Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (KRX:005930) has left no stone unturned in designing and materialising its latest flagship, the Galaxy S9 and S9+. If you want to talk about features, just name any, the S9 has it. We won’t give you an exhaustive list of features packed in the S9 and S9 plus because it just doesn’t end. Some of the interesting features are facial recognition technology, slimmed down TouchWiz, AR emoji, Super AMOLED screen, Dual Aperture camera with auto switching, AR emoji, stereo speakers and many more. The state of the art technology will give the Galaxy maker an extra edge over its main competitors Apple and Google.
The Korean smartphone giant first unveiled the device at recently held Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Though Samsung has already launched its flagship devices in India, which is the second largest smartphone market in the world, it is yet to launch Galaxy S9 and S9+ in all other countries. Pre-orders have begun, and these top-notch devices will hit the stores on March 16 globally. Samsung is aiming the target of over 43 million sales. That’s 2 million more than the sales of its predecessor Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus. The S9 resembles an awful lot with the S8 but with plenty of additions under the hood. The S8 plus features that are unchanged in S9 are – IP68 dust and water resistance, microSD expansion slot (compatible up to 400GB cards). Meanwhile, the oddly positioned fingerprint reader in the S8 Plus has been moved between the new dual cameras in the S9.
The challenge for Samsung can be what to look up next. The S9 is a well-equipped smartphone, but an iterative upgrade on the S8. The company is seemingly desperate to reverse the previous trend in which the Galaxy S8 sales fell drastically compared to Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge – from 55 million to 41 million. Moreover, the Galaxy S9 and S9+ will come with a nasty price tag of $720 and $840, respectively. A Premium Care can cost you an extra $11.99 per month over a two year period, with one-month free-trial. Hence you might end up paying nearly 40% more than you think in case of S9 and 33% for S9 Plus.
Samsung’s sales target seems ambitious but achievable. Taking the extensive reviews into account, the Galaxy S9 is a promising device in the smartphone industry. It is beyond capable of doing any and everything that the competition can do and more. Among its competitors, Pixel 2 lacks a dual sim option and an expandable storage, S9 has both. If u consider iPhone X to be expensive, then apparently S9 and S9 Plus are value for money, plus they are equipped with headphone jack too. Also, the AR emoji is developed to counter iPhone X’s Animoji, but unfortunately it came out to be a little awkward.
Samsung claims that S9 doesn’t have a Portrait Mode on any of its front or rear camera, while S9+ has live focus which uses the two rear cameras. But on the upside, the front-facing camera on both the devices has a Portrait Mode stand-in called ‘Selfie Focus’. On the other hand, both Google’s Pixel 2 and Pixel 2XL and Apple’s iPhone X can take portrait mode shots with just one camera.
In the current smartphone market, where giants like Apple are struggling to maintain its sales growth, it can be a significant win for Samsung if it levels up its sales of the Galaxy S9 and S9+.
It would be interesting to see if Galaxy S9 and S9+ will just be able to take part or they can take over?
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