Samsung Galaxy S9

8owners with an opinion

83%of verdicts positive

5/1positive/negative since 2024

6.5 yrslongest happy owner

1happy after 3+ years

Praised for reliability and battery; criticized for design.

What owners wrote

Likes itOwned 6.5 yearsStill going

My small army of old android devices are plugged into a USB 'charging station' (multiple USB charging ports off a single plastic device) which in plugged into a smart switch. The smart switch turns on for a couple of hours overnight, to keep the phones charged at least minimally. Most of the devices also have a custom ROM and are rooted, and using the ACCA app I restrict charging to a maximum of 80% battery capacity. I had a Samsung Note 5 (released in 2015) that only went spicy maybe 6 months ago. I have a Samsung S9 and a Nokia 6.1 that are both still going strong with fairly recent versions of LineageOS. Both are 2018 phones, so around 6.5 years old (old for phones, but shouldn't be 'electronically' old).

Likes it

They were slowing down to the point of unusable. I had a Galaxy S3 from 2012 to 2024, then got a hand me down Galaxy S9 for free. I don't like that I can't remove the battery, but it's got a SD card so I don't have to worry about storage ever and a headphone jack, so I don't have to worry about my headphones running out of batteries.

Likes it

The only reason I changed my phone was because my provider stopped supporting it when migrating to 5g VoIP. Otherwise I'd still be rocking my S9. I'm also using a pixel 2 for Android development and Google play billing isn't supported on it. The hardware is fine but they make it obsolete with software. I'm guessing they'll soon move to a subscription pricing for phones.

Doesn’t like it

It sounds crazy, but it turns out the finish on the phone makes a huge difference. I never used a case until I got a Galaxy S9; that phone was like a greased eel. Went from dropping my phone zero times in 8 years to 5 times in one week.

Likes it

This article resonates greatly with me. And because this is not happening anytime soon, I run with Android phones in the "throw away" price range (~200€) or even refurbished ones until the battery or the charging port dies, or my banking app refuses service (happened once last year on an old Samsung S9 which was running perfectly up until then)

Likes it

I've given a ton of thought to buying an old iPod and setting it up for modern usage, largely inspired by this blog post: https://ellie.wtf/ipod/ The author is a bit wrong about one thing, in that you can add Bluetooth capability, though it does require a headphone jack to Bluetooth adapter. In the end I didn't go the iPod route, but instead repurposed an old Samsung S9 with the sim removed. It's got an SD card slot so it can go about as big as I want it, and I can use apps that are better tailored to what's at end, such as podcasts, audiobooks, or music. The only problem is that the battery isn't as good as an iPod would be. But with no data connection, I can still get a few days when I'm using it on a long trip, and I just use the same charger as my phone.

Neutral

I haven't had any issues with a Samsung S7, Samsung S9 (although I broke HDMI output), and Sony Xperia 5 Mark II (very pleasant to repair). iPhones have been much more troublesome for me, as I have destroyed three during repair attempts. All the issues were from damage to ribbon cables, as they are fragile and easily damaged from being bent. So I'd advise avoiding devices with tight tolerances like iPhones, and minimizing interaction with ribbon cables.

Neutral

Interesting - I recently got myself an S9 and my wife a OnePlus 6T, and the OnePlus gets much better battery life (with fewer apps and overall lighter usage) - but now I'm not so impressed if that's how it's achieved. It's a fairly divisive issue - I can understand developers getting frustrated if their app's functionality is broken, but I do think this should be more in the user's control. A permissions-based model for backgrounding would be better, but there's too much permission prompting as well on Android (and this is something you can't back up - so on any restore, you're left 'allowing' permissions in every app you use in a new way - yes, when I select the camera mode in an app, I want to allow use of the camera - gets tedious across a bunch of different apps). My S9 (or maybe it's just Android) also puts a notification up if an app continues to run when I click 'back' out of it (or some other heuristic - it's not for every app, but it does a good job of identifying which are running) - which I think is a better compromise. It makes it much more visible which apps are consuming resources, and tapping the notification takes me to the App Info page with the 'Force Stop' button at the top. It's a bit noisy (it appears even for the stock music player, where obviously I want that to continue running), but it serves well as forcing visibility of battery hogs (whether it's through incompetence or nefarious background data collection), and reassuring to see it there for the

Likes itHasn’t owned it

Please, don't assume your situation is universal. I'd take this smartphone immediately. I'm never far from a 5G tower. I used to have a speedtest script on my Android before I bought an iPhone, and the average speed I had at any time was over 100 Mb/s. Only 5 days of a year I was below 50 Mb/s - but still connected, every day. > Just the screen is probably already 20% or so of power consumption even at very low brightness There are other kinds of displays, some of them don't need any brightness at all, but even those that do are getting much more efficient. An old/cheap IPS is incomparable to what a Samsung AMOLED can do, and they're not stopping there. I use my phone very often - much more than 5-6 hours of screentime - and display is only around 10% of the power budget. The 5G connection usually takes more as I'm always on some call. I'd gladly take a phone that's just the same size and weight as Samsung S9, but has a giant battery and mainframe-level performance. I'd gladly pay the price of having to be connected, because I have to be and am connected anyways.