Today was the first day websites could publish their official reviews of the first major flagship of 2018 and so far so good for the Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+. We’ve grown accustomed to Samsung revamping its phone lineup every year, but 2018 seems to be a little different with the S lineup. The body is almost identical to last year’s phone, however, the biggest gripe of the S8 has been solved by moving the fingerprint reader to a more usable position on the back center of the phone. The display is as good as ever, with minor upgrades in brightness and color that keep it atop the crowd of great displayed smartphones. Internally the S9 and S9+ have been blessed with the latest processors, upgraded RAM, and most importantly a first of its kind dual aperture camera that auto adjusts to the lighting around you to get great shots no matter if it’s day or night.
If you’ve been dying to get the latest and greatest from Samsung, you know the official release date for the S9 and S9+ is set for March 16th. However, if you pre-order your S9 from Samsung.com, you are guaranteed to get it two days early on March 14th. You can also trade in your current phone for up to $350 off, but remember it must be in good working condition. Your phone can have a financing plan attached to it, but you’re still on the hook to pay your provider the remainder of the balance.
If you can’t afford to pay for your phone in full, you can still order the S9 through your specific carrier on Samsung.com. There you can sign up for the respective payment plans, or you can buy the unlocked version which comes free of carrier bloatware. The unlocked model is also the cheapest as some carriers, not T-Mobile, have decided to jack up the price for no good reason except to suck more money out of you. The smaller S9 pricing starts at $719.99, while the larger S9+ starts at $839.99.
We used to highly recommend picking up insurance for all glass Samsung phones as repairs used to cost up to $300 per side sans protection. Samsung wised up and made repairs for its all glass phones a bit more reasonable. For the large display Note 8 and S8+ screen replacements cost $199 while rear panels cost $75. The smaller S8 display replacement costs $189 and the rear panel costs $75 and can take up to seven business days to repair.
Samsung’s Premium Care+ insurance costs $11.99 per month, for a total cost of $287.86 over the course of 24 months. Even with insurance, accidental damage claims come with a $99 deductible with a maximum of three events per year which can be more costly depending on how accident prone you are.
If you want your S9 or S9+ before everyone else, now is the time to pre-order directly from Samsung.com.