Israel\, UAE and Bahrain sign Abraham Accord; Trump says “dawn of new Middle East”

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Israel, UAE and Bahrain sign Abraham Accord; Trump says “dawn of new Middle East”

Washington, September 16, 2020 06:25 IST

Updated: September 16, 2020 06:37 IST

PTI

Washington, September 16, 2020 06:25 IST

Updated: September 16, 2020 06:37 IST

As per the agreements, the UAE and Bahrain will establish embassies, exchange ambassadors, cooperate and work together with Israel

Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Abdullatif Al Zayani, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and United Arab Emirates (UAE) Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed display their copies of signed agreements while U.S. President Donald Trump looks on as they participate in the signing ceremony of the Abraham Accords, on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, U.S., September 15, 2020. | Photo Credit: REUTERS

As per the agreements, the UAE and Bahrain will establish embassies, exchange ambassadors, cooperate and work together with Israel

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain for the signing of the historic Abraham Accord, which is the first Arab-Israeli peace deal in 26 years.

“We are here this afternoon to change the course of history. After decades of division and conflict we mark the dawn of a new Middle East,” Trump said, moments before the accord was signed at the South Lawns of the White House.

The UAE was represented by Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed and Bahrain by Foreign Minister Abdullatif Al Zayani. The Arab Accord — essentially bilateral agreements with Israel — does not mention the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“Thanks to the great courage of the leaders of these three countries we take a major stride towards a future in which people of all faiths and backgrounds live together in peace and prosperity,” Trump said.

The President pointed out that these were the only two peace deals between Israel and the Arab States in more than a quarter of a century. Egypt was the first Arab State to sign a peace deal with Israel in 1979. Jordon signed a peace pact in 1994.

“Now we have achieved two in a single month and there are more to follow,” Trump said.

Watch | All about the Israel-UAE Peace Agreement

As per the agreements, the UAE and Bahrain will establish embassies, exchange ambassadors, cooperate and work together with Israel across a range of sectors, including tourism, trade, healthcare and security.

Also read: Palestinians to mourn ‘black day’

“They are friends. The Abraham Accords also open the door for Muslims around the world to visit the historic sites in Israel and to peacefully pray at Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the third holiest site in Islam,” Trump said, amidst applause and cheer from more than 200 invited guests.

Together these agreements will serve as the foundation for comprehensive peace across the entire region, Trump said.

'Pivot of history'

Netanyahu described the accord as a “pivot of history”, heralding a new dawn. “For thousands of years the Jewish people have prayed for peace. For decades, the Jewish state has prayed for peace and this is why today we are filled with such profound gratitude,” he said.

“You have heard from the president that he has already lined up more and more countries. This was unimaginable a few years ago. But with resolve, determination, a fresh look at the way peace is done, this is being achieved,” PM Netanyahu said.

PM Netanyahu said Israel is eager to invest in a future of prosperity, and peace.

“We’ve already begun to cooperate on combating coronavirus and I am sure that together we can find solutions to many of the problems that afflict our region and beyond,” he said.

A change in the Middle-East

Foreign Minister Zayed said the UAE is witnessing a change in the Middle-East, one that gives hope around the world.

“We are witnessing today a new trend that will create a better path for the Middle-East,” he said. “This peace accord which is a historic achievement for the United States of America, the state of Israel and the United Arab Emirates will continue to have a positive impact as we believe that its reverberations will be reflected on the entire region, every option other than peace would signify destruction, poverty, and human suffering.”

This new vision which is beginning to take shape as we meet today for the future of the region for love, youthful energy is not a slogan that we raise for political gain. Everyone looks forward to creating a more stable prosperous and secure future,” the minister said.

'Road to lasting security and prosperity'

Foreign Minister Zayani said peace between the Kingdom of Bahrain and the State of Israel is a step on the road to genuine and lasting security and prosperity.

“For too long the Middle East has been set back by conflict and mistrust causing uncontrolled destruction and thwarting the potential of generations of our best and brightest young people. Now I am convinced we have the opportunity to change that,” said the minister from Bahrain.

Soon after the signing, the White House, in a statement, said the deal will strengthen peace in the region, giving Muslims increased access to the Al Aqsa Mosque. This will counter the extremists who use the false narrative that the Al Aqsa Mosque is under attack and that Muslims cannot pray at this holy site, it said.

The deal between the UAE and Israel represented a significant breakthrough in diplomatic relations between the two nations as the Trump administration works to facilitate cooperation between Arab nations and Israel. Trump, seeking re-election in the November 3 presidential election against his Democratic Party rival, Joe Biden, is hoping that the two major diplomatic deals would help him in the polls.

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Printable version | Sep 16, 2020 6:38:00 AM | https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/israel-uae-and-bahrain-sign-abraham-accord-trump-says-dawn-of-new-middle-east/article32616867.ece

Israel\, UAE and Bahrain sign Abraham Accord; Trump says “dawn of new Middle East”

Moto G8 Plus Review

Moto G8 Plus Review

Prakhar Khanna | 05 Dec 2019

PROS
Good battery life
Excellent speakers
Unique action camera
No bloatware

CONS
Only 64GB variant available
Can’t take wide-angle pictures despite the presence of a wide-angle sensor

Verdict

The Moto G8 Plus comes with excellent stereo speakers, very good battery life and a unique action camera. It is a solid device when it comes to media consumption and everyday usage. However, it lags behind the competition when it comes to gaming. Don’t buy it if you are in the market for a device that needs to handle heavy gaming.

BUY Moto G8 Plus

	Available	15990
	Out of Stock	13999

Moto G8 Plus detailed review

The Moto G lineup used to be amongst one of the best selling devices in the budget segment until it faced competition from the Chinese smartphone manufacturers. The latter has been offering some compelling choices in the sub-Rs 15,000 segment. However, Motorola has a new offering, and it could be an interesting choice for a budget phone.

While Motorola launched a slew of Motorola One smartphones this year, they were focused on one camera feature or the other. On the other hand, the Moto G8 Plus is a culmination of the Motorola One series. It brings together the action camera from One Action, primary camera from the One Vision and laser autofocus from the One Macro. It’s not just the cameras that are flexible, the Moto G8 Plus offers Dolby-backed stereo speakers as well.

After an overpriced Moto G7 Plus, Moto G8 Plus marks the return of the Moto G-lineup in the lower mid-range segment. But is that enough to compete against the likes of Realme 5 Pro, Samsung Galaxy M30s and Redmi Note 8 Pro? Let’s find out.

Performance

Moto G8 Plus is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 665 chipset, which can be seen on devices like the Realme 5 and Redmi Note 8 that retails at much less than Rs 13,999. It comes with 4GB RAM and 64GB storage, which can be expanded up to 512GB using a shared microSD card.

In everyday work, phone performance was satisfactory. It didn’t lag or delay while multitasking and switching between Chrome tabs and jumping between apps. There were hiccups, but it didn’t necessarily slow down the phone.

Moto G8 Plus performance review prakhar khanna

Moto G8 Plus review prakhar khanna

Moto G8 Plus review prakhar khanna parkyprakhar

In our benchmark tests, the Moto G8 Plus performed fine. It scored 142599 on AnTuTu 7.0, which is less than the competitors. For reference, Redmi Note 8 Pro scored 222904, in the same test. However, it was more than the Galaxy M30s. The Moto G8 Plus scored 1760 in 3D Mark Sling Shot.

As for gaming, Asphalt 9 ran at a median frame rate of 25 frames per second with 44 percent stability. In contrast, PUBG Mobile ran at a median frame rate of 21 frames per second with 98 percent stability. During the gameplay, animations were mostly consistent and stutter-free. We used Gamebench for recording all gaming metrics

By default, it ran the ‘Low’ graphics preset on PUBG Mobile. While the graphics didn’t look very good, the gameplay wasn’t affected much. The phone didn’t get alarmingly warm during the gaming sessions. The performance was satisfactory.

Call performance on both earpiece and speaker was loud and clear.

Software

My favourite aspect of the phone - UI with no ads or bloatware. Moto G8 Plus comes with a close to stock Android-like experience. The default apps don’t spam you and there are no unnecessary ads or notifications. The phone ships with Android 9 Pie and the company has said that it is planning on bringing Android 10 to the device “soon.”

Moto G8 Plus Review prakhar khanna

Features such as Digital Wellbeing and Android gestures are included in the software. However, I would suggest that you stay clear of the gesture navigation. The device also comes with a bunch of shortcuts that Motorola calls Moto Actions. There are shortcuts to quickly turn on the camera and torch, taking a quick screenshot and many other things. You can also use the phone in one-handed mode by simply swiping diagonally downwards from the middle of the display. Then there is peak display gesture - my favourite - that enables a pseudo-always-on-display function.

The device comes with the standard Google apps suite like Slides, News, and Sheets.

Camera

Moto G8 Plus sports a 48MP main sensor with an f/1.7 aperture + a 16MP ultrawide Action camera with an f/2.2 aperture + a 5MP depth sensor with an f/2.2 aperture. The triple rear camera setup is accompanied by an autofocus module. However, more doesn’t necessarily mean better. The image quality is rather average.

Moto G8 Plus camera prakhar khanna

Moto G8 Plus camera sample prakhar khanna

The phone saves 12MP oversampled photos by default. Also, you cannot click pictures at the full 48MP resolution. When shooting close subjects, the device focuses swiftly. It captures a decent amount of details. The images are sharp, colours are vivid and the images look quite good.

Moto G8 Plus camera sample prakhar khanna

Moto G8 Plus Taco Bell cold drick tacos prakhar khanna

Moto G8 Plus camera sample prakhar khanna food

Overall, the camera tends to highlight blue tones. This makes the image look much cooler than it is supposed to be. The dynamic range, as you can make out from the samples, isn’t great either. It blows out highlights. As for portrait shots, the depth sensor does a good job of detecting edges around our subject and blurring backgrounds. The software allows you to adjust the blur effect before and after a shot has been taken. There is also an option to add various kinds of lighting effects.

Moto G8 Plus night camera sample
Night Mode

Shooting in low light environments is a hit and a miss with the Night Vision turned on. However, it doesn’t make much of a difference in low light shots. Sometimes, the image processing makes an image look worse with Night Vision turned on than it was with Night Vision turned off. The low light shots have had muddy details.

Surprisingly, there is a wide-angle camera on the Moto G8 Plus, but it cannot take wide-angle photos. It is Motorola’s Action Cam, which only allows you to shoot videos. The videos taken on the action camera are stabilised at 1080p 30fps, but not at 60fps. The video quality is good and electronic stabilisation works fine in daylight. However, it is noticeably grainy and softer in details in low light. The footage was stabilised well for a mobile phone. However, one should not expect GoPro level footage. As for the videos taken on the primary camera, the resolution can be set all the way up to 4K at 30fps, but without stabilisation.

Prakhar khanna Moto G8 Plus review

Prakhar khanna parkyprakhar

Coming to the front camera, it lets you capture selfies at full 25MP resolution or oversampled to 6MP. Selfies look decent during the day time. The camera manages to capture good colours and details. Like you can see in the picture above, once told where to focus, the camera was able to expose the image well. The low light quality would be rated average with weak details, and noise. Users get the option to enable Face Beauty mode, which smoothened skin textures. There are other shooting modes like Spot Colour, Group Selfie, Portrait, and slow-motion video as well.

Display and Audio

The Moto G8 Plus features a 6.3-inch Full HD+ IPS LCD display. It looks good at first glance. The content on the IPS LCD panel looks crisp. However, the brightness maxes out at 500 nits, which is below average for a sub-Rs 15,000 device in our testing. However, the content on the screen was easily visible under direct sunlight. The device has wide viewing angles as well.

Moto G8 Plus review Prakhar khanna

The smartphone has a 19:9 aspect ratio. While watching 18:9 content on the tall screen, the software enabled-black bars are noticeable, at least for me. But then, that’s the case with every phone that comes with an LCD panel. Apart from this, the display looks high quality for the price.

Speaker output on the Moto G8 Plus is loud and clear. The company includes a range of Dolby enhancements that you can toggle on or off. When left on ‘Auto mode’, the Dolby settings adjust to the scenario, whether it be while watching movies or while playing music. You can always manually tinker with the bass, mids, and vocals depending on your style of listening.

Audio on the earphones did not sound too good out of the box. But when the Dolby Audio app came into play, I had no problems listening to music through my earphones. Audio via Bluetooth was also good, and I didn’t observe any dropouts while listening to music and moving around in my apartment so it is safe to say that the Bluetooth range is good as well.

Overall, with excellent speakers and a crisp display, the Moto G8 Plus is a really good device for media consumption. In fact, it is one of the best in the range.

Battery

Moto G8 Plus packs a 4000mAh battery and the battery life on this phone is excellent. Battery life is one of the unique selling points of this phone. We played a video on loop at full brightness to see how long it take the phone to go from 100 to 0, and it lasted for more than 20 hours - that’s more than the average of the sub-Rs 15,000 phones we have tested thus far.

Moto G8 Plus battery life prakhar khanna

During the tests, the Moto G8 Plus was put through many sessions of gaming, web browsing, simultaneous app installs and downloads and online video playback. It performed well throughout the tests. Moreover, leaving the phone unattended didn’t have a significant impact on battery life either. It is perfectly good for all-day use.

The Moto G8 Plus ships with a 15W USB-C charger in the box, which charges the battery from zero to 100 percent in around 2 hours.

Build and Design

In terms of design, the Moto G8 Plus looks similar to the phone I reviewed before this, the Motorola One Macro. It sports a polycarbonate body and comes in Cosmic Blue and Crystal Pink colours, which looks nice. The Blue colour has purplish highlight to it. The rear of the phone is registers smudges and fingerprints every time you pick up the device. Hence it is suggested to use the clear case included in the box. It will also help you to minimise the camera bump. The rear panel also holds the fingerprint sensor built into the Motorola logo. The sensor works as you’d expect it to - making the unlocking experience fast and hassle-free.

Moto G8 Plus review prakhar khanna
Quad rear camera setup

Coming to the front, the Moto G8 Plus features a 6.3-inch display. It comes equipped with a waterdrop notch. The size of the bezels on the sides helps it keep up with the current design trends. The chin isn’t particularly big either. There is a large earpiece grille above the display, which doubles as a stereo speaker. The headphone jack is placed on the top and a USB Type-C port at the bottom.

As for the sides of the smartphone, the volume rockers rest above the power button on the right edge of the device. The power button has a textured finish to it., which helps to distinguish it from the volume buttons. Moreover, the tactile feedback of buttons isn’t the best and it could’ve been better. On the left edge lies the SIM tray, which can accept two Nano-SIM cards, or one SIM card and a microSD card (up to 512GB). Since the Moto G8 Plus comes in just one configuration, that is, 64GB storage, I would have preferred a separate microSD card slot instead of a hybrid one.

Moto G8 Plus review prakhar khanna

The Moto G8 Plus sports a nano-coating layer, which makes it resistant to splashes. The company says it has implemented little rubber gaskets throughout the build of the phone. While the phone doesn’t have an IP68 certification, Motorola claims it is water repellent.

Overall, there is nothing extraordinary about the design language of the Moto G8 Plus. It lacks a glass-metal sandwich design seen on the Moto G7 Plus, but it is still more ergonomic and fits in the hand perfectly. It looks elegant and smart as long as you are able to keep fingerprints off it.

Bottom Line

The Moto G8 Plus is an excellent device when it comes to media consumption and battery life. It has very good stereo speakers, a solid battery life, a fine display and above all, a clean Android experience. Compared to Motorola One series models, the Moto G8 Plus is the best Motorola device out of all the available options in the price range.

Where the Moto G8 Plus falters is in heavy gaming. Make no mistake, it can easily handle a casual gaming session, but if yoúre someone who’s particularly competitive about their PUBG Mobile sessions or CoD matches, then you’d be better off looking somewhere else. The camera performance of the Moto G8 Plus is just a little above average at best. Sadly, there is no way to click wide-angle photos and low-light camera performance is underwhelming.

Apart from that, if you are in the market for a device with stock Android-like experience, on which you can consume media and it still lasts for an entire day, the Moto G8 Plus is the device to go for.

Moto G8 Plus Key Specs, Price and Launch Date

Price:	Rs. 13999
Release Date:	24 Oct 2019
Variant:	64GB
Market Status:	Launched

Key Specs

Screen Size
6.3" (1080 X 2340)
Camera
48 + 16 + 5 | 25 MP
Memory
64 GB/4 GB
Battery
4000 mAh

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Israel\, UAE and Bahrain sign Abraham Accord; Trump says “dawn of new Middle East”

Irish Jockey Pat Smullen Dies Of Pancreatic Cancer Aged 43

SPORTS

News18 »sports

1-MIN READ

Irish Jockey Pat Smullen Dies Of Pancreatic Cancer Aged 43

Ninetime Irish champion jockey and 2016 Epsom Derby winner Pat Smullen has died. He was 43.

Last Updated: September 16, 2020, 6:18 AM IST

DUBLIN, Ireland: Nine-time Irish champion jockey and 2016 Epsom Derby winner Pat Smullen has died. He was 43.

Horse Racing Ireland said Smullen, who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in March 2018, died in a Dublin hospital on Tuesday. Britains Press Association said Smullens initial treatment had been positive, but he suffered a relapse.

Pat was one of our greatest stars, Horse Racing Ireland chief executive Brian Kavanagh told PA. He was nine-times champion jockey, but in many ways his greatest achievements were out of the saddle.

Since his diagnosis, he did wonderful work fund-raising for charity and he battled this disease with great heart and its hard to believe he has passed at such a young age.

Born in County Offaly on May 22, 1977, Smullen, the son of a farmer and who became involved with horses at the age of 11, went on to form a long alliance with trainer Dermot Weld, taking over in 1999 from another riding star, Mick Kinane.

Among the greatest wins for the Smullen-Weld combination was the Derby at Epsom in 2016 with the Aga Khans Harzand, when Smullen was presented with the winning trophy by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II. Smullen went on to win the Irish Derby in the same year, also on Harzand.

Smullen was also a multiple Group One-winning jockey internationally, including the Breeders Cup Marathon at Santa Anita in California in 2008 riding Muhannak. He also rode Vinnie Roe in three Melbourne Cup races in Australia.

Smullen retired from racing in 2019 but helped raise pancreatic cancer awareness with charity races.

In a post on his official Twitter account, Irish President Michael D. Higgins expressed deep sadness at the untimely death of champion jockey Pat Smullen, saying his remarkable performances at home and abroad brought joy to so many.

Smullen is survived by his wife, ex-jockey and trainer Frances Crowley, and three children: Hannah, Paddy and Sarah.

___

More AP sports: https://apnews.com/apf-sports and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

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Israel\, UAE and Bahrain sign Abraham Accord; Trump says “dawn of new Middle East”

Samsung Galaxy S9 Review

By Subhrojit Mallick | Updated May 22 2019

DIGIT RATING

84 _/100

design
91
performance
87
value for money
83
features
76

User Rating : 3/5 Out of 2 Reviews

PROS
Compact and ergonomic
Bright low-light photos

CONS
Conservative performance
Poor battery

Verdict

The Samsung Galaxy S9 is a beautiful piece of work. It’s future- forward design, the stunningly bright display and a re-engineered camera is an attractive proposition if you have the the money lying around, but it’s unlikely to deliver the satisfaction of buying something unique. Samsung’s flagship phone for the first half of 2018 is an iteration of its predecessor at best, and an underwhelming upgrade at its worst.

BUY Samsung Galaxy S9

	Available	34999
	Out of Stock	24999

Samsung Galaxy S9 detailed review

The Samsung Galaxy S9 is a follow-up to last year’s Galaxy S8, but looking at the phone, you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart. The Galaxy S8’s design was not only functional and ergonomic but it also looked stunning too. No need to fix that which isn't broken. While that’s definitely a good thing, the Galaxy S9 comes across more like an ‘S’ variant of the Galaxy S8, much like how Apple uses the term to define minor upgrades to its iPhone lineup. There are definitely some welcome upgrades, especially in making biometric authentication easier and faster, and a whole new approach to low-light photos, apart from tiny, but meaningful additions.

Between the Samsung Galaxy S9 and the S9+ this time, the difference is not just the battery and the display size. Now there are two cameras at the back of the elder sibling. But being a stickler for compact devices, the smaller Galaxy S9 feels way more ergonomic and easier to use than the bigger variant. The smaller form factor makes it easier to grip the phone and allow for one-handed use.

However, all that is also pertinent for the older Galaxy S8, so is there a justification to upgrade to the newer and more expensive Galaxy S9 instead of the S8? We find out.

Design

Place the Galaxy S9 and the Galaxy S8 side-by-side and you will not be able to tell them apart. At least from the front. While every other OEM has gracefully embraced the notch, the Galaxy S9 boldly stands out as a full-screen device without ugly cutouts in the display. Instead, Samsung maintains small, but prominent forehead and chins on the front while the display curves around the edges to blend in with the rest of the body. This design philosophy is more preferable over the Notch as the screen is uninterrupted and there’s some space to grip the phone when held horizontally.

Everything that was good with the Galaxy S8 has been carried over to the Galaxy S9, with minor refinements. The bezels are just a little more thinner and about two millimeters have been shaved off in height, making the phone feel even more compact without messing with the 5.8-inch display size. The Infinity display takes up most of the surface and curves down the edges to meet the metal frame, and it looks just as stunning as the Galaxy S8, if not a little aged. Samsung also introduced a lilac purple colour variant of the Galaxy S9 which we received for the review and the glass panel at the back makes it stands out from the crop of metal unibody phones.

You’ll know things have changed when you turn the phone around. The placement of the fingerprint sensor on the Galaxy S8 was universally hated, so Samsung moved it around. It is now just below the camera lens, where your finger is very likely to miss the sensor again. Thankfully, it is much easier to reach than last year's fingerprint sensor.

Holding the Galaxy S9, it feels like Samsung put every bit of effort to make this a premium smartphone.You’ll know where your money went when you cradle this phone in your hands.

Display

The 5.8-inch Infinity display is the center of attraction of the Galaxy S9. It looks a lot like the one on the Galaxy S8 with the Super AMOLED panel sort of melting into the metal frame along the edges. The QHD+ resolution also remains the same. Being a Super AMOLED display, the black levels are deep with a high contrast ratio. The default display calibration isn’t as oversaturated as on the Galaxy S8 though. Samsung seems to have worked on making this one of the more colour accurate panels. However, if you’re not happy with the colour temperature, you can tweak it in the display settings.

The display is Mobile HDR Premium compliant and also Daydream-ready. I particularly liked the Adaptive display setting which tweaks the colour temperature and brightness based on the ambient light, much like what Apple does with its TrueTone display.

All that was said about the display on the bigger S9+ stands true for the smaller sibling as well. Being more compact, the pixel density on the S9 is much higher at 570 ppi as compared to 529ppi on the S9+. Ideally, that should make the panel on the S9 appear crisper and more vibrant, but it doesn’t make much of a difference here as the AMOLED panel made by Samsung is one of the best out there.

Performance and UI

The Samsung Galaxy S9 and the S9+ has the same set of hardware under the hood — Samsung’s proprietary Exynos 9810 in global markets and the Snapdragon 845 in the US and some other regions. Both chipsets are manufactured on a 10nm process and houses an octa-core processor. The Exynos chipset can hit a max clock speed of 2.7GHz, coupled with an 18-core Mali-G72 GPU. All that should make the Galaxy S9 one of the fastest device around. But it would be hard to eke out that level of performance from the chipset.

We ran the AnTuTu Stress Test with Qualcomm’s Trepn Profiler running simultaneously to note the CPU frequency that the chipset clocks when handling different workloads. Turns out, the CPU hardly went above 1.79GHz and only when the load on the CPU and the cores were at 100 percent did the performance cores hit the max clock speed. That too after quite sometime of sustained load on the chipset.

Most of the times, the Exynos 9810 chipset will not go above the 1.79GHz mark which is the base clock speed of the high-performance M3 cores. Only when the CPU is stressed for a particularly long time will the chipset hit the advertised max clock speed. But that’s not essentially a bad thing. Samsung is actually giving itself some headroom should there be a need for the extra power.

Then again, the Galaxy S9 does have a tendency to heat up a lot. I even got a prompt about the phone overheating and shutting down apps in the next 20 seconds. Samsung hasn’t used a heat pipe in the device and the glass back offers no means for the heat to dissipate.

Benchmark reports peg the Galaxy S9 higher than all other flagships from last year, although it wasn’t at par with the S9+. 3DMark Slingshot gave a score of 3801 as compared to 3884 on the S9+ while on AnTuTu the difference was of 40,000 points. That’s an unusually high difference and we are probing it further. Geekbench’s single core performance between the two was similar, but the multi-core performance was less by about 900 points (which again is alarmingly high).

Samsung’s UI isn’t helping either. Yes, it has improved vastly over the older versions. It even has a new name now — Samsung Experience. It’s more optimised but still takes up a lot of memory even when idle. While the bigger S9+ has extra 2GB of RAM to compensate for it, the smaller sibling sometimes slows down and stutters a bit, but quickly gets back on its feet. Using the phone as a daily driver, I often found around 25 percent RAM left free, which is never a good thing when the going gets tough. The battery drop when idle is also around 4-5 percent over a period of 4-5 hours. That’s much higher than what phones with stock Android offer.

The real-world performance of the phone, however, was quite flawless. Apps open soon as you tap on them and switching between two memory-intensive apps doesn’t take much time. There are also no lags in performing basic operations while gaming will be more or less without a hitch.

There’s reason for the UI to be memory-intensive though. Samsung offers a plethora of features that are unique to Galaxy devices, most of which aim to improve productivity. The Edge Panel which makes apps, shortcuts and contacts easy to access by just swiping from the edge is really useful while the Samsung’s windowed mode can make any app appear in picture-in-picture mode. Finer things like the Samsung Health app that allows users to keep track of important factors like heart rate and sp02 levels, while the settings menu allows just about every aspect of the phone to be customised.

Samsung has also beefed up its security features with the S9. The Iris scanning is now combined with facial recognition to make it more reliable. Biometrics is needed to access the secure folder and in place of passwords.

Introduced in the Samsung Galaxy S9 are the new AR emojis — animated avatar resembling your appearance which can be shared in the form of GIFs while messaging. It doesn’t work as well as its iOS counterpart, but the varied expressions can be entertaining for the first few times you use it.

And then there’s Bixby. Samsung’s voice-based AI-assistant once again gets a dedicated hardware button and is still quite half-baked. However, Samsung has promised a Bixby 2.0 later this year, which will open the platform up to third-party developers and will be more integrated with IoT devices. Currently, Bixby can run basic commands like opening apps, sending messages and calling people. It can also leverage the camera to allow users to perform visual searches and translate in real time.

The Samsung Experience UI is pretty much the same in both the Galaxy S9+ and the S9. Most of the features (save for the AR emojis) are now available in the Galaxy S8 as well as the Galaxy Note 8. If Samsung’s UI is why you’re looking to upgrade, it’s better to stick to the older models.

Camera

The Samsung Galaxy S9’s design and display are not new. There’s simply no difference in the way the phone looks and feels as compared to its predecessor. So why will you be interested in it? Well, Samsung wants you to buy this phone because of the innovation it has made in the camera by putting a dual aperture mechanism on the rear camera. The S9 rocks a 12-megapixel 26mm camera with dual-pixel autofocus, optical image stabilisation and single LED flash. The camera sensor is 1/2.5-inch which is the standard size in smartphones, while the pixel pitch is 1.4um. What’s interesting is that the camera can switch between f/1.5 and f/2.4 depending on the amount of ambient light.

But here’s the thing. In a time when even mid-range smartphones are shipping with apertures as wide as f/2.0, why would Samsung want to put a tiny f/2.4 aperture? That small an aperture, especially with a tiny 1/2.5-inch sensor will have no use whatsoever in improving the imaging prowess. Ideally, smaller apertures are used to make the photos sharper with tighter exposure and more details. But the sensor size in smartphones will cap the light absorption to a point where the f/2.4 aperture will not make much of a difference.

At day time, photos taken in f/1.5 and f/2.4 apertures have practically no difference whatsoever. The phone is smart enough to adjust the shutter speed and exposure to compensate for the lower aperture while at f/1.5, the same adjustments are made to nullify the extra light. What’s the point of the f/2.4 aperture then? It comes across more of a gimmick, and in marketing terms, putting a tiny aperture makes the f/1.5 aperture (which is the real innovation here) stand out. Furthermore, the LG V30 boasted of the widest aperture till last year at f/1.6. Samsung wanted to go a step further, but that small an improvement could only be highlighted by diverting the attention to the dual aperture, which indeed has never been seen before in a smartphone.

The f/1.5 aperture, on the other hand, puts the S9 ahead of the competition. The wide aperture helps capture a lot more light and the resulting shots are quite well-lit. However, if you compare the photos with those taken with the Galaxy S8 (that had a f/1.7 aperture), the difference is in the light intake. The same noise reduction algorithm is also present in the Galaxy S9 that softens the details and save for the exposure, nothing much has changed here. There’s also Samsung’s signature yellowish tinge in the low-light shots.

Samsung wants you to think the dual aperture technology is a reimagination of the smartphone camera. Surely there have been a lot of engineering effort put in, but that’s doesn’t reflect in the end user’s results. The f/2.4 aperture has no practical advantage whatsoever and in this day and age, Samsung has no right to put that small an aperture in a flagship phone’s camera.

But the dual aperture is not the only thing new in the camera department. The Samsung Galaxy S9 can shoot super slo-mo videos at 960 frames per second. The feature was introduced in the Sony Xperia XZ Premium last year, and Samsung seems to have cracked the formula to do it as well. The tech works by shooting 960 photos per second to slow down motion. The camera stores that many shots in the DRAM chip which is then processed and transferred over to the storage. The phone can give an output of 720p, even when Sony’s new Xperia XZ2 can do the same at 1080p. Once again, this isn’t anything new or innovative but Samsung’s implementation of the tech is better than Sony’s. The phone can detect motion inside a box in the frame to slow it down. It’s much more intuitive, but the fact remains that the feature is pretty much unusable after 5 PM as shooting at 960 fps requires a massive amount of light.

The front camera though, has been mostly left untouched. The same 8-megapixel sensor with f/1.7 aperture and 25mm lens has been carried over from the Galaxy S8 to the S9. Selfies come out well detailed with just the right amount of exposure with the option of applying filters and beauty effects. It’s pretty standard, the implementation of it. There’s a selfie focus mode that can simulate the background blur while a wide selfie can basically take a panorama with the front camera. Both are quite useful and help in augmenting the selfie experience.

Battery

The Samsung Galaxy S9 takes after its predecessor in terms of the battery capacity as well. The phone retains the 3,000mAh battery, but the power-hungry Exynos chipset does not give the same result. As we noted in the performance section, the Exynos chipsets of the Galaxy S9 is hungrier to take power which depletes the battery quicker than its predecessor. The Galaxy S9’s PCMark Work 2.0 battery life performance was around 25 percent lesser than the Galaxy S8. Definitely not a good sign for a future-forward flagship phone. Using the camera and especially shooting slo-mo videos drains the battery a lot quicker, as do performance-intensive games and apps. The new PubG mobile game dropped the battery percentage from 80 to 40 in less than an hour of gameplay.

Having said that, Samsung bundles a fast charger with the phone which fills up the tank in less than an hour and a half. That’s a saving respite considering how the phone fails to last the average work day. I often found myself plugging the phone in after a day out reporting which usually includes doing a live stream, shooting photos, Tweeting, and taking videos, apart from the back and forth messaging with my team at the desk.

A good battery life should be a given when you are splurging half a lakh rupees on a device that is a phone first and then everything else. All the innovation and all the design improvements aside, a dead phone is an useless piece of junk in the pocket.

Bottomline

All things combined, the Samsung Galaxy S9 comes across more of an iteration of last year’s innovation than a step forward towards the future.It’s futuristic design will surely catch the eyes of onlookers but more often than not, it will be mistaken for the older Galaxy S8. The camera too will not make much an impact in making your social media game stronger, and more often than not, you may find yourself red-faced when the phone unexpectedly runs out of power while you’re showing off all the cool features the Galaxy S9 struts.