iPhone X vs Samsung Galaxy S9
Recently, the Mobile World Congress concluded and the Samsung announced its much-awaited flagship smartphone: the Galaxy S9. If you’re a tech geek and looking forward to buying a premium segment smartphone, here’s all you need to know. Apple iPhone X or Samsung Galaxy S9- which one has an upper edge. So in this article, we’re looking forward to comparing the two best and beautifully crafted designs on the basis of factors like design, build quality, features, tech specs and pricing. The phone that performs better in all the mentioned aspects gets our thumbs up in the verdict section.
Design & build quality
Samsung latest flagship smartphone S9 is surely one of the company’s best designed, attractive, up-to-the-date and eye-catching smartphone. In similar fashion, Apple’s iPhone X is one of the company’s revolutionary smartphone with a new design and offers a quite refreshing experience for the iOS users.
Coming to the display part, Samsung Galaxy S9’s Infinity display is almost bezel-less and creaseless. On a similar note, iPhone X is another virtually all-screen phone. Both these flagship phones do not disappoint us and are an example of sleek and beautifully designed devices.
Colour options
Talking about the available color options: iPhone X is available in just two colors: silver and Space Grey whereas the Samsung Galaxy S9 comes in Coral Blue, Lilac Purple, Midnight Black and the Orchid Grey color variants.
Features
After talking about the design and the build quality, let us have a glimpse of features these phones are capable of performing.
Face ID/face scanning
The most noticeable change in the design of the Apple iPhone X was the absence of home button, which is where the company incorporated its fingerprint sensors. Instead of moving this sensor to the rear side or embedding it under the screen as seen in most of the Android devices, this time the company has come up with new technology entirely- the biometric technology called Face ID facial recognition system.The company has been seen asking the users to give up Touch ID and depend completely on this newly devised technology for high security. Trying our hands on this phone, we found that this feature is reliable and extremely sophisticated i.e., it works pretty well in the dark and its performance is not affected with the change of clothes, facial hair etc.
Comparatively, the facial recognition system of the Galaxy S9 is less sophisticated than that found in Apple iPhone X. The S9 comes with a plus point, it offers fingerprint scanner as a backup on the rear panel of the smartphone. The placement of fingerprint scanner on the rear end makes it trickier to use at times.
Animoji/AR emoji
During the announcement of iPhone X last year, the tech giant Apple spent some time seeking attention and demonstrating its new feature called Animoji. This feature uses a sophisticated front shooter sensor array to record and match your facial movements to an animated emoji- which may be an animal, robot, alien, smiling turd and so on. Sounds silly at times but believe me it is really fun
On a similar note, Samsung came up with its new feature called AR emoji.
Both of these features share a common idea of ‘animated emoji’, the only difference is AR emoji uses your face approach: you take a photograph of yourself and the system itself generates an emoji version for you, plus various set-piece animations, messaging badges and so on. The approach is quite similar to Apple but it failed to make much impact at times and looks a bit creepy.
Camera features
Now, talking about the optical quality, there is no doubt that Apple iPhone X comes out ahead of Samsung Galaxy S9. Thanks to the iPhone X’s twin-lens rear-facing camera setup which implies that it can offer Portrait mode which creates some lovely Bokeh effect and a Portrait Lighting mode(a feature available in the beta version which uses some interesting but quite unreliable lighting filters). Another unique and stunning thing among iPhones is that it offers these above-listed features on its front as well as the rear-facing camera. All thanks to the proper use of the True Depth Selfie cam and available sensor array.
Now, coming to the Samsung Galaxy S9, it has only a single lens shooter on the rear end. If you’re looking forward to buying a twin lens camera setup, then you have to opt for the Plus model. But anyways, the camera of S9 is capable enough to click some decent pictures. Another highlight which put this phone in limelight is the presence of Dual Aperture Mode which permits the phone to automatically adjust aperture between f/1.5 and f/2.4 depending on the available shooting environment, which means better clicks in both daylight and low light conditions. The other impressive thing about the S9 camera is its capability to capture slow-motion videos at an astonishing 960fps which is quite high as compared to iPhone X’s 240fps. Though this feature restricts S9’s usability for a longer period and thus make it tough to click your shot at times. Whenever such condition arises- the clever auto detection mode comes into the highlight and allows the user to activate the video with movement in a specific part of the clicked shot, for an instance, the balloon popping.
Water resistance
Now, the next feature on this list is water and dust resistive technology and I am proud to tell you the fact that both these phones have passed with impressive results. The Apple iPhone X is rated IP67 which means that it is safe for dealing with solid and liquid intrusion: that converts into “dust tight” and offers resistance against “immersion up to 1m”.
Whereas coming to the Galaxy S9, it beats the score of iPhone X and is rated with IP 68 technology i.e., it can handle “dust tight” and offers resistance against immersion beyond 1m.”
Tech specs
The major factor that supports our verdict is the Tech Specs. So here is the brief detail about the specifications of both these flagship smartphones.
iPhone X specs
- It comes with an A11 Bionic chip with 64bit architecture, Neural engine, and Embedded M11 motion coprocessor technology.
The phone comes with 3 GB of RAM and 64 GB or 256 GB internal storage. - It features 5.8in(diagonal) ‘Super Retina HD’ all-screen OLED Multi-Touch display with 2436 x 1125 display resolution and 458ppi pixel density. It has an aspect ratio of 19.5:9 and comes with features like 3D Touch and True Tone.
- Talking about the optical quality of the smartphone: it comes with 12MP+12MP Dual-lens rear-facing camera and 7MP front shooter. a) Dual-lens rear-facing camera comes with features like a 12Mp wide-angle sensor with f/1.8 aperture and another 12Mp telephoto lens with f/2.4 aperture.The rear camera setup is equipped with features like Optical zoom, dual optical image stabilization, Portrait mode, Portrait Lighting, Quad-LED True Tone flash, 4K video recording up to 60fps and slo-mo video 1080p at 240fps. b)The front shooter comes with features like a 7Mp front-facing ‘TrueDepth’ camera lens with f/2.2 aperture. The front camera setup is equipped with features like Portrait mode, Portrait Lighting, Animoji and 1080p HD video recording.
- The flagship phone is packed with a 2,716mAh rechargeable battery and claims to have a battery life of up to 21 hours (talk time) and 12 hours (internet use). The phone also supports fast-charge technology i.e, fast-charge up to 50% charge in 30 minutes and wireless charging support.
- It comes with the Face ID face-recognition system.
- The phone comes with stereo speakers and IP67 water- and dust-resistant technology.
- Talking about the connectivity options, it comes with 802.11ac Wi-Fi with MIMO, Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, Assisted GPS, Lightning port (no headphone port) options.
- The phone has a dimension of 143.6mm x 70.9mm x 7.7mm and weighs 174g.
- It works on iOS 11.
Samsung Galaxy S9 specs
- It is equipped with Octa-core Exynos 8910 processor chip (4 x 1.7GHz efficiency cores, 4 x 2.7GHz high-speed cores; replaced by Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 in some markets).
- The phone comes with 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of internal storage which can be expanded up to 400 GB via microSD card.
- It features 5.8in (diagonal) ‘Infinity’ Quad HD+ Super AMOLED screen with 2960 x 1440 display resolution and a pixel density of 568ppi. It has an aspect ratio of 18.5:9.
- Talking about the optical quality of the smartphone: it comes with 12MP lens rear-facing camera and 8MP front shooter. a) The rear-facing camera comes with features like a 12Mp sensor with f/1.5 aperture.The rear camera setup is equipped with features like Optical zoom, optical image stabilisation, and slo-mo video 960fps(with auto motion detect). b)The front shooter comes with features like an 8Mp front-facing camera lens with f/1.7 aperture.
- The flagship phone is packed with a 3000mAh rechargeable battery and no battery claims have been made yet. The phone also supports fast-charge technology via USB-C and wireless charging support.
- It comes with a fingerprint scanner on the rear panel and iris scanner in front.
- The phone comes with stereo speakers and IP68 water- and dust-resistant technology.
- Talking about the connectivity options, it comes with 802.11ac dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, GPS, USB-C and headphone port.
- The phone has dimensions of 148mm x 69mm x 8.5mm and 163g.
- It works on Android 8.0 Oreo.
Release date
Price
Coming to the price tag of both the phones, iPhone X is available at the price of £999/$99 for the 64 GB model and £1,149/$1,149 for the 256GB model. This phone can be purchased directly from the Apple store.
Whereas, the Samsung Galaxy S9 is comparatively cheaper and starts at a price tag of £739/$719.99.This phone comes with the lower amount of storage as compared to the iPhone X but can be expanded up to 400GB via microSD card. This phone can be purchased directly from the Samsung, O2 or Vodafone store.
OUR VERDICT
Both Apple iPhone X and Samsung Galaxy S9 are stunning looking and beautifully crafted devices, incorporated with the latest technology. These phones set the benchmarks for other players trying their hands in the premium segment smartphone market. Talking about the general comparison, both these phones boast large 5.8in displays and that of S9’s is considerably sharper. The major difference between both the phones is the availability of dual camera setup in the iPhone X which is missing in S9, thus giving it an upper edge.
Overall, the iPhone X offers exceptional performance, though you have to spend few extra bucks for buying it as compared to S9. Our vote goes to iPhone X.