Samsung Galaxy S9 - Well everyone, it's time for us to go ahead and take a look at the Samsung Galaxy S9 and see how this phone holds up in 2023.. Now personally I think this phone is still a very interesting device. For the most part It's turning five years old like it's been almost five years since this phone just came out.
And it's crazy because both the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 plus were pretty good phones when they first came out. but I think the Galaxy S8 were even more like insane devices when it actually comes down to it. So if you want to pick up some phones I would recommend this year.
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Samsung Galaxy S9 Price in Specs & Review 2023
Now starting off with the outside of the Galaxy S9, you actually had a pretty good feeling body like it was. Definitely a premium phone for the most part at that time in 2018. you had a 5.8 inch Super AMOLED display and as I mentioned for many years now this was a pretty good panel. It was a 1440p display. You had a 3D touch home button which I kind of forgot about but now I remember it was that little bottom portion. It was a very good you know display for the most part.
It also curved on the sides which I love. And back in 2018 when this phone came out I thought to myself at that moment, how can Samsung or How can any manufacturer make a phone that looks better than this I thought this was Peak you know development. But then shortly after the Galaxy S10, the S20s came out and those ones looked way better than this thing. But it's so insane. When we look back and we look at devices in this day and age and we think to ourselves, how can these developers and manufacturers make phones better looking than this and they end up doing it which I love when they make developments like that.
Now nothing really else on the display up front. I mean we do have like a 60hz display 920 but it's still perfectly fine on the bottom. We do have a Usb Type-c port which does have Samsung decks, so although this one is unsupported, you still have Samsung deck support which is nice. So you can go and plug this thing in to a display and you can get this like desktop experience. It's not just displaying whatever on the phone, you can toggle Samsung decks, you can toggle Samsung decks and it is a really nice feature for sure. So in terms of the sun and the bottom, very cool thing. You'll set up a headphone jack on this phone too and you also have a micro Sd card slot.
This was one of the last ones the S10 also added, but this was the second to the last Samsung phone to basically have all three of those things. It was crazy. I think the Galaxy S10 was even more legendary phone and I was really happy when Samsung kept it on this phone because even at this moment a lot of Manufacturers were moving away from their headphone Jacks Google I think already did away with it at this time or they were about to pretty much this year. We also had iPhones that already, you know went away with it too. I think OnePlus did two. so there were a lot of people already swaying away and you know we still had it on this phone which is so cool on the back.
We did have the standard glass back which was awesome. Not a frosted glass back that we have nowadays, but still perfectly fine. We had that fingerprint sensor right under the camera though, which was very interesting. Very very interesting touch. Not really too sure what was going on there, but personally you know it is what it is. There's nothing we can really do about it. Samsung did actually move it from the side of the camera which was even worse, but you know it's not a big deal. At least they were making some improvements there now and the rest of the back is not anything crazy. We did have Ip certification on this phone. We did that wireless charging which is really nice too and overall that kind of covers up this whole entire outside. You know, I still like it. I still think it feels pretty good. You know it doesn't feel like a cheap phone and even in this day and age it still holds up decently well.
Now with the camera Department, this is one of the more Ap areas of this phone and I'll kind of explain why. So we had a single camera set up on the back, 12 megapixel wide angle lens on the front. We like had a dual camera setup. It was mostly just an 8 megapixel wide angle camera that can shoot 1440p videos on the front. Now I think the camera quality of this phone is still actually pretty decent and you did have quite a few features built in with this camera UI which was nice.
My main issue with this camera that I have with basically all older cameras is that it is a single camera. You know there's no like software you can download to give yourself an extra camera or anything like that. So the problem with that is that if you still have you know a single camera, you're kind of already a little bit outdated. The S9 Plus is in a better situation because it did have you know an extra camera. The S10 is in a really good spot too because it does have three cameras and this one not so much.
Not saying this is a bad camera, but again it's just one of those things that you know you just kind of have to keep in mind. So with this camera you still have a few you have quite a few features built in. If you go inside of the camera Ui, you will see several features that you know maybe some manufacturers are just now getting onto their phone and this phone from like 2018 has that type of feature set which is actually really cool.
Now I still think this phone could have done a little bit better. Like I said if it had multiple cameras, that would have been awesome because at this moment you know Apple was already doing multiple cameras. I think for like at least two years. some other manufacturers were probably doing it for a while too. The only people who took even a longer time that you know Samsung was Google and they took like it wasn't until like 2020 that they started doing it.
So I think the Samsung camera you know on this S9 is still good. I think it's not the one I would technically use, but I don't think it's a bad thing either. That makes any sense now in the software. in the longevity portion. this is the area that is probably going to be not the worst area, but it's probably going to be the reason why I wouldn't recommend people to buy this phone anymore.
And that is because this phone has not only been, you know, unsupported with software, but it's been on some supported by software for like three versions of software so far. So this is the weird thing. It's when you have a phone like this that still looks fairly modern, that actually looks like it could still get software support. and when it's been outdated for like two versions of software three, whatever we're at now, it's actually kind of insane.
So the S9 I think ended off with a 1ui2 or technically one Ey 2.5 and I remember when one Ui 2.5 came out. That was a big update for sure. And you know I liked having you know one Ui 2 on the S9 over one Ui one on the S8. I feel like if the S8 got 1uy2, that would have been awesome. And the main reason for this is because of that full on gesture design. So before you kind of had it, but it was just like a minimized nav bar button so you could swipe up from the sides and get into like different apps or whatever. But it wasn't the same with Yes 10 you actually had that you know, full-on gesture design and it was beautiful.
When the Note 9 got it too, that was awesome and that actually made this phone a little bit more future-proofed It was actually very interesting. You would never think a software tweak like that can make your phone feel so much more up to date, but it actually did. And I It was kind of sad when this phone got unsupported with software. I truly do feel like this phone could have lasted for a much longer period of time. Again, there's not really anything we can do about it, but that was one of the things that kind of stood out to me. So in terms of that I would still say thumbs up from you for sure.
I think you know it's still a good. You know it's a good phone for the features it had, but it's unsupported so I would not recommend buying it anymore. Now on the performance side, this phone did have that Snapdragon 845 chipset inside with 4 gigabytes of RAM on all the models. Now I will still say this performance of this phone isn't that bad. You know it's definitely not that great, but I still think like for this type of phone for how old it is it's still kind of Performing.
Kind of okay. Again, it's not a good performing phone anymore compared to the latest and greatest phones that we have Now you know, especially with the lack of 120 Hertz, no software support all those other things, but I still think this is a good performing phone if you wanted to go ahead and have some sort of like side advice for playing like older emulators or older games that are still supported on this phone that I I think this is actually not a bad device. You can get these things all day for super cheap but again is it the best choice? Probably not.
And you know I still think the performance of this phone is still okay. You know if. but if you're comparing it to the Galaxy S20, S21, S22, it's definitely not going to be as smooth as those phones. And I would probably argue that a lot of budget phones that are coming out now are probably faster than this thing, you know. and this thing was a flagship of 2018. that's not a knock to this phone, it's mostly just a you know, showing the Improvement of all the budget phones that we've gotten throughout the last couple years. So to kind of wrap up this whole entire video, what I'll tell you is, I think the Samsung Galaxy S9 is still a very interesting phone.
I still think it has a lot of capability and a lot of quality. It just so happens that this phone has just been unsupported with software and that is kind of the sad situation that we're in and this phone continued to get software support. I think that would have been awesome. Unfortunately, that's not the case so there's really not a whole lot we can do there. You know, we're just gonna have to kind of wait it out to be honest.
So in terms of that I think he has 10 is still worth it. I think he has 20 and all those other phones Still worth it after, but I probably would not recommend buying the S9 anymore. So in terms of that, that kind of covers it up.