Samsung's improvements to its latest flagship work as promised, but don't feel like features that you'd miss by not upgrading. Still, thanks to blazing performance, solid cameras and long battery life, the Galaxy S9+ continues to uphold the S series' reputation for excellence.

Dual Aperture effective in low light; Excellent cameras overall; Speedy performance; Long-lasting battery; Good cameras especially in low light; Superior performance; Gorgeous design

Not a major improvement over last generation; No major change since last generation; Lacks the Plus' dual cameras

Let's face it: the changes you're going to see in smartphones every year are pretty incremental. With some significant exceptions (I'm looking at you, user interface of the iPhone X ), today's phones aren't all that much different than the phones of three years ago. Faster, yes, More memory, sure.

Solid performance; classic Samsung design; Dex dock allows use as desktop computer

Iris scan feature needs work; Bixby virtual assistant remains a work in progress; AR Emoji a half-baked gimmick

The Galaxy S8 was the best phone of 2017. The Galaxy S9 is a little better. The Galaxy S9+ is even better. It's up to you whether the size and cost are worth the power: For us, they are.

Feels great in one hand; Excellent low-light camera performance; Better sound and network support than the Galaxy S8

Not a radical upgrade from the Galaxy S8; Larger S9+ model has better cameras, more RAM, and stronger Wi-Fi performance

The Samsung S9 is an excellent smartphone – one of the best Android phones you can buy today. The screen, in particular, is superb. The colours are crisp and extremely detailed, and the ample screen real estate makes it well-suited to watching videos in horizontal mode.

Good low-light photography; crisp and detailed screen; slick design

No improvement in battery life; Bixby is still not very useful; intelligent scan has high failure rate

The nice thing about the Galaxy S9 and S9+ is that they hold very few mysteries. Go back to our review of the S8 twins last year, and the majority of what you'll read there applies here. The Galaxy S8 and S8+ were great phones, and the S9 and S9+ are better versions of them.

Display An absolutely brilliant screen - the best on any smartphone out there; Amazing brightness, colors, and viewing angles, Fingerprint scanner The fingerprint scanner is back in a location where it won't give you constant frustration.

So much glass I mean, this should be obvious - the Galaxy S9 looks kind of fragile; There's a lot of glass on this phone; Use a case, Updates Even with Project Treble, Samsung still avoids committing to a period of Android OS updates, let alone timely ones, for its flagship handsets.

Refined, stylish design with gorgeous curved screen; Improved low-light camera, excellent slo-mo video; All the features you’d want in a flagship;

Improved camera still can’t quite beat the best; Hard to tell the S9 apart from the S8; Fingerprint sensor still a bit close to the camera;

The Samsung Galaxy S9 is a continuation of the path the South Korean company started last year with the Galaxy S8. Both devices are very similar and nearly identical in look and feel.

Samsung has hit a home run with the Galaxy S9 and S9+. While it may not look much different to last year's S8, there are still enough new features and abilities to make this one of the best smartphones on the market today.

Samsung's Galaxy S9 is a strange breed of smartphone. With a Snapdragon 845 processor, great camera, and 18:9 screen, it has all the trappings of a fantastic 2018 handset. Yet, at the same time, it's remarkably similar to the Galaxy S8 that it replaces.

The Galaxy S9 is an evolution rather than a revolution, but Samsung has upgraded it in all the right places.

The Infinity Display is even better than the one on the S8; Camera takes fantastic pics in all kinds of light; Fingerprint sensor is in a much better...

Camera features like Dual Aperture and Super Slow-mo are a little gimmicky; AR Emoji is fun but not as advanced as Apple's Animoji; The single camera...