Its Qi wireless charging method still isn’t as quick as wired charging speeds, but it’s faster than you can wireless-charge an iPhone X. Samsung also supports fast wireless charging, and sells a bunch of wireless charging pads. But from a dead battery, it charges faster at those crucial lower levels. In the end, it takes one hour and 41 minutes to reach 100%, the same as the Galaxy S8 Plus. However, it has slightly improved charging times, according to our tests.įast Charging the S9 Plus with the included charger for just 15 minutes brings it from 0% to 19%, and 30 minutes gets it to 38% at 45 minutes, the phone gets up to a comfortable 58%. In our lab test, running a looped HD video for 90 minutes, the battery sank from 100% to 87%, the exact 13% decrease we saw from last year's Plus-sized Samsung phone. However, it has slightly improved charging times, according to our tests.
Samsung, once again, isn’t pushing the boundaries of its battery capacity, perhaps understandably given its missteps with the explosion-prone Galaxy Note 7. We were hoping to eke out a few more hours courtesy of the new more efficient chipsets that power the S9 and S9 Plus, but that hasn’t happened. It has a 3,500mAh-capacity battery – the same as last year’s phone – and it’s still bigger than the 3,000mAh- and 3,300mAh-equipped Galaxy S9 and Note 8, though the Galaxy Note 9 has it beat. Features 5.8 display, Exynos 9810 chipset, 12 MP primary camera, 8 MP front camera, 3000 mAh battery, 256 GB storage, 4 GB RAM, Corning Gorilla Glass 5. You won't notice the difference except in Gear VR and it saves a tremendous amount of battery life.
Pro tip: keep the default Full HD display on instead of switching to the Quad HD+ (2K) resolution.
It’s not perfect if the motion isn’t obvious enough when passing in front of the on-screen motion-detection box, but it’s brilliant when it all works out. Timing the press of the on-screen shutter button is always a pain when recording slow-motion video, and this helps alleviate that problem. Samsung told us that slow motion has been the most popular video mode outside of automatic, and here’s one more reason to continue wanting to use it: the S9 Plus has the ability to start recording slow-motion video when it detects motion.
The 240fps normal slow-mo video has been bumped up to 1080p Full HD, too. But the slow-motion effects are absolutely mesmerizing, matching what we’ve seen from the Xperia XZ1 and XZ1 Compact. It’s grainy if the light isn’t ideal (and sometimes even if it is ideal, as it's slow enough to ruin office space slow motion video by picking up flickering fluorescent light).
We were able to capture slick-looking super-slow-motion video at 960fps, albeit in a noticeably lower 720p HD resolution. The biggest Galaxy S9 video highlight, however, is its Super Slow Mo video capabilities.
Samsung also gives you the option of recording normal-speed video in the new HEVC format to save space. The rest of the resolutions, from 4K 30fps on down, do have OIS and the footage looks fluid, same as last year. It’s sharp, though this mode lacks optical image stabilization and doesn’t support tracking autofocus. Samsung has added an option for recording 4K resolution video at 60 frames per second, with a reasonable limit of five minutes.