFF PRESS RELEASE TO GET PEOPLE TO SPEND MONEY, disguised as a "legitimate" Twitter post. Shows you just how little shit on Twitter is unpaid.

There are per-network MIMO tweaks for different bands in newer phones since the S7, but the speed improvement is going to come down to which provider you're using.

I ran my S7 Edge on the same wifi and it never got close to the same speeds as my S9+ did. Barely half the speed.
 
What the absolute shit is that tweet supposed to mean?

I'm super awesome because I can 5x2 ROFL and 9 LOL and someshit.

My LG G5 had 3xCA. It means "triple carrier aggregation", meaning the phone can use 3 different bands to download at the same time and aggreggate a single download across all of them. The upshot is I could get sustained 120Mbps downloads (confirmed by, for example, downloading the latest geforce drivers, and then multiplying elapsed time by average reported download speed) in the right neighborhood.

Is there a reason to do that on a phone? Basically, no. I only used it a handful of times while I was at work to get large downloads because it was much, much, much, faster than the office network.
 
Why the hell does anyone care? No one is going to be downloading a 100GB 4K Dolby Atmos 7.1 Blu-Rays or backing up their NAS through a fucking phone.

I hate to be that guy but I've done just that a few times. (Well, I was actually grabbing stuff like customer databases for troubleshooting, but whatever.)
 
But, but it's got more 4x more MIMO's !!!! ;-)

Yep, technically faster, but not in a way that any average user or even most enthusiasts would ever notice.

It's just an e-penis measurement contest.

Similar to how car manufacturers produce cars that their owners never take to the drag strip / track that do 0-60 in under 3 seconds and then continually brag about how they're 0.1s faster than the previous fastest car.

http://www.automobilemag.com/news/2018-dodge-challenger-srt-demon-review-first-launch/
But at least with cars they make cool sounds and smells when one does a burnout.

This is the one average people actually buy because 0-60 in 6 secs is good enough for most uses and gets them to work in stop and go traffic no slower :
http://www.automobilemag.com/news/rental-spec-2017-dodge-challenger-sxt-review-one-week/
 
Honestly i would like a small slider or flip just for voice and text and that pairs to a tablet. Upgrade them independently..
 
Samsung is basically saying that VTec kicked in... bro.


See, he gets it. Now lets talk about physical qwerty keyboard phones again, cause I FUCKING HATE THESE IPHONE COPYCAT SHIT.

Give me this shit now, but with actual buttons. Spend that marketing money on designing QWERTY phones again you cheap fucks.
View attachment 74093


This makes me wonder why no one makes a physical keyboard slide case. That way anyone could add that feature to their phone if they wanted it.
 
Rocking a Nexus 4 still, and just got a S8 from work.

Big screen and newer hardware is amazing, sure! Still.. meh, at the end of the day, I still like my Nexus better. At least I can play with it, as it is completely unlocked and ready to take any custom ROMs.

And yea I do miss my Motorola Milestone 3 (Droid 3). The sliding keyboard was awesome. Sadly, the Moto software back then wasn't.
 
As long as it's still stuck with a Samsung launcher and forced software none of that matters.

I don't know about you but I like when my phone comes with a launcher so I can do things on it.

God i wish people would stop complaining about this. It sounds so 2010.
Can you change that in iPhones?

I always install Nova Launcher. It's good to have alternatives. Amazing alternatives.
 
Rocking a Nexus 4 still, and just got a S8 from work.

Big screen and newer hardware is amazing, sure! Still.. meh, at the end of the day, I still like my Nexus better. At least I can play with it, as it is completely unlocked and ready to take any custom ROMs.

My Note 8 is also completely unlocked and can take custom ROMs.
 
I hate to be that guy but I've done just that a few times. (Well, I was actually grabbing stuff like customer databases for troubleshooting, but whatever.)
LOL. I stand corrected. But you are probably the one and only guy. :p

I can't imagine trying to pull off that stunt on a phone.
 
LOL. I stand corrected. But you are probably the one and only guy. :p

I can't imagine trying to pull off that stunt on a phone.

It was that or use the 3Mbps at the office or wait until I got home. Plus it gave me an excuse to hang around outside for ten minutes. It was basically a couple of one-off instances. ;)
 
I'm not an Android user but I support them and the only Android phones I will support at this point are the Pixel's so employees have a choice of an iPhone or a Pixel, there may be "better" phones out there but seriously they need email, texting, and the ability to make/take phone calls. At this point all I see for phone specs are walls of text I can't be bothered to read because they have hit a point where I feel like they are adding features for the sake of adding features.

I am turning into the cranky old man and I think I am OK with it.
 
I don't know about you but I like when my phone comes with a launcher so I can do things on it.

God i wish people would stop complaining about this. It sounds so 2010.
Can you change that in iPhones?

I always install Nova Launcher. It's good to have alternatives. Amazing alternatives.

Nova Launcher doesn't replace Samsung's extra layer of "features" baked into the OS, its skinned (often heavily modified) system apps that rarely get updates, or it's giant cache of Jellybean-era UI apps that you can't get rid of. If Samsung really wants to give people options, they should allow all of those things to be removed or completely disabled. iPhones are certainly more locked down than a Samsung, but at least the apps are all unified. Samsung devices are a weird conflicting hybrid of Android and Samsung.
It's Google's fault for allowing them to do this in the first place.
 
I don't know about you but I like when my phone comes with a launcher so I can do things on it.

God i wish people would stop complaining about this. It sounds so 2010.
Can you change that in iPhones?

I always install Nova Launcher. It's good to have alternatives. Amazing alternatives.

Yeah, but on some of these newer phones, the launcher never really goes away, even if you switch to another one. It is integrated with the digital assistance , search and all that garbage, and if you switch it just sits in the background using up resources. They don't want you to get rid of the launcher.
 
This makes me wonder why no one makes a physical keyboard slide case. That way anyone could add that feature to their phone if they wanted it.
Because these companies tells us that we all want ultra thin, water resistant phones. :meh:
I'm sticking with my V20 until the wheels fall off and then buy another. :cool:
 
Of all the phones I've used samsungs had the worst skin/ui and now I steer clear of them.
Just upgraded from a asus zenfone 2 to a xiaomi mi A1 (android one, global version) and I love the basic android OS and the quick updates.
IMHO its impossible to beat at ~$200 (260$ CAD), really happy with it.
It's not a top tier phone but its a solid mid tier one and is more then enough for my light usage. I wanted a pixel 2 but could not justify the price so it became between a used pixel and the A1 and since I don't like scratches I went new (my zenfone is pretty near mint after 4+ years).

The zenfone was ok (for a 5.0 device) and while there was some preinstalled apps that you could not remove you could at least prevent them from loading with an included app and it had relatively quick update for 2 years.
 
Why the hell does anyone care? No one is going to be downloading a 100GB 4K Dolby Atmos 7.1 Blu-Rays or backing up their NAS through a fucking phone. Facebook/Twitter/Instagram and even Pornhub HD are not going to feed you data at that speeds, even on their best days. Once you reach a certain bandwidth on a phone, you're going to have diminishing returns due to the type of content they consume. Reducing latency becomes more important at that point.

Make that capability as an add-in card for a laptop, desktop, or even hooked into a home router? Now you got my attention.

People care because it matters, I think its ironic that people will come and shit on Samsung because they claim the interface is not as responsive as stock android when this only causes split second delays, then they will say who cares about speed for downloads either wifi or cellular? Speed on a phone = improved responsiveness. If you are downloading even a website from the web in a congested network and a blip of an opening allows you to snag all the data a little faster than the next guy then your experience improves. This is the same exact reason SSDs blew hard drives out of the water, In the early days SSD sustained read and write wasn't that much better than HDDs but random small files is where they crushed them and is what caused people to feel so much improvement. I had countless people with ghetto old laptops I would get to upgrade to an SSD and they would talk about how it gave it new life. Even if you don't own a Samsung S9 you can thank them for helping you out, because the faster other phones fetch data, the faster they stop congesting the network and open it up for those with slower devices when viewing small data content like web pages etc.... The faster phones and cellular networks get the better the user experience becomes for everyone.
 
Just did a 234/210 test on my LG G4 running android 5.1. Faster wifi on phones hasn't mattered for years.
 
i can't complain my S8+ wifi is stellar.

View attachment 74053

Edit :
damnit how do you shrink the image ?
nvm figured it out -.-"

Those are wifi speeds.

What speed do you get on LTE?

Only smartphone I ever had with a physical buttons was a blackberry curve, and I absolutely fucking hated that keyboard.

I literally could not type the number 7 because it required pressing the altabutton and the zz7 button at the same time. They were tiny buttons and right next to each other, and my fingers were too big.

I'm open to the idea of a physical keyboard, but it would have to be a GOOD physical keyboard. If it were something like that blackberry I'd rather just keep the on screen stuff.

Have you tried the Blackberry KeyOne?
 
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