Cameras and Business Focus Separate Samsung Galaxy S9, S9+

In Samsung'southward introduction of the new Milky way S9 and S9+ smartphones, the company emphasized new camera features, and in doing and so, underscored how the way we utilise such devices has inverse. While the camera is impressive, I'm intrigued by the new AI features, and by Samsung's continued push for the Galaxy line to be seen equally an enterprise production.

It's been clear for years that the "telephone" part of smartphone has become a smaller and smaller part of what we exercise with these devices. Texting and messaging, cameras, the Internet and apps, and most recently, video consumption took over from phone calls equally the biggest uses of the devices.

DJ Koh, President of Samsung's Information technology and Communications Sectionalisation, said that in today's globe, images are replacing words, and that, rather than writing, capturing and sharing images and video has get the virtually important expression of who nosotros are. Koh said that last year people took 1.two trillion photos, and shared 10 billion videos and five billion emojis, and virtually all on devices that were designed to be used as phones. This, he said, is what inspired Samsung to create a "breakthrough camera" that sees the world clearly in any light.

It's an interesting thought—telephone cameras are improving, and I certainly encounter more than people sharing and consuming videos than I did just a few years agone. Fifty-fifty reading and writing text—what I do well-nigh on my device—seems to be declining. The "phone" itself has become just some other app, and ane that is used less and less often at that. It may be fourth dimension to rename these devices and no longer call them "smartphones," just none of the alternatives I've heard so far are peculiarly appealing. (Calling them "mobiles" simply isn't specific enough.)

As I look at the S9 and S9+, it'southward clear that they don't look very different from last year's S8 and S8+, with nearly identical form factors and no major changes in the way you'll use it. Instead, the new devices seem to present more of a refinement: they continue to employ v.8 and 6.2-inch AMOLED displays—with an eighteen.5:ix ratio—and the "Infinity Brandish" design, with curved edges and very mall bezels on the acme and bottom of the device. The front end-facing camera is a flake less obvious, and Samsung fabricated a big deal of how the phone has "no notch" in the brandish. The bigger change on the back of the telephone is that the fingerprint reader (which still exists) has been moved beneath the camera, making it less likely you'll smudge the lens when you unlock the telephone. (Still, many competitive phones offering more infinite betwixt the rear fingerprint reader and the camera). And there'due south a new color: lilac majestic.

Merely again, it's the changes to the camera system that stand out. The biggest news here is that the main rear-facing photographic camera now has a "dual aperture" arrangement, significant that information technology uses f/2.4 for daylight pictures, merely switches to using an f/one.5 aperture in low light. Samsung says that in low calorie-free, 28 percent more than low-cal volition attain the sensor, resulting in better photos, and compared this to how your optics adjust to different amounts of light.

Samsung has a created what it calls a super-speed dual pixel sensor, with DRAM embedded onto the sensor itself. This makes the sensor much faster, and enables multi-frame dissonance reduction—the camera takes groups of four photos and uses the detail to reduce the noise in these photos. Samsung said low light photos on the S9 and S9+ volition have 30 percent less dissonance compared to the S8. This has been one area where phone cameras accept lagged meliorate standalone cameras, so I'll be interested to encounter how well it really works.

Samsung has also added what information technology calls "Super Tiresome Mo," a feature that lets yous capture images at 960 frames per 2d, though albeit for only 0.ii seconds at a time. You lot can set this upwardly to capture images either manually or using automatic motion detection, and later catechumen these videos into wallpaper or GIFs. It'due south interesting, and I look forwards to trying it out.

In add-on, the S9+—but not the smaller S9—now has dual cameras, bringing it in line with near of the other bigger phones. It's fix like the dual cameras on the Galaxy Annotation 8 or the iPhone viii+ or Ten, with a traditional wide-angle lens used in most situations, and a second zoom lens that's used for things like producing portraits and a bokeh upshot.

The photographic camera system is also used for a couple of other more unusual features. The telephone can accept augmented reality (AR) emojis in which you apply a preset character or create your own image, so animate information technology using the camera. These emojis tin then exist used in messages, of class. I'chiliad non the target audience, but it does expect kind of fun.

More than interesting to me are some of the new features that the camera can do with what Samsung calls "Bixby Vision," information technology's AI system. With Bixby vision, you can indicate the camera at a sign in a language y'all don't speak and it will translate that sign into your language. Information technology tin can also identify food or places, and it's got shopping experiences also, which include things like showing y'all what you would look like with makeup from Sephora or Cover Girl. I'm not even so clear on how well these services will work or how useful some of these services will be, only they did look good, particularly the sign translation. The company promises more enhancements to its Bixby assistant later in the year.

There are as well some interesting innovations in other areas of the phone. This will be the first phone to ship with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 chip, which supports gigabit LTE with speeds upwardly to ane.2 Gbps. The new procedure should, of form, be faster than last twelvemonth'south 835, through it is nonetheless made on the same 10nm process. Samsung has besides added stereo speakers on both the top and lesser of the device.

The phone now comes with the SmartThings app, for controlling the diverse "smart devices" in your dwelling. Koh made a big bargain about how this is an open ecosystem, designed to reduce complexity and fragmentation.

The operating arrangement has been tweaked and then that it can now display the lock and dwelling house screens in a horizontal layout, which makes it better for multi-tasking. Some other feature lets you open up a second window, and go on the video playing even when you're getting a text bulletin at the same fourth dimension.

When I got a demo of the phone, Samsung made a big deal of how this telephone was designed for enterprise customers. Almost of the new features seems pretty consumer-focused, but Samsung pointed out how the photographic camera improvements could also exist used in business settings, particularly by beginning responders, or in manufacturing.

Perhaps the nicest—and most unusual—business feature is the connected support for DeX, Samsung's method for connecting the phone to a keyboard, mouse, and monitor to provide a desktop-similar experience, so enterprises can support one device and employees can employ this in step of a laptop. The new version of DeX includes a new DeX Pad, a flat dock for connecting the phone to the monitor that includes an HDMI port, ability, and two USB ports. It's different from terminal twelvemonth'due south model in that by laying flat, you can use it as a keyboard in a pinch. DeX now also supports the latest version of Knox, Samsung'due south security environment, and lets managers add together a custom logo, and gives them a bit more than control.

I'one thousand happy that Samsung didn't remove two features that to me seem important, even though some companies seem content to remove them. The S9 and S9+ still support a microSD carte—Samsung says technically the phone could handle a 1 TB card, though the biggest ones on the market place are 400 GB, which seems similar a lot. This is important because taking video—particularly 4K video and even more so for slow motion video—can take upward a lot of space very chop-chop. Other than the microSD card, the phone still has a physical headphone jack.

Of course, there are also features that I wish were ready but aren't quite there even so. At CES last month, I saw Synaptics demonstrating a Vivo phone that had the fingerprint reader under the glass on the front of the phone. Samsung didn't motion that way, and instead went with a traditional fingerprint sensor on the back of the phone. It's now below the camera unit, which is an improvement, as you lot're less probable to smudge the lens when you use it. And Samsung didn't implement the kind of advanced face recognition hardware that Apple uses on the iPhone X. Instead, the company continues to push iris recognition as its preferred biometric method, followed by fingerprint, and and so suggests passwords—it does offer face up recognition, merely warns that information technology isn't as secure. Samsung suggests that face recognition only be used for unlocking the basic phone, and keeping things like Samsung Pay and corporate e-mail secure using more secure methods.

Overall, while the S9 and S9+ don't look like huge steps forrard from final year's models, they practice await like worthy steps forrard, with the new camera features existence the near notable changes. But I'm also happy to see the company focusing on the needs of business customers; afterward all, we don't just talk on these devices anymore, nosotros use them for all sorts of things both in our personal and business organization lives.

Here's PCMag'southward preview.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/mobile-phones/19792/cameras-and-business-focus-separate-samsung-galaxy-s9-s9

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