Samsung A9 Star review: A powerful player focusing on the young market

IT168 Review For the younger generation who grew up in the Internet environment, the social attributes of mobile phones have become increasingly prominent. Taking pictures, entertainment and a fresh sense of technology are often the key to their choice of mobile phones. As the consumption power of this group increases, mobile phone manufacturers pay more and more attention to their needs and launch targeted products to win their favor.

Samsung recently launched the new Galaxy A9 Star, which uses the consumer demand of young people as a breakthrough to create a product that is different from the past. Let’s learn more about it through evaluation.

First, let’s sort out the hardware configuration of Samsung Galaxy A9 Star through a table.

Main parameters of Samsung A9 Star

Operating system

SamsungExperience, based on Android 8.1

Network standard

Full Netcom, dual SIM card and dual standby

Body size

162.4 x 77.0 x 7.6mm

Weight

191g

6.3-inch 2220*1080 resolution 19:9 full screen

Main camera

16 million pixels + 24 million pixels F1.7 aperture< /p>

Front camera

24MP F2.0 aperture

Processor

Snapdragon 660 up to 2.2Ghz

RAM: 4GB ROM: 64GB

Features

AI portrait, face recognition, Samsung Pay

Battery

3700mAh (not replaceable)

Body color

Night, Day

Listing price

2999 yuan

The appearance of the "flat version Note 8"

Continuing the "full screen" theme in 2018, the mid-to-high-end models released in the first half of the year all chose "bangs" screen", but Samsung is an exception. The flagship Galaxy S9 series still features full-view curved screens. The mid-range Galaxy A9 Star has returned to a relatively traditional full-screen solution: elongating the screen and narrowing the bezel and chin.

Samsung Galaxy A9 Star uses its own 6.3-inch Super AMOLED screen, 18.5:9 ratio, 2220 x 1080 resolution, supports AOD, and the display effect maintains Samsung's consistently high level of color restoration. Vivid, high contrast, and still has a good look and feel under strong light. Although this screen does not reach 2K resolution, under the UI adapted by Samsung, the graininess of the fonts is not obvious, and there is no discomfort in daily use.

Compared with the popular "notch screen", the screen of Samsung Galaxy A9 Star is more complete. With the large rounded corners and the square outline of the whole machine, it reflects a certain beauty of symmetry. This kind of symmetry has become a stereotype in Samsung's flagship products in recent years, so from some perspectives, the Samsung Galaxy A9 Star still smells like Note 8, but it is just a "flat version".

In addition, Samsung Galaxy A9 Star retains the 3.5mm headphone jack and uses a Type-C interface.

Awkward fingerprint position

In terms of body design, Samsung Galaxy A9 Star adopts a mature "sandwich" structure, double-sided 2.5D glass + aluminum alloy middle frame. The dual cameras on the back are arranged vertically and are located on the upper left side of the fuselage. However, I don’t know for what purpose. The fingerprint recognition module is designed to be almost parallel to the camera, which is better than the traditional rear-mounted fingerprint sensor. The position is further up, making it difficult to reach when holding it with one hand, making it awkward to use.

Fortunately, the most frequently used unlocking function has been replaced by the face. Fingerprints are only used in low-frequency scenarios such as payment and encryption. The awkward fingerprint position has limited impact on daily use.

Friends who have used the Galaxy S8/S9 series know that Samsung relies on pressure-sensitive touch + linear motors to create a mature full-screen interactive experience. The virtual Home button is integrated with a pressure sensor. Pressing the area while the screen is inactive will directly light up the screen and unlock it, accompanied by vibration feedback, as if it is pressed, making up for the lack of "confirmation feeling" of the virtual button.

However, Samsung Galaxy A9 Star is not equipped with pressure-sensitive touch + linear motor. The virtual home button under the screen can only be awakened by long pressing. It lacks vibration feedback. Sometimes I don’t even know that I am Whether the button is pressed in the right position lacks the "confirmation feeling" of pressing, greatly reducing the experience.

Understand your Bixby better

Samsung Galaxy A9 Star integrates Bixby artificial intelligence, and has a special Bixby button on the left side of the fuselage. Press to call Bixby directly, and long press to speak Interaction, which is consistent with flagship-level products, ensures the Bixby experience on A9 Star.

From actual experience, Bixby’s voice segmentation of long sentences is relatively natural, does not sound jerky, and the logic of the language has also been strengthened. It can be analyzed based on the semantics, context and other factors before and after. , to respond more accurately.

To give a simple example, the author asked Bixby "How is the weather today?" Bixby will call up the weather forecast and announce the weather by voice. At this time, if you want to continue to know the weather tomorrow, you only need to ask "tomorrow" What?", Bixby will naturally connect to a command to understand this command, and directly broadcast tomorrow's weather. It can be seen that the interaction with Bixby is not a mechanical repetition of instructions, but is obviously closer to communication between people.

Comprehensive and convenient AI experience

What is exciting is that Bixby can bring about changes in the way mobile phones interact, making it possible to "click and speak", not only involving system applications, but also It even supports the operation of some third-party applications, such as WeChat, Alipay, Weibo, ofofo* bike sharing, etc. When you are bored, saying "Open WeChat Moments" to Bixby will jump directly to WeChat Moments. Saying "Send XXX a red envelope of XXX yuan" will jump directly to the WeChat red envelope payment verification page, and even the amount of the red envelope has been filled in. Well, you only need to swipe your iris to pay successfully, completely freeing your hands.

There are currently 17 third-party applications optimized for Bixby. The commonly used Weibo, WeChat, and Alipay are all supported, as well as bicycle sharing, video, music, maps, shopping and other applications. Basically Can meet daily needs. In the future, Samsung Bixby will also have in-depth cooperation with other applications to cover more applications.

In addition to voice, Bixby integrates computer vision capabilities, thus creating Bixby Vision. Whenever we encounter new things in our lives, Bixby can identify them at a glance, making it easier to understand them in depth. The entrance to Bixby vision is hidden in the camera. Once turned on, Bixby instantly becomes a smart AI that can recognize objects and text, and support corresponding translations in multiple languages.

Bixby also has Easter eggs

Bixby incorporates many Easter eggs, such as improvised music. Say "Hi Bixby, I want to compose music" to Bixby, and Bixby will immediately provide you with several styles and genres to choose from. After I make my choice, I can freely draw a few curves, and Bixby will be able to compose improvised music based on these curves, which is very fresh. .

At the same time, Bixby also includes the voice of spokesperson Hua Chenyu. Say the corresponding password to Bixby to wake it up, and let Hua Chenyu greet you, sing, etc., which is very interesting.

Taking pictures is unambiguous

As for the camera, Samsung Galaxy A9 Star is unambiguous. It has a rear dual camera of 16 million + 24 million pixels, both with F 1.7 large aperture and supporting PDAF phase. Focus. Among them, the 16-megapixel camera is the main workhorse of daily imaging. The 24-megapixel secondary camera is responsible for imaging in portrait mode on the one hand. On the other hand, it supports "pixel four-in-one" technology to ensure more light sensitivity in dark light and improve the quality of night shots. . The two cameras will intelligently switch according to the ambient light environment to ensure the best imaging effect.

From the parameter point of view, the camera of Samsung Galaxy A9 Star has certain characteristics. Below we use the sample to interpret its imaging capabilities.

In a well-lit environment, the Samsung A9 Star has accurate color reproduction, and the resolution of 16 million pixels is sufficient. Consistent with Samsung's customary adjustment, the brightness of the picture will be guaranteed first, so there is an occasional tendency to overexpose, such as the exposed bark of the parrot sample.

In terms of macro, Samsung A9 Star has no surprises. It focuses accurately and quickly. The subject of the sample is in focus and the background is blurred naturally.

The performance of Samsung A9 Star at night is also worthy of recognition. The picture brightness is sufficient, the details are preserved, the tolerance is relatively good, the noise is well suppressed, the smearing feeling is not obvious, and the look and feel is good.

In portrait mode, Samsung A9 Star's edge cutout of characters is relatively accurate, and the background blur is natural without any flaws, and the degree of blur can be modified at any time in the later stage.

As for the front camera, Samsung A9 Star uses a 24-megapixel camera, and specially adds a studio light effect function, which can simulate left and right side lights, front test lights, right side lights and other effects in real time. It is reported that these lights The effects are all adjusted by professional photographers, making the facial features of the portrait stand out and the photo more artistic.

On the whole, Samsung A9 Star continues Samsung’s strong performance in imaging. Although there is a gap with flagship first-class products, it is definitely in an advantageous position compared with products of the same level.

See Snapdragon 660 again

Samsung Galaxy A9 Star is equipped with the Snapdragon 660 mobile platform, which is also Qualcomm’s strongest Snapdragon 600 series product at the moment and is ranked among the products in the same price range. It is widely used and has accumulated a good reputation. Snapdragon 660 uses the Kryo 260 semi-custom architecture and has built-in Spectra ISP, Hexgon DSP, X12 LTE Modem, etc., making breakthroughs in computing performance, image processing, and practical experience.

The Snapdragon 660 uses a 14nm FinFET process, an 8-core Kryo 260 architecture, a 4+4 dual-cluster design, a maximum operating frequency of 2.2GHz, and a built-in Adreno 512 GPU. It is worth noting that the Snapdragon 660 does not use the ARM public version architecture like the Snapdragon 625. It introduces the Kryo 260 semi-custom architecture for the first time, which has better performance in terms of performance and power consumption.

We take AnTuTu’s running scores as an example. We can see that the Snapdragon 660 easily breaks through 130,000 points. The GeekBench test also has single-core 1,600 and multi-core 5,900 scores. The CPU performance is on par with the former flagship platform Snapdragon. 820 is basically the same.

It is worth mentioning that the 8-core Snapdragon 660 has inherent advantages over the 4-core Snapdragon 820. This is not only reflected in the multi-core running score advantage, but also in the actual experience. middle. Multi-core means that more thread tasks can be processed at the same time, and it can run smoothly without lag in scenarios such as application startup and task switching that require multi-thread calls.

As for the gaming experience, Snapdragon 660 already supports the high frame rate mode of "Honor of Kings" and provides multi-thread optimization, running smoothly without any pressure. For high-performance mobile games such as Chicken Fighting, the Snapdragon 660 is limited by GPU performance, and it is relatively difficult to run high-definition games. It is recommended to run them with medium special effects.

Summary

From a product perspective, Samsung Galaxy A9 Star is a mature product. Snapdragon 660 and 24 million front and rear dual cameras are the current mainstream standards. Its imaging performance It is not inferior to any product in the same price range, and has the same Bixby experience and NFC function as the flagship model. The price of 2,999 yuan shows a certain degree of sincerity. But fortunately, it has caught on with the full-screen trend, and its overall appearance is acceptable. Coupled with Hua Chenyu’s endorsement and Samsung’s brand influence, this phone will have good competitiveness and is worthy of everyone’s consideration.