Samsung S9+ or the Note 8?

AlmostNotable · February 25, 2018

I bought a second hand S8+ for £450 and 6 months later the phone got blacklisted and cannot be used anymore (not buying phones on ebay anymore). I loved the phone and want to buy something similar. I am an average user; some texting, social media, couple of apps, sometimes use the camera, store lecture notes/files. The Samsung S9+ is going for £869 and the Note 8 is going for £680 on Amazon. Which phone should I buy? Is the S9+ worth the £191 upgrade? Will bixby and some new features (ARemoji, camera app, etc) be updated on the Note 8 or are they exclusively for the S9+? Thanks

Lurick · February 25, 2018

The S9+ isn't out yet, did you mean the S8+?

I would suggest looking at the Pixel 2 XL or the LG V30 as well, just to compare.

AlmostNotable · February 25, 2018

Just now, Lurick said:

The S9+ isn't out yet, or did you mean the S8+?

I would suggest looking at the Pixel 2 XL or the LG V30 as well, just to compare.

S9+ was announced today, I think you can pre-order it for next week in UK.

February 25, 2018

Get the s9+

Snikerdoodlz · February 26, 2018

Raise hell on eBay. You were sold a working phone and it shouldn't be blacklisted (probably stopped paying the contract).

edit: Sorry, forgot to mention eBay Money Back Guarantee.

Jasmin · February 26, 2018

I'm right now looking at a similar situation. I was planning to get the Note 8, but decided to wait for new lineup announcement - worst case scenario it would have dropped the Note 8 prices - and it did.

I can give you my thoughts on the subject, from the perspective of future buyer:

Note 8 is a class in on itself - larger screen + improved multitasking (which is again easier because of the larger screen), has a stylus which lets you scribble on the screen without turning it on (big plus for me), has dual sim (again useful if you dont want to carry work phone about), dual camera. The big minus is an ancient single-speaker-to-the-bottom setup, which annoys me greatly as a past HTC One user.

S9 (and S9+) is new, so better android support from samsung (they drop the ball extremely quickly), better low-light camera, stereo speakers (finally, though with an odd setup) aaand that's about it.

They both have the bixby button, which majority of users hate, as it's an inferior google assistant basically. I believe samsung will keep pushing bixby updates to all devices - if for nothing else, just to keep disabling the button remappers

If you can't wait (the missing the phone part im assuming) think whether you value the stereo speakers that much - thats the 191 quid premium you would be paying. Note 8 is already a massive upgrade over s8+.

As for myself, i will wait for note 9, hoping for stereo speakers reaching the mastermultitasker.