Samsung's Galaxy S9 and S9+ are great cameras (and, oh, yes, phones)

In 2012, Samsung announced a device called the

Galaxy Camera

.Although it looked like a compact camera with a large zoom, it ran the Android operating system and had built-in cellular connectivity, allowing you to use apps and share photos and videos from anywhere. anywhere, as you can. do with a smartphone. Its slogan: “Camera.Renaître.

The Galaxy camera never caught on. But just over five years later, Samsung announced its new flagship smartphones, the Galaxy S9 and S9+ at the Mobile World Congress Show in Barcelona. its launch event: “The Camera. Reinvented. —is almost the same as the Galaxy camera once carried.And the fact that the company refers to a phone as if it were a camera shows that phones have

become

cameras in all the ways that matter.

"The camera has consistently been cited as one of the top three reasons people buy phones over the past few years," said Justin Denison, senior vice president at Samsung. has become the number one purchase driver, it's become the reason people buy their phones."I spoke with Denison while getting a preview of the two new Android 8 Oreo phones, which are available for pre-order on Friday and went on sale March 16. history. (The S9 is $720 and the S9+ $840, the price you'll likely pay split into monthly installments.)

[Photo: Samsung]

Similarities abound

Although Samsung talks about reinventing the camera, it didn't drastically redesign last year

Galaxy S8 and S8+

.The new models' industrial designs retain the striking industrial design of their predecessors, with tall, slim and curved screens using an aspect ratio of 18.5:9—5.8″ for the S9, 6.2″ for the S9+—and glass blacks. (They both continue to feature a headphone jack and a microSD memory card slot.) Samsung has further reduced the bezel areas, bringing the screens even closer to the edges and resisted any temptation to spoil the immersive feel with a

notch

.It also brightened up screens and added Dolby Atmos stereo sound.In Samsung's demo, at least, Atmos really delivered sound with a three-dimensional effect that you wouldn't expect from tiny smartphone speakers .

A real change from last year's models is a big relief: the rear fingerprint scanner now sits below the camera rather than next to it, which should allow your finger to find more easily the sensor without

smudge the lens

Alright, now for those cameras. The Galaxy S8 and S8+, which were pretty much the same phone in two sizes, had identical (and excellent) rear cameras that didn't change much from those on the Galaxy S models of 2016.The Galaxy S9 still has a shooter on its back.But like Apple

iPhone 8Plus

and

iPhone X

–and Samsung's own

Galaxy Note S8

–Galaxy S9+ has both a wide-angle camera and a telephoto camera, allowing you to get close-ups of subjects further away without losing image quality.

[Photo: Harry McCracken]

Dual-camera setups on big-screen phones are becoming standard fare. But the S9 and S9+ both have something far more intriguing: their wide-angle lenses use dual-aperture technology that Samsung introduced last year. on a flip phone (!) called the W2018. The feature uses an f/2.4 aperture when there's plenty of light, like if you're shooting outside during the day. But in the kind of environments dark that confuses even the best smartphone cameras, it opens the shutter to an unusually wide f/1.5, compared to f/1.7 on the Galaxy S8 and f/1.8 on the iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and X. This adjustment, which you can see happening if you look through the lens, lets in more light and increases the chance that your snapshot will be nice rather than blurry.

Samsung's Galaxy S9 and S9+ are great cameras (and, oh, yes, phones)

That's the theory, anyway, and in a demo Samsung showed me - involving taking photos of the inside of a dark box - the extra light did indeed make a huge difference. It will be interesting see how the Galaxy S9 and S9+ perform in dimly lit restaurants and other places where it's always difficult to take smartphone photos worth keeping. Samsung has also introduced other tweaks aimed at improve overall image quality: for example, both phones now capture up to 12 still photos in quick succession and then combine them into a single optimal image. (Last year's Galaxy S models did something similar, but with fewer images.)

Slow-motion photography is another photographic area where the S9 and S9+ aim to sprint forward. (Samsung says slow-motion is the second most popular video shooting mode on its phones after default settings.) The new phones can shoot at 960 frames per second, compared to 240 for the previous Galaxy and iPhone models. Their software also introduces a feature designed to make it easier to capture action that's over almost before you notice it's started, like a popper spitting confetti: select an area in the viewfinder and the camera will start shooting in slow motion. when it detects motion in that area.

Then there's AR Emoji, Samsung's answer to the iPhone X

Animoji

.Rather than mapping your expressions to a bunny, robot, or other canned character, AR Emoji lets you create a mini-me avatar of yourself.As an automated variation of

Bitmoji

, Samsung's app captures your face with the front-facing camera, then turns it into a look-alike character that you can customize. It then creates animated GIFs featuring your self-expressed digital emotions ("OK", "NO") .

An AR Emoji from your humble reporter.

Your AR Emoji can mimic your facial expressions in real time—

AR Emoji Karaoke

, anybody ? - but when I tried this feature, the results lacked the weird polish and precision of Apple's version. This may be at least partly because newer phones don't introduce any new front camera functionality similar to iPhone X.

TrueDepth

3D facial mapping technology, which Apple uses for Animoji as well as

Face ID Security

Speaking of Face ID, these phones don't offer anything like that. But they combine two existing authentication features - iris scans and facial recognition - into a new security feature that uses both technologies depending on which one works best in a particular environment. On their own, each was clumsier than Face ID, but maybe they'll work better as a team. Otherwise, you can always choose to use the rear fingerprint scanner in its new, less problematic position.

[Photo: Samsung]

Bixby Redux

Like last year's Galaxy S models, the Galaxy S9 and S9+ have dedicated buttons for Samsung

Bixby AI Assistant

.When I

reviewed the Galaxy S8 and S8+

, the feature, which was only partially implemented at the time, was no reason to choose a Galaxy over another phone. Samsung continued to strive to improve it, adding partners such than iHeartRadio and Expedia and improving the translation feature so that pointing the phone's camera at a sign translates text directly into the image you see. The company says half of US customers with Bixby-enabled phones are using the service, and the arrival of the S9 and S9+ will be an opportunity to reassess it.

Also on the software side, the new version of Samsung's SmartThings application will be part of the standard equipment on the S9 and S9+. (Almost four years ago, Samsung

acquired SmartThings

, a platform for devices in a home to communicate with each other.) Although you need a SmartThings hub to use the app to control smart home devices, ranging from Samsung fridges and cookers to Philips light bulbs Hue to Ring doorbells, the app's presence on new phones could be a powerful way to introduce new people to the platform, which could encourage even more products to support it.

"We're always going to innovate Samsung products, the half-billion Samsung devices sold worldwide every year," Denison told me. possible experience for these devices. But SmartThings is the open ecosystem where we can partner with any manufacturer or product vendor to integrate these devices into our ecosystem. »

With the notable exception of the fleeting and trouble-ridden

Galaxy Note 7

Samsung's smartphone hardware has been excellent since at least the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge of 2015. When it comes to software, the company's execution has been much more wobbly, compared to both the iPhone and that of Google.

Pixel Phones

What Samsung is doing with photography capabilities is exciting, but it would also be nice to think that the Galaxy S9 and S9+ could come together as cohesive experiences in a way that their recent predecessors, for all their impressive specs, didn't. sometimes did not.