Samsung Galaxy S9

I had problems with Samsungs a few years ago, so for my last upgrade I went with an LG Velvet. I now fully appreciate the quality of the Samsung. I chose the S9 mostly because of the size. The Velvet was just too big. The S9 has a screen large enough to see everything, but the phone is small enough for a pocket or for my purse. It doesn't cause stress to my wrists when I text, and it doesn't fall out of my hands all the time.Samsung has several features that I really like: scheduled text sends, Samsung Health, and the fingerprint reader on the back that allows my hand to be in a natural position are among my favorites. I also really like the way apps are easy to organize. I also like the way the entire edge lights up when the screen is dark and a text comes ... MoreI had problems with Samsungs a few years ago, so for my last upgrade I went with an LG Velvet. I now fully appreciate the quality of the Samsung. I chose the S9 mostly because of the size. The Velvet was just too big. The S9 has a screen large enough to see everything, but the phone is small enough for a pocket or for my purse. It doesn't cause stress to my wrists when I text, and it doesn't fall out of my hands all the time.Samsung has several features that I really like: scheduled text sends, Samsung Health, and the fingerprint reader on the back that allows my hand to be in a natural position are among my favorites. I also really like the way apps are easy to organize. I also like the way the entire edge lights up when the screen is dark and a text comes in.The battery needs charging a couple times a day if I use it a lot, but that's the only downside of this phone. It charges really quickly, which helps. In a year or so, I expect that it may become enough of a nuisance that I'll have to think about whether to replace the battery or the phone. For now, I'm satisfied, and that's the most I've been able to say about a phone in the last 3 years.

5 stars out of the box; hate the update to One UI

I am a 51 year old male. I’ve been a devoted consumer of Galaxy S smartphones since GS3. For me, the Galaxy S line has always presented the perfect combination of elegance and flexibility to customize the phones. I recently purchased a Galaxy S9 and received it a few days ago. It is stunningly beautiful, and when I turned it on, I immediately fell in love with it; it was everything I expected. I couldn't have been happier and was very satisfied with my purchase until I completed all the updates and ended up with One UI. I could not have been more disappointed, especially with the icons. All the non-Samsung icons look just as they did before, clean, professional, and mature. But the Samsung icons and the colors look like they are designed for a child, a very young ... MoreI am a 51 year old male. I’ve been a devoted consumer of Galaxy S smartphones since GS3. For me, the Galaxy S line has always presented the perfect combination of elegance and flexibility to customize the phones. I recently purchased a Galaxy S9 and received it a few days ago. It is stunningly beautiful, and when I turned it on, I immediately fell in love with it; it was everything I expected. I couldn't have been happier and was very satisfied with my purchase until I completed all the updates and ended up with One UI. I could not have been more disappointed, especially with the icons. All the non-Samsung icons look just as they did before, clean, professional, and mature. But the Samsung icons and the colors look like they are designed for a child, a very young child, and they are not aesthetically pleasing at all. The best thing about the phone now, is not unlocking the screen. In Contacts, there are too many colors for the bubbles and the colors are kids’ colors. There was nothing wrong with the wire frame bubbles; everything does not have to pop with color, adults use phones too. Last, but not least, it seems the settings have been streamlined too much to the point where you can't even remove or hide things like the silly stickers icon (which also seems like is for a child) in the message space in Samsung's message app; the smiley icon used to be there. I don’t know if the settings were removed, or they’re actually there, and discovery of them just isn’t as intuitive as before. I want to be able to customize to my liking as in the previous versions. I can’t express my displeasure with One UI enough. I hate to say it, but the now, since the update, the phone feels like an iPhone. If I wanted an iPhone I would’ve bought an iPhone. I recently listened to a very well known tech podcast, and the host used language very similar to mine about what I now know is One UI in his description of the GS10 UI. I didn’t think much about it because I thought it was probably specific to the GS10 and not the GS9 I was getting… he was right.Since I've been Galaxy S fan, I never thought about buying a phone from another brand until now. I’ve seen many reviews and comments, and there are a lot of others that feel the same way I do about One UI. Samsung please, please pay attention to what we are saying! You make the best, most beautiful and mature hardware, and your user interface and software has to match it.

Bad seller experience

This is more of a seller review and not a product review. The phone i bought was not the same as in their description. A lot of discrepancies.First of all, in the description, it says that the phone is open box condition, and I'm telling you guys now, it's not. There's still glue residue on the edges of the glass indicating that it has been opened, the volume down button does not have tactile feel as the volume up meaning it has already been used heavily and there is quite a number of scratches alreadyI asked them what happened, and I got a troll answer. I googled "how to leave a seller review" unfortunately i didn't see any solution, thus this review

Do not buy

At first I was excited to switch to Samsung after five years of using iPhones. Fast forward two years, I regret my transition immensely. First of all, the keyboard is absolutely awful to type on. I understand adjusting to a new format and keyboard, but after two years of having this phone, typing on it has not become any easier. The iphone is MUCH easier to type on. Second of all, the camera quality is ridiculously overrated. It is not even comparable to iPhone cameras. And lastly, the curved screen is extremely sensitive to touch. Although it is appealing to the eye, the design needs a lot of improvement. The screen is extremely sensitive to the touch, regardless whether or not it is being touched using a finger or if your phone is in your pocket. In 2020 phones ... MoreAt first I was excited to switch to Samsung after five years of using iPhones. Fast forward two years, I regret my transition immensely. First of all, the keyboard is absolutely awful to type on. I understand adjusting to a new format and keyboard, but after two years of having this phone, typing on it has not become any easier. The iphone is MUCH easier to type on. Second of all, the camera quality is ridiculously overrated. It is not even comparable to iPhone cameras. And lastly, the curved screen is extremely sensitive to touch. Although it is appealing to the eye, the design needs a lot of improvement. The screen is extremely sensitive to the touch, regardless whether or not it is being touched using a finger or if your phone is in your pocket. In 2020 phones should have enough technology to detect unintentional touches. One more concern worth mentioning is the Bixby feature that comes pre installed on the device. I have never used Bixby and I never will, and there is absolutely no way you can uninstall it on your phone. I constantly have notifications to update my software due to Bixby, and it is extremely annoying. Save your money. Buy an iPhone.

Extremely disappointing phone, done with Samsung

I bought this, upgrading from a Galaxy S5, thinking that it would be just as good and if not better since it was newer, had more storage space and other enhancements. I was extremely wrong.The curved glass screen is probably the biggest problem that this device has for two reasons. One the curved glass feels slippery and not as smooth as previous generations touch screens. The curves more so get in the way then they do help when dragging along the edges of the screens. And due to the curvature, there really isn't any kind of screen protector that works for the device. You are 100% guaranteed to have your screen protector crack under the slightest touch and/or have it fall off. As a result, you're pretty much left to use the phone without any protection for the ... MoreI bought this, upgrading from a Galaxy S5, thinking that it would be just as good and if not better since it was newer, had more storage space and other enhancements. I was extremely wrong.The curved glass screen is probably the biggest problem that this device has for two reasons. One the curved glass feels slippery and not as smooth as previous generations touch screens. The curves more so get in the way then they do help when dragging along the edges of the screens. And due to the curvature, there really isn't any kind of screen protector that works for the device. You are 100% guaranteed to have your screen protector crack under the slightest touch and/or have it fall off. As a result, you're pretty much left to use the phone without any protection for the screen, which is terrible because even though it is using "gorilla glass", the screen will still get hairline fractures and other small nicks in it over time and eventually may be looking at spending anywhere in the neighborhood of $200-400 to get your screen replaced. This is inexcusable for Samsung and probably one of the biggest rackets I have ever seen them create with their devices.The second biggest problem is that the phone does not have anything distinguishing on it that sets it apart from much lower priced models. The software on the phone, Samsung's proprietary stuff, is more or less garbage bloat ware at this point. All of their programs have been watered down and stripped of any significant features in the past two years. For example, the Samsung music program used to have more sound features and had a cool edge light effect that played with your music. Both of those features are gone and it is now an incredibly generic music player. The Samsung alarm app has been made so bare bones and buggy that it is practically useless. The list goes on and on. I have been finding myself having to go back and uninstall all of Samsung's trash from my phone using the Android SDK since they flagged so much of it as "System Apps", which makes you unable to uninstall it using the OS on the phone. Why bother making your software "essential" if it doesn't actually provide anything essential?The third huge problem is another software one, but it is significant enough on its own that it merits mentioning in a separate paragraph. This is of course, Samsung's annoying and useless digital assistant, Bixby. Bixby is hands down the worst digital assistant I have ever had the displeasure of using. It doesn't have nearly the search capabilities of Cortana or Google and it is also extremely invasive with the way it pops up on the side if you tap the edge of the screen or accidently push its button. It also drains battery and seems to hurt system performance. Thankfully you can uninstall Bixby using the Android SDK and remap its button to something else using another application, but the fact that Samsung doesn't give up on this worthless piece of junk just shows their aggressive approach to trying to make their phones "different" but not actually better.Other problems with the phone that have made me dislike this device are the lackluster camera, the narrower screen, the seemingly no better battery life versus the S5, terrible launcher (I had to replace it with the Microsoft launcher), Samsung Pay (it almost never works) and the price.As I said in the review title, I am done with Samsung. I will not be getting another Samsung phone after I have this one paid off and I will discourage anyone I know from making the same bad decision.

Fantastic Phone!

I have owned the Samsung Galaxy S9 for four years and I think it is a fantastic device. It has more features on it than the then latest and greatest iPhone had in 2018. I like the phone's size and shape and it is easy to hold, if you have a case on it. By itself, the phone is difficult to hold, due to how thin it is. Call and audio quality are pretty good. Although, through the speakers, the audio does slightly sound like it's coming out of tin cans. That does not bother me and I like what all this phone can do. I look forward to getting many years of use out of it.

Fast, reliable, medium size

Nothing better than Samsung, imo. It catches weak signals, responsive, fast, somewhat light. Mine came unlocked and it works with 3 different phone companies plug-n-play, no issues. Easy to carry because it is small, but still easy to read messages. My main complaint is the screen burn that is common with these newer models. My previous Samsung is 6 years older, heavily used (to the point screen was peeling off) and never had screen burn. I had to play around with dark theme and wallpaper background. Another complaint is that it comes with a lot of bloatware..it took me a while to remove it (what I could) or deactivate (it). Not worth upgrading to another model with 5G (yet).

Great Bargain for nice cell phone that works great and looks good!

Really nice cell phone with clear and smooth screen and bright colors and responsiveness. Also like that its rechargeable. Audio is good as calls come in clear. You might need to be careful as this cell is covered in a glass coating on front and back. Do not attempt to remove the back. Great purchase price value quick shipping was helpful. Great Bargain!!!!!!!!

Great phone, after you customize it to your preferences.

First of all, I'll address some of the common negative reviews about the Galaxy S9 and how to fix those issues.Screen: While the curved screen is a nice feature, it makes it very difficult to find a screen protector that works well and installing a screen protector on the S9 without bubbles is nearly impossible. The most positive reviews from screen protectors I've heard of is the White stone dome protector; however, it is a bit expensive and I haven't tried it personally. For a while I used a Zagg tempered glass protector; it had bubbles (which didn't bother me much), but it either makes the screen sensitivity horribly unresponsive or way overly responsive, depending on which settings you use. I recently removed the screen protector, just keeping a fairly low ... MoreFirst of all, I'll address some of the common negative reviews about the Galaxy S9 and how to fix those issues.Screen: While the curved screen is a nice feature, it makes it very difficult to find a screen protector that works well and installing a screen protector on the S9 without bubbles is nearly impossible. The most positive reviews from screen protectors I've heard of is the White stone dome protector; however, it is a bit expensive and I haven't tried it personally. For a while I used a Zagg tempered glass protector; it had bubbles (which didn't bother me much), but it either makes the screen sensitivity horribly unresponsive or way overly responsive, depending on which settings you use. I recently removed the screen protector, just keeping a fairly low profile Speck impact case on the back, set the screen sensitivity settings back to default, and I've enjoyed this phone much better.Bixby Button: Yes, the bixby button is annoyingly close to the volume buttons and is easy to accidentally press, but you can disable the Bixby voice as well as the bixby button altogether. I've yet to use a voice assistant on my phone, but if you're a fan of one, you can also turn on the Google assistant.Battery Life: The battery life of this phone improves dramatically if you turn off the 'Always On Display' feature, especially if your always on display is set to show a fancy clock or image. Certain apps default to drain the battery even when they aren't in use (GasBuddy is an example of such an app). You can change the settings so that apps are only using battery/data when the app is actually in use.The Galaxy S9 is my work phone; for my personal phone I have been an iPhone user for years. While I'm still more used to the iPhone layout, after making the above changes, the S9 has quickly grown on me and become much easier and enjoyable to use. All in all, I would rate this phone 4.5 or 5 stars; however, not until you play around with it a bit to fix some of the default annoyances.

Great unlocked phone, works with different SIM cards, weak battery

My work place issued me an identical Samsung Galaxy S9 three years ago. It is still going strong, but locked into AT&T. I purchased this used, unlocked S9 for personal use in Europe with a local SIM card. It works great for that. The screen has no scratch and the light burn-in is hardly noticeable. Previous owner probably did not take good care of the battery because it runs down a lot faster than my work phone, even in airplane mode with WiFi only. Have to charge up every day. Easy to do with a wireless charging pad.