9 Things To Know About The Samsung Galaxy S9

Into A New Galaxy

Samsung shook up the smartphone market last year with the nearly border-free display design on the Galaxy S8 and S8+. It's a tough act to follow with this year's Galaxy S9 and S9+, but Samsung has still managed to introduce a range of enhancements and features with the new devices -- while keeping the price pretty much the same. Samsung is also making strides on business-friendliness by introducing an Enterprise Edition of the Galaxy S9 that will be sold unlocked by channel partners.

What follows are nine key things to know about the specs, features and price of the Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+.

Display

With the displays on the Galaxy S9 and S9+, Samsung is mostly sticking with its trailblazing edge-to-edge design from the S8 series. Samsung is describing the new screen as "uninterrupted display," perhaps in an attempt to draw a contrast with the iPhone X's camera notch. (Samsung executive Justin Denison, in fact, took a jab at Apple by saying during the S9 unveiling that "as always, there's no notch" with the S9 and S9+.)

The display specs are staying the same as on the S8 series, however. The S9 will measure 5.8 inches and the S9+ will measure 6.2 inches, with both featuring a curved QHD resolution (2,960 x 1,440) screen, with Samsung's bright and colorful Super AMOLED technology. One change from past models: The S9's home screen will be usable when held horizontally.

Camera

Samsung's biggest emphasis with the new Galaxy smartphones is on the camera, which includes better low-light photography capabilities thanks to an aperture that automatically adjusts to lighting conditions. The S9 and S9+ also include features such as "super slow-mo" for improved slow-motion video capture and "live focus" for automatically blurring a photo's background (as well as the AR Emoji feature to compete with the iPhone X's Animoji).

The camera system differs between the Galaxy S9 and S9+, however. While the S9+ gets a dual rear camera setup -- of 12-megapixel wide-angle and telephoto cameras -- the S9 sticks with a single 12-megapixel camera on the rear side. Both the S9 and S9+ do get optical image stabilization on their cameras, though.

Biometrics

Another area of change with the S9 series is the adoption of a new form of biometric authentication, dubbed Intelligent Scan. Samsung didn't tout the feature too heavily during the device unveiling Sunday, beyond indicating that it's meant to be a faster way of unlocking a phone by combining facial recognition and iris scanning (both facial recognition and iris scanning were available individually in the S8 series).

Maybe a more significant change: Samsung has moved the location of the fingerprint scanner so that it's now located directly below the camera on the back of the device, rather than awkwardly placed next to the camera as in the S8 series.

Processor, RAM And Storage

As expected, the U.S. version of the Galaxy S9 and S9+ will be powered by Qualcomm's latest top-of-the-line mobile processor, the Snapdragon 845. The eight-core processor runs at up to 2.8GHz, significantly faster than the previous generation chip, the 2.45GHz Snapdragon 835.

The Galaxy S9+ includes 6 GB of RAM, more than the Galaxy S9, which has 4 GB. By contrast, both models in the S8 series featured 4 GB of RAM.

Nothing is changing in terms of internal storage on the S9 models, which both feature 64 GB. Notably, though, the microSD slot on the phones now supports a card with up to 400 GB of space, a big jump from 256 GB previously.

Audio

One area of focus for the Galaxy S9 and S9+ is on the audio experience, with the devices offering stereo speakers that Samsung says are the "loudest ever in a Galaxy phone." The audio quality on the S9 series is also enhanced through special tuning by acoustics expert AKG as well as by surround sound from Dolby Atmos.

Battery And Durability

Nothing is changing in terms of the battery capacities in the Galaxy S9 series, with a 3,000mAh battery in the S9 and 3,500mAh for the S9+, the same as last year's devices. Samsung didn't specify what the battery life estimates will be for the S9 and S9+. But any improvements on battery life over the S8 series -- the S8 promised up to 12 hours and the S8+ up to 15 hours on 4G -- will be thanks to energy efficiency improvements in the Snapdragon 845 processor.

Samsung is also keeping the phones' water- and dust-resistance rating at the IP68 level, which means the device should recover after plunging as deep as 5 feet for up to 30 minutes.

DeX Pad

In tandem with the S9 and S9+, Samsung has unveiled a second-generation model of the DeX dock, which allows users to power an Android desktop experience using their Galaxy phone. The new DeX Pad allows users to lay the phone flat on the dock rather than propping up the phone, as in the original version. More significantly, the DeX pad allows users to turn the phone itself into a trackpad for operating the desktop mode.

Enterprise Edition

A major announcement for businesses is that Samsung will offer an Enterprise Edition of the Galaxy S9 (though not the S9+), which will be sold unlocked by "select channel partners" starting on March 16. The Enterprise Edition S9 will feature enterprise customization through Knox Configure, which will allow for remote provisioning and configuration of devices and easy installation of software and policy updates. The Enterprise Edition will also come with simplified deployment thanks to enterprise firmware over-the-air, allowing for device fleet management through a centralized OS.

In addition, the Enterprise Edition will feature "PC-class" life-cycle management with two years of purchase assurance, as well as access to a "robust partner ecosystem to help you create secure end-to-end solutions, tailored packages and customer experiences," Samsung said in its news release. Samsung did not immediately respond to questions asking for further details on the plan to sell through channel partners.

Price And Availability

Contrary to some previous rumors, Samsung won't be hiking the price on the Galaxy S9 and S9+ compared with the S8 models. An unlocked version of the Galaxy S9 will be priced similarly to the S8 at $720, while an unlocked Galaxy S9+ will be priced $15 more than the S8+, at $840. Pre-orders for the Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ will begin on March 2, and the release date for the phones is March 16.