Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus

"The human eye is an incredibly powerful image capturing tool" – that's how Samsung started the camera segment of the presentation of its latest flagships at the launch event at MWC, Barcelona. And that's what has inspired the brand for the camera capabilities of the Galaxy S9 and S9+. Just like how the human eye adapts to different lighting conditions by contracting or expanding the pupils, the cameras on the S9 duo offer a dual aperture of f/1.5 and f/2.4, and can automatically switch between them depending upon the ambient light. In fact, the f/1.5 aperture is the widest-ever on a smartphone yet, making the S9 duo ideal devices for low-light photography. Both the S9 and S9+ come with this feature, but the latter adds dual cameras to the mix. Specs-wise, the Samsung Galaxy S9+ comes equipped with a pair of 12-megapixel snappers, with the primary being a wide-angle sensor and the secondary lens being a telephoto one with f/2.4 aperture. The optically-stabilised sensors offer Live Focus functionality and the ability to zoom up to 2x without losing image quality, similar to the Galaxy Note8 (review). The phone also comes with impressive video-recording capabilities, including a new super slow-mo mode that lets you shoot videos 32 times slower than normal playback speeds.

When the S9/S9+ are kept next to their predecessors, you could find it tough to tell them apart. Not that it's a bad thing, as Samsung has popularised the glass-based design with metallic reinforcement along the edges. Add to it the Infinity Display up front which curves towards the sides, and the Samsung Galaxy S9+ is a stunning smartphone. Another factor distinguishing the device from the crowd is its Coral Blue and Lilac Purple hues along with the regular black or grey options.

Like always, Samsung's newest flagship comes equipped with the latest and greatest. The Galaxy S9+ is powered by a 10nm Exynos 9810 processor. The SoC is clocked at 2.8GHz for the four high-end cores, while the remaining four power-efficient scores are tuned at 1.7GHz. Combined with a Mali-T880 graphics engine and 6GB of RAM, the phone is a true powerhouse. From basic tasks of switching between apps to running heavy ones, or even playing graphics-intensive games, the smartphone performs like a hot knife on butter. The thermals are also managed well. Even after an hour of playing Middle-earth: Shadow of War or CSR Racing 2, the handset doesn't heat up. The same remains the case even while using GPS, though the phone does get slightly warm while charging, which is quite normal anyway.

Fuelling the Samsung Galaxy S9+ is a 3,500mAh battery, which is the same capacity as its predecessor. It ensures that the device can comfortably last an entire working day, but if you're a heavy user, it'd require juicing up by night. With my usage of streaming music via Bluetooth, watching YouTube videos for an hour, using 4G for messaging on WhatsApp and browsing, and of course, a few calls, the device had less than 10 percent left by the end of the day. On an average, the phone is able to offer about four hours of screen-on time. This is when the screen was pushing 1,080 x 2,160 pixels and wasn't set at QHD+ resolution. In our video loop test however, it gave impressive results as it drained just 10 percent in an hour of HD video playback with both brightness and volume levels at 50 percent.

Is the Samsung Galaxy S9+ perfect? No

Gorgeous IP68-protected design

The intelligent scan isn't fast enough