Samsung Galaxy S9

[Coolbanana]

Pre-ordered! (Direct from Samsung UK, Phone only, no Contract)

I've opted for the Samsung Galaxy S9+ Hybrid Sim in black to replace my S8+

Watched the launch today - yeah, I had nothing to do - and it looks like a nice evolution of the S8. Particularly like the Dual Aperture and Dual cameras (S9+) as well as the AKG-tuned stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos. Albeit most the time, the sound from the device will be via my headphones but still, nice.

Ships from March 8th it says on my Order notes.

Edited by Coolbanana on Sunday 25th February 19:49

[BlueJazz]

Looks like a decent camera upgrade but not much else. Think I'll wait till 2019 when the 5g chipsets are due before I change my Note 8.

[jimmyjimjim]

US price of $720 which is pretty decent and will almost certainly annoy the chuff out of a lot of other manufacturers who were hoping for $1k.

Now to wait for the release to force the price of the S8 down - I've found a provider for $1/month for unlimited calls and texts, but they only support a very limited range of phones.

[Yipper]

Had a play with one of these last week. It is the best Android phone on the market right now.

[Shaoxter]

£869 for the S9+ on Samsung's website!
I have a year to run on my current contract anyway so will hold off until next year, a better camera is always nice but not at the price of an actual DSLR!

[Coolbanana]

Shaoxter said:

£869 for the S9+ on Samsung's website!
I have a year to run on my current contract anyway so will hold off until next year, a better camera is always nice but not at the price of an actual DSLR!

Yeah, not exactly cheap. Still, it is more than just a camera and a device to listen to music and watch movies on when on planes. I run my business from my mobile so claim it as an expense every year. I switched to Samsung last year from iPhone because I wanted dual sim, work and personal on one phone.

[Rawwr]

Watched the launch with a huge degree of 'meh'. It's like they're trying to corner the market in tat. There was literally nothing they announced which made me go 'ooh'. This is barely a microstep in evolution and you're really going to pay for the price for that tiny fart of development..

[HTP99]

Rawwr said:

Watched the launch with a huge degree of 'meh'. It's like they're trying to corner the market in tat. There was literally nothing they announced which made me go 'ooh'. This is barely a microstep in evolution and you're really going to pay for the price for that tiny fart of development..

Problem is I think we have reached a relative peak in what a phone can do now and each development is likely to only be small, yet it has to be done to keep the phone relevant.

[james_tigerwoods]

I've looked over the specs and features and I, too, will admit to being underwhelmed by this - My partner has an S8 and it looks exactly the same. Yes, the camera is better and there will be a few extra good things, but nothing that makes me what to spend a lot on this

I looked on the O2 website (I know there will be cheaper) and the cost of this really staggered me - £49.99 upfront and about £60 odd a month for 2 years? I'll look seriously at the S8 when my upgrade is due in 3 months time.

[HTP99]

james_tigerwoods said:

I've looked over the specs and features and I, too, will admit to being underwhelmed by this - My partner has an S8 and it looks exactly the same. Yes, the camera is better and there will be a few extra good things, but nothing that makes me what to spend a lot on this

I looked on the O2 website (I know there will be cheaper) and the cost of this really staggered me - £49.99 upfront and about £60 odd a month for 2 years? I'll look seriously at the S8 when my upgrade is due in 3 months time.

I'm due an upgrade in October, currently I have an S7 Edge, by then the S9 will have come down in price to levels that I am currently paying, in the early months, new phones are always expensive.

[Rawwr]

HTP99 said:

Problem is I think we have reached a relative peak in what a phone can do now and each development is likely to only be small, yet it has to be done to keep the phone relevant.

But it's an illusion! There's been nothing amazing in the last three years, compared to the jumps in the three years before that and the huge leaps in the three years before that. It's now primarily expectation that the version number goes up one and the price goes up £100. People are already so conditioned to the fact that I'm sure some people are waiting for the S10+ at £969 next February.

[Coolbanana]

Well, I think the upgrade is worth it for my use from just reading the specs. The price doesn't bother me, I claim it as a company expense, so irrelevant.

I look at it this way: I use my mobile everyday; I use it to monitor and run my business. I use it to communicate. I use it for various Media. It is a great tool for many things and I want every little extra I can get to see if it works for me - take the new Bixby upgrade, I have never used it on my S8+ but the new translator, brilliant! I use Google Translate almost daily here in Portugal while I am still learning the language and have found the apps for translating paperwork cumbersome, Bixby sounds like it might make that easier. Great.

Sure, the S9+ looks very similar (just smaller bezels to differentiate, dual camera and fingerprint scanner relocated) to the S8+ but so what? The S8+ is a great-looking phone!

The screen is the same, just tweaked to make it a little brighter.
The chip is a little faster.
The fingerprint scanner is now in a far better position.

The big upgrade for me is the camera. I really like what it promises to bring to my photography. It won't replace my DSLR's but it is my go-to camera when out-and-about usually for Social Media shots; my Family is spread and live in the USA,SA, UK, The Netherlands and Portugal and sending pictures via WhatsApp is something we do almost daily. I use my mobile for most of these pictures.

Upgraded speakers. Ok, nice to have. I do like that it has Dolby Atmos. That through my B&O headphones should be really nice.

Yes, it costs more. About £50 for the S9 vs S8 at launch. You don't have to buy it.

All said, I think it will be a fine replacement for my S8+ and I'll enjoy the upgrades.

[Rawwr]

I'd say everyone with any mobile device has a similar use pattern. I just don't see it as a decent gain over even the S7, let alone the S8. You say money is irrelevant but it really isn't, these are devices being peddled at a specific price, which allows us to determine whether or not there is a real sense of value and I'm just not seeing it. We're now at a stage with devices like the S8, S9, iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 where the incremental improvements are so miniscule that yearly upgrade cycles just seem like madness. I dare say even 2-yearly upgrade cycles are becoming somewhat unnecessary. I strongly suspect that a big driver of the unit price increases is because people are slowing down on the upgrade cycles.

Having said all that, if you want something to have the latest and greatest then go for it, I totally respect that, but please don't try and justify it on a non-existent technical footing.

[Coolbanana]

Rawwr said:

...I totally respect that, but please don't try and justify it on a non-existent technical footing.

Non-existent? I disagree. You are merely applying your own personal idea of what an upgrade should be to justify a change - you expect sweeping, major changes before you upgrade. Fine. But please don't impose your concept of what an improvement needs to be upon others.

If - if - the camera alone lives up the promise it's spec-sheet suggests then it is a technological improvement that will be clearly noticeable to what you can achieve with the S8, let alone the S7 which is demonstrably inferior when both are used correctly.

What value you put upon that alone is entirely up to the individual. For me, it is worth it on a technical level.

Remember too, while I absolutely agree that cost plays a significant part to many, it is still relatively cheap to others. Samsung, like Apple and all others, have produced a new flagship. They aren't forcing you to buy it. They offer other phones in their range that are more affordable. However, if someone can afford it and the new model has an upgrade that they are willing to pay for, why is that an issue for you? You come across as someone who believes they are somehow superior and should dictate their own sense of worth upon others.

[Coolbanana]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Exactly.

When I look at the value of convenience my phone provides - being able to work from the beach, while walking, even while cycling, out and about generally, as well as the myriad of other things it provides, I would pay a lot more for such a device with these specs if it didn't already exist!

Yes, I could get a less costly phone but I want the better screen, the better camera, the better features. I use it a lot. So I want the best I can comfortably afford outright.

I cannot justify buying a Ferrari 488 at the moment because I want to invest at this stage and sooner spend it on my home or rental properties so I settle for a far less costly car. When it comes to mobiles and laptops that I use everyday for work and personal, I am more than happy to pay the prices they currently cost. No issue at all. Bargain!

[Rawwr]

Coolbanana said:

You come across as someone who believes they are somehow superior and should dictate their own sense of worth upon others.

Jesus, that's a bit of a reach and certainly not was I was trying to convey.

I was trying to highlight this worrying trend for cycle creep. We've slowly moved from large improvements for little cost to little improvements for large cost, predominantly led by Apple's pricing model, which I don't believe is a good model to follow. This has come about because we've pretty much reached the limit in certain areas of technology - certainly with SoC/CPU/GPU fabrication, anyway - so, the leaps have become shorter. In a perfect world, the flagship manufacturers would hold out to match the slowing of development but the annual launches are expected and always hotly anticipated, particularly by the shareholders.

My worry is that we've reached the wrong side of the seesaw now where the releases are being led by the combination of fans, shareholders and expectation rather than the when the technology dictates there's something worthwhile. This can only lead to a decrease in value as the manufacturers rapidly inflate prices to combat the the slowing of the upgrade cycles below the 95%ile.

I try to only look at the value in the hardware and software. I honestly don't look at the value to the user because it's intangible and immeasurable, and that's what I was trying to get at with not encouraging argument on a technical footing.

If you took offence to my original point, possibly from my own poor wording then I apologise, I didn't intend to cause offence.

[Robster]

Yipper said:

Had a play with one of these last week. It is the best Android phone on the market right now.

No you didn't

[alorotom]

Robster said:

Yipper said:

Had a play with one of these last week. It is the best Android phone on the market right now.

No you didn't

I replied the same and deleted it before posting ... they’re just not worth it

[james_tigerwoods]

HTP99 said:

I'm due an upgrade in October

I'm due in mid-May - I will wait and see what's what with it before commiting. Key to me is battery life which, on the S7, seems pretty poor when you use the phone in the day - I did about 15 minutes of Clash of Clans, about half an hour of Browsing on the internet and Facebook and watched the battery go from 100% to 60% in that time....

[AmosMoses]

So, i'm a serial Apple owner. Have had iPhones since the 3GS.

My current 6S 64GB is aging like milk, and i suspect it will die this year.

I would only be interested in the iPhone X however after reading about the S9 last night, it is better in every single way than the X and is significantly cheaper.

How can Apple justify their prices?

Seems i shall be moving do the Android side of things this next upgrade.