I've just come back from Samsung's booth at Mobile World Congress here in Barcelona, and I've got one of the new Galaxy S9 phones with me.
Don't worry, they know I have it.
And we are going to unbox this together.
We're actually going to unbackpack it also because this is how I brought it over here.
So come on over, we'll take a look.
I actually wrapped it up in my scarf to protect the edges from getting dinged in my backpack.
And because it's a long way from the convention center here to my hotel.
So here we go, we've got the Galaxy S9+.
This is the 64GB version, and this is actually a UK edition.
I'll be getting the US version later.
The box is black.
It looks really similar in design so far to previous Galaxy models.
You can see that the writing is this sort of metallic blue that says S9 plus.
Does that mean the phone is blue?
Nope, unfortunately it is Midnight Black.
But I begged and pleaded for the purple version, or at least the coral blue color, or at least silver, and we have black.
So it will be a little bit hard to see some of those details but we'll do the best that we can.
Here's the rest of the box.
You've got your basic specs on the back, not a whole lot to see here.
Anyway, we're gonna take the sleeve off.
Just slides right off here.
Plop it down and you've got, again, some more very similar box design.
it kind of slides out through a tab on the side.
And then it will unwrap.
So let's unwrap this.
And on the table it goes.
So now we've got the little tab with information.
It looks like there's a SIM card holder in here as well, See, there's our SIM tool.
This is what we would use to put the SIM card in.
Quick start guide.
This is all the usual basic stuff.
I'm not really excited about that.
Do not accept if the seal is broken.
[MUSIC]
Okay, well, we'll just keep going.
All right, tipping out the phone.
I'm getting ahead of myself here.
The phone is wrapped in plastic, this is always really satisfying.
Seriously one of my favorite parts is taking off all the plastic, because I just Is not standard there.
So interesting, it's not covering the edge.
And see the sticker on the back, good.
Good, no residue there, very minimal, that's kind of nice.
And then I check on the edges This could take forever.
So the sticker on the bottom, it's kind of going around the port.
So you can see there's still a headset jack on this phone.
That's a major selling Feature for some.
And Samsung missed no opportunity to make fun of Apple, especially, and other phone makers that had skipped that jack.
Okay, so now we've got the phone.
It's unwrapped.
You can see it's the S9 plus because of the dual cameras on the back.
The finger print sensor that's underneath the display.
Then we, of course, have the heart rate monitor over here.
There's a new special feature.
It not just takes your heart rate, but it can also kind of check your blood pressure.
So that's new there.
On the exterior, we have the Bixby button here on the side.
And, no, unfortunately that cannot be mapped to open any other apps.
Samsung wants that for Bixby only.
Volume button.
SIM card holder for that SIM card tool.
That will come out there.
Power button along the side.
And then the ports we talked about.
So we've got a microphone down here, we've got the headset jack, and we've got the USB port.
Let's turn it on.
[MUSIC]
Start up screen, pretty basic.
No fireworks yet.
It's pretty usual graphic for Samsung.
I wonder how much battery this device has, right now getting started.
Well, while we let that do it's thing, let's see what else is in the box.
So, we've got the little separator, I mentioned, okay, I guess this is a European charger Here we go.
So that's adaptive fast charging, so this will be fast charging for the phone.
It is, of course, wirelessly chargeable as well, but you'll have to buy that charging pad, after the fact.
Here, we've got a USB connector.
So USB-A on one side, the USB-C These actually come on handy more often than you would think.
[MUSIC]
Further destroying the box.
Nothing there.
I want the good stuff.
I want the headset.
This is an AKG wired headset to go with that wired headset jack.
Samsung acquired the company, which is why these way better than average headsets come with the phone.
Otherwise they retail for about $100.
There are little stickers on the ends of these too.
And since I really don't like stickers we're just gonna pull those off as well, because why not?
[MUSIC]
On the sound front, one of the things the S9 Plus and S9 come with is Dolby software on there, that will make the phone sound a lot better when you use not a headset, but the speaker at the top and then the microphone at the bottom.
But if you do wanna plug in There you go.
Comes right in the box.
We also have two other ear tip sizes.
We just had a little mini crash there.
But we have two extra ear tip sizes in the case the ones that come on the end are too big or too small.
And finally, there is a USB A to Z cable.
So this is what you are going to plug in to your charging brick then plug in to the wall.
Of course, I like it when they are not attached because you can use it for a number of things.
Take out the cable, stick it into your computer, charge your phone that way.
Or just connect it to transfer files.
So that is pretty much it for the unboxing, I've made a mess of things.
I'm going to go and setup this phone and then we will be back with more comparisons live between the Galaxy S9+ and the Galaxy S8.
Tune in for more.
