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Samsung Galaxy S9
- Thread starter jamezr
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The extras that Samsung works into the operating system add another layer of potential conflict with apps and potential for lags and slowdowns and general quirky behavior. I'm seeing this with my S8+ and so is my husband. But plenty of people do not. So it's not a one-size-fits-all safe generalization to toss around lightly.
On the S7 Edge my husband had bad lag and I did not, for example.
I'm gambling on the S9+ being a refined version of the S8+ and I can get a palatable price with the trade in of an older phone, so I'm going to give Samsung one more try. I found their quality control to be "meh" so I'm lukewarm in my approach to dropping any more money their way. But I will pay one more round of respect for the courageous inclusion of the headphone ports and the notch-free design.
Make sense. When I played with the S9 in the store yesterday I didn't feel blisteringly snappy despite the specs. The iPhone X felt snappier.
It's a shame there isn't an easy way to run stock Android on the S9.
Where were you able to play with the S9?
I have a Note 8 and it is every bit as snappy as my iphone 8 Plus. I don't have any lag what so ever on my Note 8.....
The extras that Samsung provides can be really helpful and appreciated. But they probably would be better if Samsung could build them into its own OS. Or make them standalone apps. Their browser is very well liked, for example.
My husband appreciated the way Samsung handles VIP mail notifications like Apple can. Stock Android can't do this.
The Apple processor is also apparently more powerful than Exynos or Snapdragon's newest offerings.
For me, personally, while iOS may be snappier, it's had some very concerning issues. I worry it's a battery killer and I'm not talking about throttling. And I've missed important notifications from third party apps our schools use to keep in touch with parents. I've had email suddenly stopped working. If I hadn't had a second Android phone running at all times I would have been in a bad bind a few times. I'm hoping Apple really turns things around.
For the longest time, on iOS Gmail was not working at all in the default mail app. I think they fixed it but anyways yes iOS is not perfect either. I do feel that some of the 'snappy' feel is also due to the look of their animation graphic- some apps takes a screenshot of the app and will load that very fast. But yes, the new Apple processor chip is VERY powerful, almost double the speed of the ones that are in the Android offering.
I definitely appreciate Samsung's services. They are the only company that have the s-pen which is so useful. If SMS was less sucky and more like iMessage I would so use the Samsungs default SMS app because it has features like the mailbox where you can pin the important messages on top and can schedule messages. Very useful. Only reason I don't use it is because I like the functionality of Messenger which is more like iMessage.
I am a fan of the extras Samsung puts on their phones. Its why i went back to them and wasnt a fan of stock Android. Never used iMessage but i dont like things that are exclusive to their devices.
Have you used Facebook Messenger before? I think iMessage was inspired by Mesenger. They are similar although iMessage kinda incorporate those features into SMS. Messenger have SMS as well but it is separate from their chat function if that makes any sense.
Pre-order in! One Lilac S9 and one Coral Blue S9, no plus. Didnt realize they came in 64GB, thats cool. So for two phones on TMobile, bill only goes up $36 with trade ins of S7($360 credit) & S6($200 credit) with their up to 50% off promotion out of the gate 
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welp, I pre-ordered the unlocked coral blue S9+ from Samsung.com. Unidays discount saved me $63 (which was my sales tax) and then ebates should be another ~$60ish on top of that. Not too bad. Now the wait begins
Hope we will less of the Apple Fanboy drivel in the Galaxy threads vs last year.
Looking forward to everyones thoughts on the Camera, particularly those coming from Note8s to the S9+.
Looking forward to everyones thoughts on the Camera, particularly those coming from Note8s to the S9+.
S8+ on Oreo. No lags other than apps that have a known history of doing so and need a “swift kick” now and then.
Wiping cache partition / Project Treble / and the 6GB SHOULD do for S9+ what it can do for N8.
What apps are the lag makers? I wonder if my husband and I have one of those we didn’t identify yet. I don’t have very many. Pokémon Go is one that took over my camera and wrecked it. It will be banned from my Android devices from now on. It’s not kind to iPhone, either, but only when it’s actually being used on iOS.
I actually like Sammy's version of some of the apps. Their email and calendar is better than native Google products. Google Photos is awesome but Sammy's photo library is really good, and has added functionality.
Adware/malware that hooked a ride on popular games were rampant. Also coin-mining that can stress a system and leave only small % for actual apps.
Nearly 700k developers lost their license for Android last yr. Lots of fake apps, purport to be one thing but have trojan horse or agenda. Just saying.
Nearly 700k developers lost their license for Android last yr. Lots of fake apps, purport to be one thing but have trojan horse or agenda. Just saying.
Wow, what did Pokémon Go do there? I play it on both my iPhone and S8+ and haven’t noticed any side effects except for the obvious hit on the battery when playing.
Somehow every time I closed out a session of Pokémon Go, thinking the game was entirely closed out, it had an effect on my camera app on the S8+, freezing and lagging it. I had to go into one of the utilities to Jill it and free up my camera again. This was over the summer. It also caused my iPhone 7 Plus to heat up burning hot. Scary hot. I’m not sure what was going on there. I have the app updated and on my 8 Plus and I tried to play it during my road trip last week but it was very buggy so I gave up. But at least it didn’t overheat my phone. It did not ever overheat my S8+. My S8+ has been a good phone. It just has lags and the fingerprint sensor doesn’t work well sometimes. And it has that pink tint display if I don’t use the fix on the Adaptive display mode.
I am like you. The smartphone market has matured. We are not going to see any major changes. The difference between the S8 and S9 are minimal just like the difference between the 7 Plus and the 8 Plus. It is a total waste of money to upgrade yearly. At the same time phones are becoming expensive.
I now buy from Swappa. I got a 6s Plus 2.2 years ago. I paid 870$ for 128 gigs. Best iPhone I ever owned. Sold it for $360 and bought a mint 256 gig 8 Plus for $810 with AppleCare+ included. The 8 Plus only cost me $450. Two years from now I will sell the 8 Plus for the 11 Plus, but I will buy it used in mint condition. I have saved so much money that way.
Oh wow, I play the game every day at least shortly to keep my catch and PokeStop streaks alive. I haven't noticed such an issue but I still have a Tasker profile to raise my screen timeout to 30 minutes when Pokemon Go is active and restore it back to 1 minute when it isn't even though also the Android app should nowadays manage to keep the device awake when the game is running similarly as iOS does. The S8+ is actually an awesome Pokemon Go winter phone due to its display being highly responsive even when you're wearing touchscreen gloves and have a glass screen protector installed. In fact, the game is one of the things enticing me to retain my S8+ even though my main SIM is in the iPhone 8 nowadays.
Sorry typos. Kill, not Jill. Well my camera on my S8+ is slow enough even on its own but Pokémon Go would actually cause it to freeze and take awhile to free up.
I’m getting ready to head out and visit Best Buy. I am actually going to replace small appliances that got destroyed today in the winter hurricane we had here today. I’ve just come in a little while ago after touring our property and taking stock of the storm damage, which thankfully so far is cosmetic. We have friends that lost shingles and cars and parts of roofs and we just have some things that a hammer and some nails can fix when it settles down out there. We aren’t even in the region getting the snow and worst winds.
I lost a few small kitchen appliances because something went awry with the power failures and surges we got from last night to this morning. We lost one of the components of our HVAC system too. Dang. Needless to say I haven’t preordered anything until I find out the bill to fix that.
Ouch, I'm glad you didn't suffer any more damages. We're experiencing a period of some extra cold here, but small annoyances like having the lock on the trunk of my car frozen are minor issues compared to property damage you're having there. The good thing about temperatures in the -20C region is that it typically also means that it's quite calm, i.e. no strong winds or snowfall.
But yeah, what comes to the S9, I'm not preordering either. With the way Samsung device prices come down rather quickly, I'll wait for a deal similar to where I got my S8+ from just 6 months or so from its release. 300€ off from the initial list price is quite enticing after all.
My s7 edge with nothing installed lags out of the box at the 2 year mark. It's so bad that I can't wait to ditch it. The note 8 never lagged and was a great device. I am sure the s9+ will be just as good as I believe that memory will help.
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It's the other way around. imessage was out before fb messenger.
Hope we will less of the Apple Fanboy drivel in the Galaxy threads vs last year.
Looking forward to everyones thoughts on the Camera, particularly those coming from Note8s to the S9+.
Posts like this go a long ways towards ensuring fanboys on both sides get in their drivel.
I did get to see the lilac and black s9+ at Best Buy. No blue ones were on display. I was very disappointed. I know that blue has got to be stunning in person. They had blue S8 and S8+ on display so I looked at those. They were gorgeous.
I’ll start with the good things I observed. The glass of the display seems wider and flatter than that of the S8+ I compared the S9+ to. I also looked at a Note 8. The S9+ display was my favorite as was the overall shape and feel in the hand. While it is very close to the S8+ they did refine the edges and overall shape to where I no longer feel frustration that Samsung decided to go all in on edge displays. This one, I can live with. The Note 8 has a pleasant edge display too but the S9+ was just a better size for me to handle.
The lilac purple is wonderful. I loved it. My husband liked it, too, but he thought it could veer more into a pink shade at times than he would prefer to carry for himself. He likes how Samsung does blues so that is likely what he would get.
Without a doubt, I prefer the lilac purple to my current orchid grey. I’m very fond of my orchid grey so you can imagine how much I fell for the lilac purple.
The software felt fluid and I overall enjoyed interacting with the lovely display. I was not distracted by edges. It was just perfect for me. If I end up ordering I hope I get sent a phone with such a flawless display.
The camera was good. But it just can’t touch a Pixel. It can’t even touch the Note 8. The Note 8 has a white balance that rendered colors more accurately under the store lighting. The iPhone X was more close to the S9+ but the problem we had trying to compare the pictures is that my husband’s X has a horrible blue shift to the display. He may as well have kept his Pixel 2 XL. It’s bad. So we kind of gave up trying to compare the two.
What the S9+ does is let too much light in on auto mode and the scene looks much more bright than is realistic. The Note 8 and Pixel 2 strike a good balance of giving you light but realistic shadows in which you can still see details. As does the X. (I had my 8 Plus with me but had my hands full wrangling the Pixel2 and the Note 8 together.)
With variable aperature though, I would imagine that could be adjusted for manually. I just didn’t have the time to work with it. I found myself as always, fighting with the demo mode software. It’s less heavy handed than it used to be but it’s still a factor in impeding my ability to make a thorough evaluation quickly.
The stereo speakers sounded nice and loud but didn’t really shine until I turned the Dolby Atmos setting on. And then it became something more impressive. I still think maybe the iPhone X stereo speakers might sound more rich but I’d need to be standing away from a giant video presentation to test that theory out. I was really standing right next to a giant screen tv running a nonstop ad for the S9+ so I was thankful I was able to evaluate the speakers at all.
I was very pleased with video recording quality but, as always, I am disappointed we are still limited to 10 minute maximum size videos when shooting at the highest available settings. With iPhone there is no limitation. I’ve made 4K videos that were well over 90 minutes. I read that this is a limitation of Snapdragon processors. However, it’s not a deal breaker. I can work with this.
I hope this post was coherent. I actually nodded off in the middle of attempting to proofread it. It was a long stressful day and my mind is a bit scattered. Fortunately, though, my husband fixed the HVAC system himself. No expensive repairs loom over us.
I’ll start with the good things I observed. The glass of the display seems wider and flatter than that of the S8+ I compared the S9+ to. I also looked at a Note 8. The S9+ display was my favorite as was the overall shape and feel in the hand. While it is very close to the S8+ they did refine the edges and overall shape to where I no longer feel frustration that Samsung decided to go all in on edge displays. This one, I can live with. The Note 8 has a pleasant edge display too but the S9+ was just a better size for me to handle.
The lilac purple is wonderful. I loved it. My husband liked it, too, but he thought it could veer more into a pink shade at times than he would prefer to carry for himself. He likes how Samsung does blues so that is likely what he would get.
Without a doubt, I prefer the lilac purple to my current orchid grey. I’m very fond of my orchid grey so you can imagine how much I fell for the lilac purple.
The software felt fluid and I overall enjoyed interacting with the lovely display. I was not distracted by edges. It was just perfect for me. If I end up ordering I hope I get sent a phone with such a flawless display.
The camera was good. But it just can’t touch a Pixel. It can’t even touch the Note 8. The Note 8 has a white balance that rendered colors more accurately under the store lighting. The iPhone X was more close to the S9+ but the problem we had trying to compare the pictures is that my husband’s X has a horrible blue shift to the display. He may as well have kept his Pixel 2 XL. It’s bad. So we kind of gave up trying to compare the two.
What the S9+ does is let too much light in on auto mode and the scene looks much more bright than is realistic. The Note 8 and Pixel 2 strike a good balance of giving you light but realistic shadows in which you can still see details. As does the X. (I had my 8 Plus with me but had my hands full wrangling the Pixel2 and the Note 8 together.)
With variable aperature though, I would imagine that could be adjusted for manually. I just didn’t have the time to work with it. I found myself as always, fighting with the demo mode software. It’s less heavy handed than it used to be but it’s still a factor in impeding my ability to make a thorough evaluation quickly.
The stereo speakers sounded nice and loud but didn’t really shine until I turned the Dolby Atmos setting on. And then it became something more impressive. I still think maybe the iPhone X stereo speakers might sound more rich but I’d need to be standing away from a giant video presentation to test that theory out. I was really standing right next to a giant screen tv running a nonstop ad for the S9+ so I was thankful I was able to evaluate the speakers at all.
I was very pleased with video recording quality but, as always, I am disappointed we are still limited to 10 minute maximum size videos when shooting at the highest available settings. With iPhone there is no limitation. I’ve made 4K videos that were well over 90 minutes. I read that this is a limitation of Snapdragon processors. However, it’s not a deal breaker. I can work with this.
I hope this post was coherent. I actually nodded off in the middle of attempting to proofread it. It was a long stressful day and my mind is a bit scattered. Fortunately, though, my husband fixed the HVAC system himself. No expensive repairs loom over us.