Samsung held a big event in Barcelona to launch its Galaxy S9 and S9Plus. Even before the event, it was clear that the camera is one of the main changes as the title for the event was ‘The camera re-imagined’.
DJ Koh, who is president of the Samsung Mobile business came on stage to welcome the audience. AI, VR, IoT and better processors are enabling lots of new developments. Koh said that technology companies do not change the world, it’s the users that really change things when technology is available. The challenge is to respond to the requests from users.
DJ Koh Introduced the Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus
The new phones will work as part of the SmartThings IoT world (which Samsung highlighted at CES), will add more health features including a new sensor that can measure blood pressure and Samsung is developing Bixby, the firm’s smart assistant.
However, Koh said that images have become the new language of communication and the most important function of phones is no longer making calls, but sharing images and videos He said that last year 10 billion videos were shared every day and 5 billion emojis were shared each day. However, cameras are squeezed into a device designed for talking into.
Koh wants the phone to have a camera that can work in any light and so he said that the S9 is really the first smartphone designed for the the way that users really want to use them.
Justin Denison, Senior VP of Product Marketing came on to talk about the new phones. He expanded on the mantra of ‘photos, videos and emojis’. He emphasised that the phone doesn’t have a notch and still has a fingerprint scanner but it has been moved below the camera. (there were lots of ‘we’re not Apple’ points made during the event). It does have combined face and iris recognition The phone is in four colours of black, grey, blue and purple.
Denison then got those at the event to use the entry badge as an object that could work in a Samsung app that made it look as though the Galaxy was in their hand. Turning the badge over also turned the virtual phone over.
Samsung demoed AR at the event using the ticket which became the phone in an app.
The next speaker said that the company started from first principles with the camera design. Most cameras didn’t work well in high sunlight or in low light. A new feature is an adjustable aperture that can autoswitch from f2.4 to f1.5 in low light situations, giving 28% more light. There is a new image sensor with dedicated DRAM for image processing to make it much faster.
Samsung has integrated memory with the camera sensor
Most of the features are the same on both units, but the S9+ has dual 12 megapixel cameras, while the S9 has just a single camera. There is a new DSP and more memory to improve image processing, but the selfie camera is similar to the model on the S8.
Later, we heard that the new camera can use processing on up to 12 consecutive frames to capture detail.
A feature of the S9 camera that is enabled by a new processor is ‘super slow-mo’ which offers 960 fps capture in 0.2 second bursts, which can be automatically triggered, and automatic Gif creation (the iPhone captures 240fps). The videos can also be set as the log on screen. Base storage can be expanded using a microSD slot.
The S9+ has both a wide angle and telephoto lens with live focus for shallow depth of field effects.
Erin Willis came on to talk about individual AR emojis that are created based on individual camera shots and can be set for individual expressions. Up to 18 can be created and shared on other phones and services. If you don’t want to make your own, Samsung has done a deal with Disney to allow the use of Mickey Mouse and other Disney characters including the Incredibles.
Bixby was developed last year, and this year it has been updated to allow the instant visual display of results, for example by recognising a language and live translating menus for example. It can be used to recognise the food on your plate, allowing the faster tracking of calories and other nutritional information. In make-up mode, make up can be tried ‘virtually’. Amore Pacific, CoverGirl and Sephora are the initial partners.
The S9 is compatible with ARCore from Google to allow access to different apps.
Marc Notton then came on to talk about other features. The S9 has a 5.8″ 18.5:9 display and the S9+ is 6.2″ and both have 18:9 displays that are brighter than the S8. The audio has been boosted with speakers at each end of the phone (in landscape mode) and is AKG-tuned. It also has support for Dolby Atmos which works on the speakers or through headphones (and Samsung highlighted that it still has a headphone socket).
The speed of the S9 is said to be ‘more than a Gigabit’ on LTE because of the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor. (We later confirmed that it has 4GB of RAM and 6GB on the S9+ and 64GB of integrated storage on the S9, 128GB on the S9+) The processor also allows multi-tasking and can support this function in landscape mode, as well. The phone has fast wireless charging as standard.
Turning to services, software and security, head of software R&D, Eui Suk Chung came on stage who said that the best hardware needs good software and vice versa. Phones already do things we could never have imagined. Samsung Pay is an important application and is available in 20 markets. Samsung Health helps users to understand their health. Bixby adapts to your behaviour and adapts to your needs. Data from these apps needs to be handled very carefully, so Samsung integrates security with Knox technology, which has more approvals than any other alternative. That makes it easier for corporates to remotely configure devices through the cloud.
There is increasing integration between work and leisure and Dex can offer a PC-like environment and it has been improved with a new DexPad and new applications.
(We later found that while last year’s Dex dock held the phone vertically, the second generation version keeps the phone flat with the face up so that the phone can be used as a touch pad. The dock has dual USB 2.0 ports and an HDMI port that can support up to 2560 x 1440 resolution, up from FullHD on last year’s model.
Samsung’s New Dex Pad allows the phone to be used as a touch pad.
Samsung is working with VMWare and Citrix for optimisation of their architectures and there is work going on to support full screen gaming. Knox has been brought to Dex, so that corporates can control the Dex environment.)
Bixby is improving continuously and there will be some big updates during this year.
The S9 will be available on March 16th and will be available for pre-order and there will be a trade in programme with ‘high’ resale values for buyers and corporate solutions will also be available on that date. Samsung said informally that pricing will be in the same range as the S8 at launch.
After the show was over, we tracked down the following detailed specification. So far, we have not been able to establish the brightness of the display, but we’re sure that Ray Soneira will be doing a detailed test, soon. (Ah! here it is DisplayMate Tests the S9 Display)
Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ Product Specifications
