The Samsung Galaxy S9 was revealed at this year's MWC tech conference, and secured a solid four-star rating from our reviews manager, Jon Bray. It might be a great mobile phone, but the question is, could it be worth upgrading if you have a Galaxy S8, or even the Galaxy S7?

In some ways, the Galaxy S9 is a serious step up from last year's effort. In particular, its new 12-megapixel f/1. 5 rear camera performs more effective in low light than its predecessor. Its new Exynos 9810 processor also promises significantly faster performance.

Yet , the Galaxy S9 looks a lot like last year's S8 and rather than reinventing the wheel, builds on previous accomplishments. Consider the truth that Samsung's latest flagship will cost you? 739 SIM-free - which is? 60 more than the original launch price of the Galaxy S8 and as much as? 230 more than its current price - and it becomes very tricky to know which phone to buy.

To help you assess if you really need the refinements that include the Samsung Galaxy S9, or whether you should opt for last year's Galaxy S8, we have put together this helpful assessment between the two latest generations of Galaxy phone.

The Galaxy S8 and S9 look so alike that you'll probably struggle to tell them apart. Simply because it's done many times in past times, Samsung may have only made minor changes to the S8's design, and that is certainly no bad thing because the S8 is still one of the best-looking phones we've seen. For the S9, the top and lower part bezels have been reduced in size ever so slightly, so its screen-to-body ratio is slightly higher than the S8.

Normally, it really is almost the same phone as the S8. There's a 5. 8in 18. For more on galaxy s8 instructions have a look at the web page. 5: 9 QHD+ (2, 960 x 1, 440) display like the one seen in Samsung's previous flagship, which looks brilliant. Along the bottom of the telephone, you'll find an USB Type-C port and a 3. 5mm headphone jack (hurrah! ) and the right side, you will find an electric power button, volume rocker and dedicated Bixby button, just like on the S8. Both phones share the same microSD and nano-SIM card slot and also feature IP68 dust- and water-resistance.

Essentially, the telephones look so similar that neither speculate if this trade the advantage over the other.

The main distinctions between the Galaxy S9 and the S8 are on the inside. The S9 is powered by an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor - although UK models come prepared with Samsung's 2. 7GHz Exynos 9810 equivalent - paired with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, expandable via microSD.

As the Galaxy S8 also features 4GB of RAM MEMORY, the S9's new cpu makes it much faster than its predecessor. In reality, it's the speediest Android handset we've tested from any manufacturer so far.

It scored 3, 659 and 8, 804 on single and multi-core Geekbench 4 tests, which represents improvements of 45% and 25% over the Galaxy S8. 2 weeks . similar tale with GPU performance, too. Running GFX Bench's onscreen and off-screen Manhattan 3. 0 test, the Galaxy S9 achieved average body rates of 45fps and 77fps at native quality, compared to the S8's 40fps and 60fps uses.

However, all this run takes its toll on the Galaxy S9's battery life. With the screen set to our standard 170cd/m2 brightness and flight function enabled, we were able to watch 14hrs and 23mins of video before battery levels fell toned. This is a solid report, but it's some two and a half hours behind the S8.

Which in turn phone is the right one for you will therefore rely upon how you use it. If you want plenty of power and speed above everything more, then opt for the new Galaxy S9. However, if you'd rather have slightly longer between charges, then the S8 is the better choice.