Samsung Galaxy A9 (2018) Review

Samsung might be the world’s number one phone maker by volume, but in the last few years, a new class of phones has emerged that has made its business so much harder. “Affordable flagships” like the OnePlus 6T, Pocophone F1, as well as phones by Xiaomi, Honor and other brands out of China bring flagship performance and surprisingly great cameras at very affordable prices. And Samsung doesn’t seem to have an answer to any of those devices.

Its latest Samsung Galaxy A9 (2018) is a phone that hits that exact spot: priced at just over $500, it enters the hotly contested “affordable flagship” territory. Its magic trick? Not one, not two, not three, but four cameras on the back. That’s a first ever in a smartphone, in case you were wondering! Plus, you can easily find this phone in physical stores where Samsung phones are sold, as long as it is officially available in your country, of course. The US isn't on the list.

So, how does this new Galaxy A9 look when compared to the competition? And is it any good? Read on to find out.

Design

Slim and elegant, but build quality is not great

The Galaxy A9 2018 is made of glass and metal. It has a slim profile and tapered sides that make holding this otherwise big phone much more convenient. Still, there’s no going around that this phone is wide and tall. You can see just how big it is in comparison with other popular phones below: it’s actually wider and much taller than, say, the OnePlus 6T or Pocophone F1.

In terms of color options, we’ve got the classic black model up for review, but you have a bubblegum pink and lemonade blue color gradients that look a lot more fun. The back of the phone is glass on all of them and it is as slippery and easily smudged with fingerprints as you’d expect (very noticeable on the black model), so we would recommend getting a case for this one.

While we like the looks, we are disappointed with the build quality of the A9: wiggle the phone in your hand and you hear something rattling on the inside, as if Samsung forgot to screw in some component! This definitely does not feel reliable.

Speaking of annoyances, the dedicated physical Bixby button is still here on the A9. A year and a half after Bixby’s launch in April 2017, our opinion about Bixby has not changed much: namely, we still think that the Google Assistant is a way more capable and actually usable assistant. We truly wish we had the option to use that Bixby button to start the Google Assistant, but alas, no luck. At least you can still disable Bixby Home that otherwise pops out when you press the Bixby button accidentally, interrupting whatever you were doing. To disable Bixby Home, first open it, then tap on the gears icon and switch the Bixby Home toggle off.

On the back of the phone, you have the star of the show: the quad camera system, and we’ll take a closer look at it further in the review. Also on the back you also have a traditional fingerprint scanner.

We found this scanner to be reliable, recognizing our fingerprint usually on the first try, but a bit on the slow side, as there is a very slow fade in animation. This feels like you have to sit and wait for one long moment until you can actually use the phone.

In terms of ports, you have a USB-C port on the bottom and a 3.5-mil headphone jack, as well as a single bottom-firing loudspeaker (more on sound quality later). At the top, you have a true dual SIM + microSD card tray, and not a hybrid slot.

One more thing: there is no special water-proofing on this phone, so be careful not to get it wet.

Display

An excellent AMOLED screen.

The Galaxy A9 features a 6.3-inch Full HD+ (1080 x 2220 pixel) display of the Super AMOLED kind and it looks beautiful. It has lively colors, well-tuned auto brightness, and it just looks good. As all recent Samsung phones, by default, it’s set to the Adaptive screen mode that produces punchy colors, but you can select between three other modes, including the sRGB gamut-compliant Basic mode for more toned-down colors.

Samsung calls this an “Infinity Screen”, but you still have a very noticeable bezel at the top and bottom (no notch here, at least).

We measured a top brightness level of 466 nits (measuring white), which is brighter than the screen on the OnePlus 6T, and we found that this boosted brightness helps with outdoor visibility under bright sunlight.

This being a Samsung AMOLED screen, you also get the Always-on mode that shows you the time, date, battery level and missed notifications. This is very useful and something that most rivals are missing.