Samsung Gets it Right with the Galaxy S9 (Premium)

While some tech pundits are complaining that the Samsung Galaxy S9 is just more of the same, I see things quite differently. This is what leadership looks like, folks.

And it's what Apple does, too, when it creates a product that is so innovative, and so damn good, that the simple act of improving on it becomes difficult. And pointless. Why mess with success?

More to the point, why ruin a good thing? The near tall and bezel-less design that Samsung first started championing a year ago with the S8 has yet to be surpassed, despite multiple attempts from every major phone maker on earth.

For example, both Essential and Apple shipped phones in 2017 that feature notches that intrude into the screen; in Apple's case, ludicrously and distractingly so. (And Apple's "all screen" iPhone X actually has pretty significant bezels, too.) Meanwhile, other firms---Google, OnePlus, and many others---have aped the tall and bezel-less design of the S8, yes. But none have duplicated the elegant, curved sides of Samsung's displays. The company's flagships still stand above the rest of the industry.

If we forgive Apple using the same designs for several years each, and we do---some even applaud them for this---then I'm curious why anyone would be down on Samsung for having the audacity to take a design from one year ago and then only evolve it subtly for a new generation of devices. This doesn't make any sense.

Here's Apple, marketing the iPhone 8 as being "all-new," when in fact it's the fourth rendition of a bland design that debuted in 2014. But when Samsung presents the elegant---and, again, still unchallenged---new Galaxy S9, how does this firm market it?

"The Camera. Reimagined."

Right. Samsung doesn't pretend that the phone's design is "all-new," it focuses on the what really is all-new in this device: The camera system. Which, I'll remind you, is the number one selling point of flagship smartphones these days. And when you consider how the year-old Galaxy S8 fairs competitively with the handsets that have shipped since then, the camera emerges as the one area in which Samsung could make some meaningful improvements. (This is a subtle distinction, frankly, as the S8 camera is excellent.)

So last year, Samsung stepped above the rest of the industry in offering a unique and innovative design that has yet to be matched by its competitors. And this year, it is attempting to leapfrog the competition in yet another meaningful way.

And, folks. This is huge. A potential game-changer, if you will.

As many of you probably know, smartphone cameras have evolved in ways both small (optical zoom, sparingly) and big (dual camera systems) over the past few years. So what Samsung has done here is finally catching up to the notion of dual cameras---what we think of now as a camera system---while leaping past others by offering mechanically-adjustable apertures.

Mechanically what what?

To date, smartphone cameras apertures have been fixe...

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