Every so often, I like to boot up one of my older smartphones from back in the time tunnel. Handsets from the 2000s and 2010s have a certain character to them that modern devices simply lack, and I’m always curious to swipe through antiquated software and to see how it performs on years-old hardware.
Recently, I turned on my old Samsung Galaxy S9 for the first time in several years. Along with its larger S9+ sibling, the S9 was Samsung’s 2018 flagship Android phone offering, making it over eight years old at the time of writing. The phone served as a subtle refinement over the previous year’s Galaxy S8, itself a major hardware refresh from the company.
- Brand
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Samsung
- SoC
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Exynos 9810 / Qualcomm Snapdragon 845
- Display
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5.8-inch Super AMOLED (2960 x 1440)
- RAM
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4GB LPDDR4X RAM
- Storage
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64GB / 128GB / 256GB
- Battery
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3,000mAh
The Galaxy S9 is Samsung’s base-level Android flagship for 2018, serving as a refined continuation of the previous year’s S8 model.
Thankfully, my S9’s battery is still alive and kicking, albeit with rather poor endurance. I used the S9 as my daily driver for approximately two years, and it served as the center of my digital life for that entire time. With this in mind, it’s no surprise to see its battery in the state that it’s in. Thankfully, the rest of the phone remains in good condition, aside from the rear fingerprint sensor module which is somehow starting to peel away.
Looking at the Galaxy S9 wholistically and in retrospect, it has quickly become clear to me that the device is an all-time great. Its fit and finish, its design language, its feature set — it all comes together in a way that feels not only premium, but also distinctly Samsung. Curiously, I don’t get this same reassuring feeling when holding a modern Galaxy in my hand like, say, an S26 series device.
The Galaxy S9 still looks futuristic in 2026
What makes the Samsung Galaxy S9 stand out above all else is its exterior design. The phone’s display features 3D ‘waterfall’ edges, which became quite the trend in the years to follow. The rear glass is symmetrically curved, making for a lovely in-hand feel. The S9 is deceptively narrow thanks to these curves, and it looks brilliant when it catches the light just right.
Unfortunately, these very same curved edges result in light refraction when outdoors, in addition to a slightly distorted image and the peskiness of accidental taps and inputs when actively in use. For the most part, I miss the curved phone screen era — in one sense, I’m glad the trend is gone from a usability standpoint, but on the other hand, it adds so much flair and charm to the experience of using a mobile device.
What hasn’t aged quite as well is the S9’s bezels, which were boundary pushing in slimness for 2018, but are downright massive by 2026 standards. The glossy rear glass material choice has also aged poorly, with newer etched or matte glass solutions looking and feeling far nicer in my opinion. On the other hand, the rear-mounted fingerprint sensor remains perfectly placed (a big upgrade over its immediate predecessor’s placement), and the footprint of the device is what I’d describe as being a Goldilocks size.
A full-featured smartphone experience
Modern handsets lack many of the Galaxy S9’s bells and whistles
Beyond its edge display and its rear-mounted capacitive fingerprint sensor, the Samsung Galaxy S9 also features a number of other hardware additions that have fallen by the wayside in more recent years. The S9 includes a 3.5mm headphone jack, a microSD card slot, and a notification LED. Curiously, there’s no IR blaster here, even though many of its Android contemporaries still shipped with the feature at the time.
The S9 also directly inherited a couple of unique tricks up its sleeve from its predecessor, the S8. First up is the iris scanner, a unique biometric authentication method that previously also appeared on certain Windows Phone devices like the Microsoft Lumia 950 and 950 XL. In my experience, the scanner is finicky at best, and it doesn’t work well at all when under direct sunlight. It also requires you to hold the phone quite close to your face, adding friction to the experience when compared to modern-day facial unlock technologies.
The S9 also included the same pressure-sensitive home button as the S8, with three intensity levels available to choose from. This hidden home button is a unique inclusion, allowing you to hard-press even when in fullscreen mode to go back home, regardless of whether the on-screen navigation keys are visible. It also lets you to simply press down harder on the software home key at all times, which simulates the feel of pressing a physical button.
Personally, I love this hardware inclusion, even if its faux home button effect is less convincing than that of Apple’s iPhone 7 series. I’d have loved to have seen Samsung iterate on the feature with a next-generation version, though this wasn’t meant to be, as gesture controls soon took over the entirety of the mobile tech landscape.
Samsung’s best-ever Android flagship
Newer Galaxy S models can’t hold a candle to the S9
For as high-tech as modern Galaxy S flagships phones are, I can’t help but feel that they lack some of the pizzazz that made the Galaxy S9 and its S9+ counterpart such stellar product offerings. Newer Galaxy S phones all sort of meld together, perhaps out of industry maturity, and perhaps also out of Samsung’s removal of characteristic design elements like the curved screen and the pressure-sensitive home button.
As it currently stands, it’s nearly impossible to tell apart a Galaxy S24 from an S25 or an S26. It’s great that Samsung has consolidated and homed in on a formula that works, but I feel these newer models lack a lot of the charm that made their hardware ancestors so special and distinct.
I’d love to see Samsung revisit the S9’s design language within the modern context.
I’d love to see Samsung revisit the S9’s design language within the modern context, perhaps by reintroducing signature hardware elements and melding them together with modern specs and other quality-of-life additions. I reckon a Galaxy S9 with modern Android and One UI, a modern processor, an upgraded iris scanner, and an etched rear coating would turn an already great foundation into something entirely next-level.
Rumor has it that Apple, of all companies, is working behind the scenes on retooling the waterfall edge display concept with a new take on 3D curved glass. If Apple’s rumored iPhone 20 arrives with a quad-curved or micro-curved ‘Liquid Glass’ display, we might just see some cross-pollution in the form of a curved Galaxy S phone once more. While not a full S9 reboot, this would at least go a long way in bringing back some of the whimsy currently missing in Samsung’s 2026-era mobile portfolio.
