Samsung Galaxy S9/S9+

big_aug

2[H]4U
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Oct 13, 2006
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No thread on this? Surprising. I hate to say it but I'm probably going to preorder. $100 off at best buy and they'll give me $300 for my S7 Edge.

My S7 Edge isn't the best ever but it has been rock solid. Never a single issue.

I'm taking a lot more pictures now and the camera on the S9 looks appealing.
 
No thread on this? Surprising. I hate to say it but I'm probably going to preorder. $100 off at best buy and they'll give me $300 for my S7 Edge.

My S7 Edge isn't the best ever but it has been rock solid. Never a single issue.

I'm taking a lot more pictures now and the camera on the S9 looks appealing.
to be honest samsung makes some of the best hardware but there software sadly is still just too bloated. Stock Android for life for now on. If Samsung made a Google play edition or aka Android one version I would grab it in a heart beat. No dough this is gonna sell really well. I am really interested in the dual focal lense setup. That is a game changer if they can start doing this on smart phones with AI to automatically switch between the 2 for the best shots.
 
Well I will be being the plus very shortly. Not sure though it it's going to be good enough to make me wanna stop carrying my v30+ though.
 
Yea, I'm primarily going to do it to get the best value out of my S7 Edge.

The S9+ at best buy is $930 - $100 - $300 trade in = $530 which is satisfactory to me for a flagship day one.

I'm really hoping Best Buy let's you put the trade in value towards the phone. It looks like a gift card.
 
Yea, I'm primarily going to do it to get the best value out of my S7 Edge.

The S9+ at best buy is $930 - $100 - $300 trade in = $530 which is satisfactory to me for a flagship day one.

I'm really hoping Best Buy let's you put the trade in value towards the phone. It looks like a gift card.
that's not bad at all. Sell the GC for 250 to 260 cash. If my wife's 7 edge I would upgrade her to the S9 via that pre order deal
 
I like the phone but damn Samsung and their TouchWiz. Am I ignorant for not wanting to even experience Bixby? I still preordered one, but I think the Google Pixel is going to be the replacement.
 
I like the phone but damn Samsung and their TouchWiz. Am I ignorant for not wanting to even experience Bixby? I still preordered one, but I think the Google Pixel is going to be the replacement.

Most of us likely couldn't care for Bixby in the slightest. Google Assistant is still the go-to if you're on Android.
 
I'm pre-ordering one. Currently on a note 5 since the screen cracked on my S7 and I never replaced it. I am interested in bixby if it works like shown in the release video. Being a diabetic it would be handy to be able to pull up nutrition info with a photo and bixby.
 
I like the phone but damn Samsung and their TouchWiz. Am I ignorant for not wanting to even experience Bixby? I still preordered one, but I think the Google Pixel is going to be the replacement.
Pretty easy to get rid of TouchWiz though. Never understood this complaint.
 
When you are on Verizon, it is not easy to get rid of TouchWiz. Most of the boot loaders are locked preventing custom ROMs. While I can load a custom launcher and use a different interface, performance is not the same on a straight up vanilla device and customization is neutered. I have gone through many ROMs and phones to realize this, but I choose Verizon because in the end its a phone and they have the best service where I am.
 
Pretty easy to get rid of TouchWiz though. Never understood this complaint.

It is not easy to get rid of TouchWiz, especially if you are running the Snapdragon version of the phone. You can run a launcher over TouchWiz, but it is still there running in the background.

I've had my Galaxy S7 for just over a year, and I'm tired of the microstutter and delay.
 
Pretty easy to get rid of TouchWiz though. Never understood this complaint.

You can't get rid of Lagwiz on a Galaxy phone. Just because you install Nova launcher and an icon pack, and set animations to .05 or even 0, doesn't eliminate it. It's still very much there running the phone. Plus the bootloader is locked down like a door on submarine, they cannot be rooted and no way ROM'd.

I had the Galaxy S8+, and did all the Package Disabler stuff, and installed Nova, and did as much debloating as possible on a U..S carrier Galaxy phone, and you know what ? Lag was still there. I now have a Pixel 2 XL, and before doing anything to it, it was smooth as butter zero lag whatsoever. Plus you shouldn't have to set animations to zero to make the phone feel smoother, to test how smooth a phone is, keep it to 1 second animation, and it should be fluid and buttery smooth in opening and closing apps, like they are on Pixel phones.

Stock Android runs circles Galaxy S phones. The Galaxy S9+ does zero for me, just no reasons whatsoever I'd want it over the Pixel 2 XL. Samsung phones have become generic appliance type gadgets.
 
You can't get rid of Lagwiz on a Galaxy phone. Just because you install Nova launcher and an icon pack, and set animations to .05 or even 0, doesn't eliminate it. It's still very much there running the phone. Plus the bootloader is locked down like a door on submarine, they cannot be rooted and no way ROM'd.

I had the Galaxy S8+, and did all the Package Disabler stuff, and installed Nova, and did as much debloating as possible on a U..S carrier Galaxy phone, and you know what ? Lag was still there. I now have a Pixel 2 XL, and before doing anything to it, it was smooth as butter zero lag whatsoever. Plus you shouldn't have to set animations to zero to make the phone feel smoother, to test how smooth a phone is, keep it to 1 second animation, and it should be fluid and buttery smooth in opening and closing apps, like they are on Pixel phones.

Stock Android runs circles Galaxy S phones. The Galaxy S9+ does zero for me, just no reasons whatsoever I'd want it over the Pixel 2 XL. Samsung phones have become generic appliance type gadgets.


Still got a J7 and been a pretty ok phone...nothing real special...I'm not real phone crazy like some though dude....for sure not like the people that want the newest I-phone or something....
could use a new battery though....
 
I had it in my cart for a preorder and couldn't pull the trigger. I couldn't bring myself to spend $800 for a touchwiz phone.
 
I had it in my cart for a preorder and couldn't pull the trigger. I couldn't bring myself to spend $800 for a touchwiz phone.

I could trade in my Galaxy S7 and pay only $419, but TouchWiz prevents me from doing so. I'd rather spend more money outright on a phone closer to stock Android.
 
I could trade in my Galaxy S7 and pay only $419, but TouchWiz prevents me from doing so. I'd rather spend more money outright on a phone closer to stock Android.

I ended up pre-ordering the S9+. I had the Pixel 2 XL at launch but sent it back because I got a shitty screen. I'll probably keep it until the launch of the Pixel 3 and then offload it to my brother who likes his Samsung phones.
 
So even unlocked s9+ won’t be able to be rooted with vanilla Android? If not then I’ll probably pass on this phone.
 
Don't really get the compliants about touchwiz. I have an S8+ and there's no discernable lag. I have tried the Pixel 2 and it didn't seem to perform any better. It's possible I just don't care enough, but everything seems smooth, animations look like they're running at 60 FPS.
 
It's not surprising that you'll see more people who have actually used (not merely tried) the Pixel/Nexus Android phones, Apple iPhones, or even HTC's flagships with Sense UI complain about the lag on Touchwiz. Those phones set the standards high. Samsung set the bar real low, so every next generation phone would seem faster. The SoC and other dedicated chips have obviously increased in performance, so the Touchwiz lag is less noticeable. But the underlining problem is still there. TouchWiz is bloated with too many useless shit that runs in the background, the menu UI is not the same as default, and perhaps Samsung needs to do more on display touch response.
 
TouchWiz has a lot of lag, microstutter, and hanging that doesn't exist on other, even lower powered phones that I've used.
 
I have yet to notice any lag on my S8... even with most of my apps loaded on MicroSD card.
 
Two S7Edges T-Mobiles preorder "Jumped" to S9s
I'm pretty happy with the 7 but couldn't see using the jump on the 8 - can't wait to see what the f1.5 camera is capable of. and if it has better audio that's a bonus.
 
There's always two camps when a new Samsung phone comes out. Those who say it's laggy trash and those of us who say it doesn't lag. Every time.

From the way people describe the microstuttering and lag the phones seem unusable. Been using an S7 Edge for two years without a problem.

Ignorance is bliss I guess.
 
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12478/exynos-9810-handson-awkward-first-results

Single core is close to Apple speeds but we're talking 3W for a single core. SD845 gives you 72% of the performance while using 33% of the power. And the Snapdragon GPU destroys everybody (especially when considering thermal throttling).

I'm not sure I'm interested in an Exynos GS9

Looks like we may want to wait to see if the retail units are any different/better (in we are talking the Exynos version). From the AnandTech article:

What seems clear is that there is something is very very wrong with the Exynos 9810 S9+ that I tested. It was barely able to distinguish itself from last year’s Exynos 8895, let alone the Snapdragon 845 in the Qualcomm Reference Device which we previewed earlier this month. I looked through the system and monitored frequencies and indeed the big cores were reaching the maximum 2.7GHz core frequency. The only explanation I have right now is that it’s possible that the DVFS configuration, as well as the scheduler, are currently so conservatively tuned that there is barely any activity on the big cores.

I dug a bit more through the system and found out Samsung uses some new scheduler called “eHMP”. I’m not sure if this is something based on EAS but the system did use schedutil as a frequency governor.

One of the Samsung spokesmen confirmed to me that the demo unit were running special firmware for MWC and that they might not be optimized. I’m having a bit of a hard time believing they would so drastically limit the performance of the device for the show demo units and less so that they would mess around with the scheduler settings. I did get confirmation that Samsung is planning to “tune down” the Exynos variant to match the Snapdragon performance – however the current scores which I got on these devices make absolutely no sense so I do hope this is just a mistake that will be resolved in shipping firmwares and we see the full potential of the SoC.

Doubtful of major improvements, but it wouldn't surprise me the issues are purely firmware related, or a good portion atleast.
 
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can't wait to see what the f1.5 camera is capable of

It's still a tiny, noisy sensor with enough processing power behind it to turn your low-light shots into mud.

That's not to say that there won't be an improvement, but that there are limitations that cannot be overcome in the form-factor (and our current understanding of optical physics).

If you're actually interested in photography, get a real camera ;)
 
There's always two camps when a new Samsung phone comes out. Those who say it's laggy trash and those of us who say it doesn't lag. Every time.

From the way people describe the microstuttering and lag the phones seem unusable. Been using an S7 Edge for two years without a problem.

Ignorance is bliss I guess.

Honestly used to HATE Samsung & Touchwiz. The new "Samsung experience" UI is actually quite nice (and polished) but I still see a few people bitch about microstutters. Honestly, it never bothered me at all, but I do hate that Samsung feels the need to double up on apps. I put on Nova Launcher, Google Messages, and spend the next year wishing I had the Pixel dialer instead of the Samsung one.

I got the S6/S7/S8 for free from Samsung. I preordered a Purple/Pink (It's fuckin pink) S9+, simply because I'm trading my S7 in for $360 off, and will be able to sell the S8 for $450-500.

I'd rather have a Pixel 2 XL, but I'm not paying $1000 for a phone.
 
I could've sworn there was another S9 thread in this subforum with the reveal trailer right in the first post... oh well.

Honestly, it just looks like a refined S8 to me. Perhaps people think Samsung's still playing it too safe, especially after the Note 8, but I don't think they want to screw up a winning formula. That, and with my mom still stuck on an S7 from a year ago (S8 wasn't out yet), I'm thinking she's due to JUMP! up to the S9.

Since it ships with Oreo (something that still isn't on my unlocked Note 8, come on!), that means Samsung's finally getting on board with Project Treble - which means absolutely nothing when it's crippled with a locked bootloader here in the US anyway, since the real point of Treble is booting generic AOSP images in much the same way you can boot whatever OS you please on all these IBM-compatible PCs or Raspberry Pi SBCs. What a damn shame.

As for the software end, I will say this: while you shouldn't ever expect AOSP levels of smoothness out of Samsung software, they've somehow managed to close the gap considerably with the Note 8. I have rarely seen framedrops on it, I admit, but the performance is still noticeably above and beyond the Note 4 it replaced, as well as an old Note 8.0 LTE tablet with the godawful pre-S5 rendition of TouchWiz. It's close enough that I can endure that (and maybe their trademark glacial pace on Android feature updates, which sure as hell hasn't changed over the years) for the sake of far superior split-screen/windowed multitasking, fullscreen on any app, auto-hiding nav bar without extra apps, all that good stuff that bafflingly isn't in AOSP without modded distributions (LineageOS, Paranoid Android, etc.) or third-party apps.
 
It's still a tiny, noisy sensor with enough processing power behind it to turn your low-light shots into mud.

That's not to say that there won't be an improvement, but that there are limitations that cannot be overcome in the form-factor (and our current understanding of optical physics).

If you're actually interested in photography, get a real camera ;)

I ain't saying it'll best my Canon with a nifty - fifty in a tripod with someone posing, but if I'm watching a movie on the couch and my cat does something funny, setting up the studio is not possible, going from an S3 to an S7 I noticed tremendous improvement inn low light response. Hoping for a little improvement... for the cat.
 
I ain't saying it'll best my Canon with a nifty - fifty in a tripod with someone posing, but if I'm watching a movie on the couch and my cat does something funny, setting up the studio is not possible, going from an S3 to an S7 I noticed tremendous improvement inn low light response. Hoping for a little improvement... for the cat.

I sent this messages yesterday to someone:

"Ordered my s9+ today. Has a bad ass camera for cat pics."

:LOL:
 
Samsung makes arguably the best hardware out there... Their software... that's where it falls down. For years, they had so many redundant and useless features just for the sake of having them. This resulted in a phone that was noticably laggy at times and for whatever reason, every Samsung phone I Have had starts feeling noticeably slower inside of 6 months...

I have had Note 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7... I actually found my Note 5 slightly faster than my Note 7 which was laggy at times, even out of the box (both the original phone and the replacement phone...).

I appreciate that Samsung has continued to make improvements but many tech reviewers are still confirming that they are seeing similar things with the newer phones as well....

The Google Pixel XL and 2 XL I have are not experiencing these unexplained slowdowns... And they are receiving timely security updates and they have amazing cameras... I'm having a hard time getting excited about what Samsung is bringing to the table... Especially since they continue to push their own agenda with Bixby... Thy didn't listen to all of the outcry regarding the hardware Bixby button and kept it there for the S9/S9+... Why do we need more than one voice controlled assistant wanna be on our phone anyway? It just adds confusion and also with the hardware button, annoyance to the experience IMHO.

I hope anyone who gets the phone enjoys it, I'll be interested to hear what people think but I believe that Samsung is trying to play things super safe still at this point. Hopefully they have put more effort than usual into the software, so they can prove all of the Touchwiz haters to rest... I entered that camp when I started using a Google Pixel device after getting hosed on my Note 7... It's hard to go back even if there were a few Samsung customization I did like...
 
I'm sold on the Pixel, too. Pure Android is the only phone OS for me, now. The one 2018 phone that interests me is the Pixel 3 XL.
 
If the pixel didn't have ugly ass bezels...

I never really notice any lag, but even if there is, I'd take it over the damn bezels.
 
If the pixel didn't have ugly ass bezels...

I never really notice any lag, but even if there is, I'd take it over the damn bezels.

I can see saying that for the small Pixel 2, but not the 2 XL. Either way though when I see someone complaining about phone aesthetics, it just sounds pretentious af to me. I couldn't care less what my phone looks like and camera is near the bottom of my list as well, since any phone in the past few years has been more that adequate for me since I'm not a big picture taker.
 
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I can see saying that for the small Pixel 2, but not the 2 XL. Either way though when I see someone complaining about phone aesthetics, it just sounds pretentious af to me. I couldn't care less what my phone looks like and camera is near the bottom of my lost as well, since any phone in the past few years has been more that adequate for me since I'm not a big picture taker.
Agreed. It seems most people see these devices as high end cameras with phones attached. To me, my phone is primarily a communications tool. After that, it's a media platform. All I care about the camera is that it takes decent snapshots.
 
Got my s9+ yesterday.. had a lot going on so didn't get to play with it much (plus I was out and about so I wanted a case before I risked dropping it). I had some hands on time with the S9 already so it's nothing I wasn't expecting. I can say though that the subtle change to the edge display isn't subtle in your hand. It just feels better to hold. I am going to attempt a couple weeks usage on completely stock software before I start changing things. So far though I honestly don't see it as much of an upgrade over my v30+.. Definitely not enough of one to upgrade if you already owned your v30 outright.
 
some side by side shots with my iPhone X, v30 and s9+..

Sorry for the bad photography.. taken with my iPad..

6D16A088-4AF7-4AC8-8A47-68846E3E0E5B.jpeg 9293D0A9-E5A3-4F94-8A84-3E0B0422CAE2.jpeg 4BF45401-2F4F-4654-920A-95F3C40D8A3B.jpeg
 
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