Six months after releasing its super-powered phablet — the — Samsung is launching its flagship phone duo for 2018 — the and. With such a short distance of time between the two releases, it's only natural that the phones don't have a huge gap between them in terms of design and hardware. Both the and the are big, shiny and pretty to look at, and pack all of Samsung's latest bells and whistles, like the iris scanner, dual camera, fingerprint pad,et cetera. One can legitimately be confused when trying to decide between those two. So, let's take a closer look, see where they differ, and hopefully help you make the choice that best suits you. Design But that's not to say that they don't have their differences and peculiarities. For one, the Note 8 is a slightly taller phone since it does have a marginally bigger display — 6. And when it comes to fingerprint positioning, the Galaxy Note 8 has last year's placement of the pad — awkwardly to the side of the camera — while the Galaxy S9+ has it moved to a much more convenient spot, at its back below the camera. In other words, it's safe to say that the Galaxy S9+ is slightly more comfortable to hold and operate due to its smaller size and more convenient finger pad placement. Not by a huge margin, sure, but it could make a difference in various daily scenarios. Kudos to Samsung for sticking with it. Samsung has been on top of its display game for years now, and both the Galaxy S9+ and Note 8 rock top-notch screens. Both are curved at the sides for that signature Edge look though, Samsung prefers to call it Infinity Display now. You can trust that both displays are extra sharp as they have a resolution of 1440 x 2960 pixels resulting in a pixel-per-inch galaxy s9 vs note 8 of more than 500 for both phones. Maximum brightness nits Higher is better Lower is better Higher is better Lower is better Lower is better Samsung Galaxy S9+ 661 Excellent 1 Excellent unmeasurable Excellent 6890 Excellent 2. The chart also provides a visual representation of a display's color accuracy. The small squares across the boundaries of the triangle are the reference points for the various colors, while the small dots are the actual measurements. Ideally, each dot should be positioned on top of its respective square. Finally, 'ΔE 2000' is the Delta E value of the measured color. Delta E values of below 2 are ideal. These measurements are made using The Color accuracy chart gives an idea of how close a display's measured colors are to their referential values. The first line holds the measured actual colors, while the second line holds the reference target colors. The closer the actual colors are to the target ones, the better. These measurements are made using Outdoor visibility is excellent on both devices — yes, the Galaxy s9 vs note 8 S9+ can go 150 nits brighter, per our measurements, but we assure you that the Note 8 is bright enough. When it comes to reading in the night — we've got an excellent minimum brightness on both handsets, accompanied by the Night Mode blue light filter. Interface and functionality At first look, both devices have the same Samsung Experience interface, with a couple of deviations. We've got a different look for the Camera app on the Galaxy S9+, for instance. More notably — the Galaxy Note 8 has an entire suite of apps and features to be used with the S Pen stylus. And, in this comparison, this is one of the main selling points of the Note 8. The S Pen is Samsung's proprietary stylus, which it has been improving for 7 generations of Note phones. It's extremely precise and a pleasure to use for both writing and drawing on your phone, which is its obvious main use. Beyond that, it can be used as a sort of a mouse pointer, as the Galaxy s9 vs note 8 interface will recognize when you are hovering the Pen over certain items, so you can get things like pop-up views and sub-menus that you wouldn't see if you were just using your finger. If we take the S Pen out of the equation, however, both interfaces are pretty similar. The Galaxy S9+ does come with Android 8 Oreo out of the box, which brings along nifty features like picture-in-picture, but an update is en route to the Galaxy Note 8, too, so it should be getting them soon as well. Samsung Galaxy Note 8 If we take the S Pen out of the equation, both interfaces are pretty similar Processor and memory Samsung's top-tier phones always carry the most powerful commercially available hardware, so it's no surprise that the brand-new Galaxy S9+ and the 6-month-old Galaxy Note 8 are both absolute beasts. Still, the newer handset has a slight edge over its older sibling — the S9+ sports an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC that ticks at 2. The Galaxy S9+ adopted the Note 8's dual camera setup by adding a secondary telephoto camera for portrait shots and optical zoom. Then, it took things further with an upgraded main camera that has the cool new variable aperture — from F1. Samsung was extremely proud of how well the Galaxy S9+ can adapt to lighting conditions when introducing it. Of course, we took it out for a spin. Image quality We took a ton of photos with the Galaxy S9+ to compare against its galaxy s9 vs note 8. When put against the Note 8, we'd say that we can see marginal improvements in image quality, but not consistent ones. Sometimes the photos look slightly better, at other times they look equally good on both phones, just different in their own way. The Galaxy S9+ seems to make slightly warmer photos than the Note 8 and that's a bit surprising to us since Samsung's cameras were already prone to adding quite a bit of yellow tinting to their pictures. Colors are often boosted for an extra-punch, which does look striking on a phone screen, but can be undesired when you are trying to capture the natural look of a scene. On the Galaxy S9+, Samsung dialed the sharpening down a notch, which is definitely a welcome move. Digital sharpening looks awesome when you are just quick-browsing your photos on a small screen, as it creates the illusion of great detail, but that illusion is quickly shattered when you zoom in and said details begin to look awkward and fake. The Note 8 already had its sharpening tuned down from what the used to do, and it's now further fine-tuned on the Galaxy S9 phones. When it comes to nighttime photography, both the Galaxy S9+ and Note 8 perform great, but the former is ever so slightly better. Thanks to a wider dynamic range, the light sources in the S9+ photos have a smaller aura around them and we get more visible details in both lit areas and dark corners. Again, the improvement here is marginal, but it is present. The S9+ also does a lot better at balancing colors in night shots, while the Note 8 defaults to adding a strong yellow tint to everything. It's worth noting, however, that — in this mode — the S9+ is restricted to 5-minute videos only. And, of course, the S9+ has the new Super Slow Motion mode, which can take 0. In terms of usefulness — you'll need a lot of setting up to capture the perfect Ultra Slow Motion clip, so forget about making quick snaps of everyday events, but we would be lying if we said it isn't fun to play around with. Selfie quality Not much has changed in the selfie department. There is no stabilization on the front, but at least the screen can be used as a flash for selfies in the dark. Compared to the Note 8's single, bottom-firing speaker, they are a definite improvement. Those of you that have their ears fine-tuned to sense overcompression will also find the Galaxy S9+'s speakers to be less annoying, as the Note 8's sound often produces pops, due to what we can only describe galaxy s9 vs note 8 a compressor with a slow attack. Battery life Despite the fact that the Galaxy Note 8 has a bigger body, it still fits a smaller 3,200 mAh battery. The Galaxy S9+, in comparison, has a 3,500 mAh cell in its trunk. Does this result in different battery life. On our battery life test, both phones hover around the 8-hour battery life mark, which is quite excellent. Thanks to a selection of battery-saving features and resolution settings, you can stretch out your use if you happen to be stuck away from an outlet for an uncomfortable amount of time. So, what's the final verdict. We've got two big, beautiful phones, with galaxy s9 vs note 8 features and hardware specs. How does one make the call on which one to buy. First — the S Pen. Yeah, that's the main differentiator here — not the cameras, which are only slightly different, not Android 8 Oreo, which doesn't seem to do much for the and is already en route to the anyway. The S Pen is an awesome tool for those that want the freedom of jotting down notes by hand or those who would like to do sketching on the go. If you care about your stylus game, going for the Note 8 is a perfectly logical choice. You probably see where we are going with this — if you don't see yourself using the stylus, absolutely galaxy s9 vs note 8 for the Galaxy S9+ without question. Besides the S-pen, galaxy s9 plus+ seems to be a better choice in every aspect. If it had a flat screen, then it would be no brainer for me. They should try to release a small batch of flat screen flagship version to see how big is the demand because I've observed that the number of people who don't like the edges is constatnly increasing.
