Samsung Galaxy S9, Galaxy S9+ starts shipping today; offers, prices, features

The Samsung Galaxy flagships were globally launched in Barcelona and were exhibited at the MWC 2018. Samsung started pre-bookings for the same since it first unveiled the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+. The company beleives that these new devices will consolidate their position in the premium smartphone segment.

The new smartphone will now start shipping to all those who pre-booked the device and will also be available across Samsung stores in the country, their official website and popular e-commerce platforms. The prebooking amount of Rs 2,000 will be adjusted in the final sum once it is purchased.

The Galaxy S9 has been priced at Rs 57,900 and Rs 65,900 for the 64GB and 256GB respectively, and the Galaxy S9+ will be available at Rs 64,900 for the 64GB variant and Rs 72,900 for the 256GB variant.

Samsung has tied up with Airtel and Reliance Jio to offer 2.5x faster data speeds on their respective 4G LTE network. The South Korean company has tied up with leading network providers for the launch offers.

The Galaxy S9 will be available for Rs 9,900 from Airtel with a 24month postpaid plan starring at Rs 2,499. Reliance Jio will offer the Galaxy S9, Galaxy S9+ consumers a special annual tariff plan of Rs 4,999, and Vodafone users will get a free one-year subscription for Netflix streaming.

Samsung's new Galaxy flagships are essentially incremental updates over the outgoing flagship. However, the camera could be the sole exception. The Galaxy S9 and S9+ will be offered in Midnight Black, Titanium Gray, Coral Blue and a new hue, Lilac Purple.

The Galaxy S9 features a 5.8-inch display, and the Galaxy S9+ has a 6.2-inch screen. Both the devices sport a maximum thickness of 8.5mm. The fingerprint sensor has been moved underneath the camera module as many struggled with the one found on the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+.

As an alternative to the fingerprint sensor, Samsung has given the device 'Intelligent Scan', a new verification that intelligently uses both iris scanning and facial recognition technology to unlock a user's phone.

 Both, the Galaxy S9 and S9+ come with stereo speakers tuned by AKG, and audio with Dolby Atmos. The Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ will be powered by an octa-core, 10 nm Exynos 9810 processor. The Galaxy S9 comes with 4GB of RAM, and the S9+ with 6GB of RAM.

The camera on the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ is the highlight of this new generation Samsung flagship. Galaxy S9 sports a single super speed dual aperture 12-megapixel camera whereas the Galaxy S9+ has a dual-camera system with a dual-aperture wide-angle camera and a telephoto camera.

Both the smartphones have Optical Image Stabilisation (OIS) and a variable aperture of either f/1.5 or f/2.4, depending on the lighting conditions.

Galaxy S9 and S9+ can capture super slow-mo videos at 960 frames per second. Since there is a tiny window to record the clip, Samsung has introduced an automatic motion detector that will start taking slo-mo video as soon as they detect high-speed movement.