Samsung officially unveils Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus release date and specifications (and it can be yours from £33 per month)

The follow-up to the Galaxy S8 has finally been unveiled at MWC in Barcelona

The first deals are in

Just an hour after the Samsung Galaxy S9 was officially confirmed, the first deals have rolled in. Available for £739 (the S9) or £869 (the S9 Plus) SIM-free, most people will be looking for some kind of contract. Here are the early offerings.

Sky Mobile leads the pack in terms of value, offering the Galaxy S9 from just £33 per month on its Swap24 plan. Admittedly this includes a fairly slim amount of data to play with (500MB), but anyone preordering before 15 March will also get 10GB data added to their Piggybank, and this rolls over each month for up to three years.

Alternatively, EE is also stocking the Galaxy S9 – albeit at a higher price of £53 per month with an upfront cost of £150. This package includes 4GB of data, along with unlimited texts and minutes.

Three, on the other hand, is offering the long-awaited handset for £52 per month with an upfront cost of £79. For that price, you get a massive 30GB of data per month, as well as 12 months’ worth of Netflix to enjoy on that big screen. You can cut the monthly cost down to £40 if you can live with 1GB of data, too.

O2 is offering the Samsung Galaxy S9 from £44 per month with an upfront cost of £210, or £49 per month with an upfront cost of £90, both with 1GB of data.

At Carphone Warehouse, you can save up to £390 on a SIM-free handset if you trade in an old Samsung phone. On contract, it’s offering the S9 at £37 per month with 12GB of data with an upfront cost of £250; or £49 per month for 20GB of data with a £100 upfront cost.

Carry on reading to see if it’s worth preordering…

The Samsung Galaxy S9 is finally official. At the Unpacked event ahead of MWC 2018 in Barcelona, the South Korean manufacturer has provided all the juicy details about its latest flagship smartphones: the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus.

While last year’s Galaxy S8 was a more bold design change, this year’s is purely iterative, but when the S8 looked as beautiful as it did, you can’t really blame Samsung for sticking with a winning formula. The Galaxy S9 has a 5.8in 1.5:9 QHD+ display with a resolution of 2,960 x 1,440, meaning it packs 567.5ppi (pixels per inch). The Galaxy S9 Plus, meanwhile, has a 6.2in display, meaning it drops to 530ppi.

Size aside, the handsets are essentially identical. Both are powered by the octa-core 2.7GHz Exynos 9810 processor, backed by 4GB RAM and 64GB of built-in storage – which can be topped up with up to 400GB of microSD space, should it not be sufficient.

So, bumped-up specifications aside, what does Samsung bring to the party that wasn’t present this time last year? The innovation is all in the camera, which involves a 12-megapixel shutter on the rear of the handset with a f/1.5 and f/2.4 aperture, optical image stablisation and super-slow-motion video capture at 960fps.

This change gives the camera 12-shot multi-frame noise reduction, and hands the Galaxy S9 family the widest aperture ever seen on a smartphone – which should be wonderful for low-light conditions.

Worth equal celebration is the fact that Samsung has seen fit to give the 3.5mm headphone jack a stay of execution. It also comes with stereo speakers and a 3D emoji system – basically the Samsung version of Animoji recently seen on the iPhone X.