Android Circuit: Samsung Confirms Galaxy S9 Features, USA Gets Slow S9, Android Mimics iPhone Notch
More Galaxy S9 Details Leak
This week’s news around the upcoming Galaxy S9 started with Orange Romania and their early publication of the S9 specs page. Deleted quickly, it was still stored by caches around the web and picked up by the news hounds. Gordon Kelly reports:
What Orange Romania revealed is the Galaxy S9 will indeed stick with the 5.8-inch Quad HD OLED ‘Infinity Display’ introduced with the Galaxy S8, but also introduce a headline-grabbing primary rear camera with a super fast aperture (as previously leaked). Predictably the product page also mentions support for 4G+, WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS.
Samsung Confirms Some Key Details
No matter the leak, because later in the week Samsung confirmed details via a promotional video. As expected, it will be focusing on the camera to help the Galaxy S9 family stand out, and it has confirmed this approach with three videos released on its South Korean based YouTube channel:
For months Samsung has been trying to give away significant Galaxy S9 features, and now the company has confirmed the three biggest changes...
In a trio of official teaser adverts on its Samsung Mobile Korea YouTube channel, the company has left nothing to the imagination and the clips confirm the headline changes it hopes will sell both the Galaxy S9 and its bigger brother the Galaxy S9 Plus.
The Big Differences Between The Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus
As the specifications continue to come out, it is becoming clear that Samsung is happy to give the Galaxy S9 Plus pole position in the marketing. When you compare the specifications and the new technology, the smaller Galaxy S9 is being left behind, as I highlighted earlier this week:
That will leave the Samsung Galaxy S9 looking decidedly mediocre when it is launched at the end of the month. Although the talk until now has been that the S9 and the S9 Plus handsets only really differences is physical size, both the camera lens count and now the RAM count hand the flagship status squarely to the S9 Plus and leave the S9 as a weaker foot soldier in the smartphone battle.
With a heavy focus on specifications in the high-end of the Android smartphone world, the Galaxy S9 Plus is going to gather more attention because of this move. Even if the extra RAM is needed for the extra information the dual-lens system on the S9 Plus will be dealing with, the perception is that the two handset are no longer equals.
More of my thoughts on the differences here.
America Is Down On Power
Also being left behind by the Galaxy S9 family is America. Thanks to the use of Qualcomm’s SnapDragon processor to match the US 4G frequencies, the Galaxy S9 units shipping to the US will have less potential power than the Exynos-powered handsets shipping to the rest of the world.
Because the choice of chips is down to the network, and not the consumer at the point of sale, there won’t really be a choice of which S9 to go home with. You’ll get the ‘good’ or the ‘bad’ one that works on your network. The question will be if there is a noticeable difference between the two handsets in head to head tests, or if Samsung will throttle back its own processor to keep pace with the SnapDragon and ensure that the Galaxy S9 experience will be broadly similar no matter where you are in the world.
I suspect the latter will be the case, which means the ultimate power of an Exynos-powered S9 will remain a question for the modding community to answer.
Thoughts on the S9 power question can be found here.
">Taking a look back at seven days of news and headlines across the world of Android, this week’s Android Circuit includes more leaked specifications of the Galaxy S9, Samsung confirming key S9 details, the differences between the S9 and S9 Plus, why America gets a weaker Galaxy, HMD Global trouncing the competition, Huawei and ZTE under pressure from US agencies, and Google’s new UI for Android P.
Android Circuit is here to remind you of a few of the many things that have happened around Android in the last week (and you can find the weekly Apple news digest here).
More Galaxy S9 Details Leak
This week’s news around the upcoming Galaxy S9 started with Orange Romania and their early publication of the S9 specs page. Deleted quickly, it was still stored by caches around the web and picked up by the news hounds. Gordon Kelly reports:
What Orange Romania revealed is the Galaxy S9 will indeed stick with the 5.8-inch Quad HD OLED ‘Infinity Display’ introduced with the Galaxy S8, but also introduce a headline-grabbing primary rear camera with a super fast aperture (as previously leaked). Predictably the product page also mentions support for 4G+, WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS.
Samsung Confirms Some Key Details
No matter the leak, because later in the week Samsung confirmed details via a promotional video. As expected, it will be focusing on the camera to help the Galaxy S9 family stand out, and it has confirmed this approach with three videos released on its South Korean based YouTube channel:
For months Samsung has been trying to give away significant Galaxy S9 features, and now the company has confirmed the three biggest changes...
In a trio of official teaser adverts on its Samsung Mobile Korea YouTube channel, the company has left nothing to the imagination and the clips confirm the headline changes it hopes will sell both the Galaxy S9 and its bigger brother the Galaxy S9 Plus.
The Big Differences Between The Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus
As the specifications continue to come out, it is becoming clear that Samsung is happy to give the Galaxy S9 Plus pole position in the marketing. When you compare the specifications and the new technology, the smaller Galaxy S9 is being left behind, as I highlighted earlier this week:
That will leave the Samsung Galaxy S9 looking decidedly mediocre when it is launched at the end of the month. Although the talk until now has been that the S9 and the S9 Plus handsets only really differences is physical size, both the camera lens count and now the RAM count hand the flagship status squarely to the S9 Plus and leave the S9 as a weaker foot soldier in the smartphone battle.
With a heavy focus on specifications in the high-end of the Android smartphone world, the Galaxy S9 Plus is going to gather more attention because of this move. Even if the extra RAM is needed for the extra information the dual-lens system on the S9 Plus will be dealing with, the perception is that the two handset are no longer equals.
More of my thoughts on the differences here.
America Is Down On Power
Also being left behind by the Galaxy S9 family is America. Thanks to the use of Qualcomm’s SnapDragon processor to match the US 4G frequencies, the Galaxy S9 units shipping to the US will have less potential power than the Exynos-powered handsets shipping to the rest of the world.
Because the choice of chips is down to the network, and not the consumer at the point of sale, there won’t really be a choice of which S9 to go home with. You’ll get the ‘good’ or the ‘bad’ one that works on your network. The question will be if there is a noticeable difference between the two handsets in head to head tests, or if Samsung will throttle back its own processor to keep pace with the SnapDragon and ensure that the Galaxy S9 experience will be broadly similar no matter where you are in the world.
I suspect the latter will be the case, which means the ultimate power of an Exynos-powered S9 will remain a question for the modding community to answer.
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