How Samsung’s New Galaxy S9 Compares to the iPhone X
February 26, 2018 by admin
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When Microsoft revealed a replacement to Windows 8, it skipped the number 9 and went straight to Windows 10. Apple’s iPhone 8 was followed by the iPhone X (pronounced “ten”). But Samsung refused to follow: The successor to its Galaxy S8 is the Galaxy S9 (and a larger S9 Plus), and it’s coming out in March.
The phone is critical for the company. Samsung needs to show it has the hardware and software chops to maintain its leadership in the Android market, while proving Apple isn’t king of smartphone design. Then there’s fending off rising Chinese competition from Huawei and reassuring investors that Vice Chairman Jay Y. Lee has the company’s future under control since his legal woes commanded global headlines.
But above all, Samsung needs to be better than the iPhone X in the eyes of consumers. Here’s how they compare.
Photography and Video
Great pictures are essential for any top-end phone. Samsung has equipped the S9 Plus with two cameras: a wide-angle, and a telephoto (like the iPhone X) and both capture at a resolution of 12 megapixels (also like the iPhone X). Samsung even mounts the two lenses of the S9 Plus vertically — something Apple also does with its flagship.
But the big difference may come with low-light performance. When you take a picture with the S9, you actually capture 12 images simultaneously. The phone then compares all exposures to create a single shot that includes all the detail you want, but with as little grain and noise as possible. It’s similar to how the iPhone X processes high-dynamic range photos, taking three images at different levels of light exposure to combine them to produce a richer, more balanced image.
Samsung’s decision to expand this technology in the S9 compliments the physical camera lens, which has a wider aperture to let in more light — an f1.5 aperture compared to Apple’s f1.8. In the camera world, that small change can make a big difference.
Screen and Design
Most features are the same across S9 and S9 Plus models, aside from the camera system. But the latter version is larger: it uses a 6.2-inch display compared to the regular S9’s 5.8-inch offering. The large and small variants weigh 189 grams and 163 grams (a little under six ounces) respectively.
The iPhone X weighs 174 grams — right in the middle of Samsung’s two models. But the screen is one big difference. Apple’s famous “notch” atop the iPhone X’s display is not something Samsung adopted. Instead, the S9 screen is an uninterrupted rectangle. The bezels at the top and bottom of the display are thin, but Apple’s are thinner. Consumers will have a choice: slimmer bezels but with a notch, or no notch but slightly larger bezels.
Horsepower and Performance
In the U.S., Samsung will equip the Galaxy S9 with Qualcomm’s latest and greatest system-on-a-chip, the Snapdragon 845. On paper, it includes a CPU that runs at speeds up to 2.8GHz and has eight processing cores. In other regions, such as Europe, Samsung will use its own Exynos processor, not Qualcomm’s.
Until the phone gets released for review it’s impossible to say how well the Galaxy S9 will perform compared to its own international variant, let alone to the iPhone X. Apple’s phone uses its own A11 Bionic chip, which runs at up to about 2.4GHz, using six processing cores. But historically Apple’s custom-designed silicon, its integration with the iOS software it powers, together with the rest of the hardware in the phone, has given it the edge over competitors whose numbers, on paper, appear greater. What’s safe to say is that both phones should handle anything realistically thrown at them.
Features and Security
Apple has never let customers expand internal storage of the iPhone with removable SD memory. But Samsung does with the S9. It’ll have 64GB built in, but it supports Micro SD cards with up to 400GB of additional capacity. Apple will sell you up to 256GB of internal storage when you choose an iPhone X, but after that you’ll need to rely on cloud-based file-hosting, such as iCloud or Dropbox.
But Apple users will most likely still feel their iPhone X hardware is in the lead, as Samsung is continuing to use fingerprint sensors and iris scanning for unlocking the latest Galaxy. That isn’t thought to be as sophisticated as Apple’s system, which maps the contours of a human face to identify an individual and was deemed secure enough to no longer require fingerprints at all. Samsung, instead, also includes a fingerprint reader on the rear of the phone.
Samsung has also taken the idea of Apple’s animated emojis, which use the front-facing camera to let users animate facial features of a unicorn and more by moving their own face. Samsung is introducing a similar feature with the S9, but rather than using existing emojis it will let you create an avatar of yourself and animate that instead. These can be shared as videos of animated GIFs via email or text message.
Price and Verdict
Apple and Samsung both know people are keeping the phones for longer, so manufacturers need to have those that do upgrade to pay more. Apple’s iPhone X starts at $999 — $200 more than the iPhone 8. Samsung is also increasing the price of its flagship, bumping the S9 up $100, to $950 in the case of the Plus model.
These phones are the most expensive flagships either has made within their categories, and on paper they share remarkable similarities. Aesthetically, there’s a bigger difference between an iPhone 8 and an iPhone X, particularly in terms of raw industrial design, screen size and display quality. Samsung’s S9 offers less of a noticeable upgrade physically compared to the S8, but improved photographic features and raw horsepower will be key selling points to potential upgraders.
As for the customer on the fence over whether to defect from one manufacturer to another, it’ll be a trade-off between screen format and bezels, expandable storage, low-light photography and physical look and feel. Elsewhere we’re still in the realm of very attractive slabs of glass and metal, despite record highs in cost.
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California Democrats Decline To Endorse Another Term For Sen. Dianne Feinstein
February 26, 2018 by admin
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Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., speaks at the 2018 California Democrats State Convention on Saturday in San Diego.
Denis Poroy/AP
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Denis Poroy/AP
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., speaks at the 2018 California Democrats State Convention on Saturday in San Diego.
Denis Poroy/AP
Updated at 1:10 p.m. ET
A version of this story was originally posted by member station KQED.
Before U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein could finish her speech at the California Democratic Party convention Saturday, the music began playing to indicate she had used her allotted time.
She kept talking. The music got louder. “I guess my time is up,” Feinstein conceded as what sounded like a 1940s movie score continued playing.
Without missing a beat, supporters of her opponent, state Sen. Kevin de León echoed her statement in a chant: “Your time is up! Your time is up!” — a not-so-subtle reference to Feinstein’s 25 years in the U.S. Senate.
It was a sign of things to come. The grass-roots Democratic activists gathered at the party’s annual convention in San Diego this weekend implicitly rebuked the state’s senior U.S. senator by denying her the party’s endorsement for her re-election bid.
Feinstein finished far behind de León, the top Democrat in the state Senate. De León received 54 percent of delegates’ votes to just 37 percent for Feinstein. It takes 60 percent to receive an endorsement.
While the lack of an endorsement certainly won’t keep Feinstein off the ballot, it’s a sign that grass-roots Democrats are eager to supplant leaders who are seen as too moderate and willing to compromise.
Democratic Party activists have never really been Feinstein’s people. In 1990, when she was running for governor, she came to the party convention and expressed her support for the death penalty, eliciting boos from the liberal crowd. She lost the party endorsement to John Van de Kamp but got the nomination anyway, ultimately losing the November election to Pete Wilson.
Feinstein has always been a little to the right of where the party’s activists are. Now, at age 84 and in her final campaign, Feinstein is once again at odds with progressives, despite her efforts to move left by more strongly opposing President Trump’s agenda.
She said the Senate Appropriations Committee, which she sits on, would never approve $25 billion for Trump’s wall along the Mexico boarder. But minutes later, de León’s team sent texts noting that Feinstein had just voted for exactly that as part of the “Common Sense Coalition” immigration plan that failed to get through the Senate.
The bill would not only have provided a path to citizenship for so-called Dreamers, people in the U.S. illegally who were brought here as children, but it also included $25 billion for the wall.
Feinstein also reminded the crowd of her longstanding leadership on gun control, including her success against long odds at getting an assault weapons ban signed into law in 1994.
In his speech to the convention, de León reminded the crowd that his opponent hasn’t always been a reliable liberal. “Democrats, you’ll never have to guess where I stand,” de León said before noting that he has championed issues such as raising the minimum wage, single-payer health care and the environment.
“Moral clarity is always doing the right thing when no one is watching,” he said. “And it should never take a primary challenge to stand up for California values.”
As leader of the state Senate, De León has had his own problems of late, most notably criticism of his slow response to the sexual harassment scandal in Sacramento. And while an endorsement from the Democratic Party would have provided a boost, his campaign is also overshadowed by Feinstein’s huge advantages in name recognition and campaign cash. A recent poll from the Public Policy Institute of California had her leading de León by 46 percent to 17 percent.
Despite the boost for De León, the vote is in some ways a loss for him. Democratic campaign strategist Katie Merrill says he needed the endorsement much more than Feinstein.
“He was such a narrow path to the Senate, and he had to have this Democratic Party endorsement,” she said. “This was the one strategic thing he need to accomplish here and he did not accomplish it.”