Samsung A9 star evaluation: the strength group focusing on the young market.

IT 168 Evaluation For the younger generation who grew up in the Internet environment, the social attributes of mobile phones are becoming more and more prominent. Photographing, entertainment and novelty of technology are often the keys to their choice of mobile phones. With the improvement of consumption power of this group, mobile phone manufacturers pay more and more attention to their needs and launch targeted products to win favor.

Recently, Samsung launched a brand-new Galaxy A9 Star, which is based on the consumer demand of young people, creating a product different from the past. Let's learn more through evaluation.

First, use a table to sort out the hardware configuration of Samsung Galaxy A9 Star.

Main parameters of Samsung A9 Star

operating system

SamsungExperience, based on Android 8. 1

Network standard

Full netcom, dual card dual standby

Fuselage size

162.4x77.0x7.6mm

weight

19 1g

screen

6.3 inch 2220* 1080 resolution 19:9 full screen

Main camera

160,000 pixels+24 million pixels F 1.7 aperture

front-facing camera

24 megapixel F2.0 aperture

processor

Snapdragon 660 has a maximum of 2.2Ghz.

Body memory

Memory: 4GB ROM: 64GB

eigenfunction

AI portrait, face recognition, Samsung Pay

battery

3700 mAh (non-replaceable)

Fuselage color

Extreme day and night

listed price

2999 yuan

The appearance of "Tablet Note 8"

Continuing the theme of "Full Screen" of 20 18, all the mid-and high-end models released in the first half of the year unanimously chose "Liu Haiping", but Samsung was an exception. The flagship Galaxy S9 series is still dominated by full-angle curved screens. When it comes to the mid-range Galaxy A9 Star, it returns to the relatively traditional full-screen scheme: lengthening the screen and narrowing the border chin.

Samsung Galaxy A9 Star adopts its own 6.3-inch Super AMOLED screen with a ratio of 18.5:9 and a resolution of 2220 x 1080, which supports AOD. The display effect has maintained Samsung's consistent high standard, vivid color reproduction and high contrast, and it still has a good impression under strong light. Although this screen does not reach the resolution of 2K, under the UI adapted by Samsung, the graininess of fonts is not obvious, and there is no discomfort in daily use.

Compared with the popular "Liu Haiping", this screen of Samsung Galaxy A9 Star is more complete, and with the cutting of large rounded corners and the square outline of the whole machine, it shows a certain symmetrical beauty. This symmetry has become a stereotype in Samsung's flagship products in recent years. So from some angles, Samsung Galaxy A9 Star still has the taste of Note 8, just a "flat version".

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

Awkward fingerprint position

In terms of fuselage design, Samsung Galaxy A9 Star adopts a mature "sandwich" structure with double-sided 2.5D glass and aluminum alloy middle frame. The two cameras on the back are vertically arranged and located at the upper left side of the fuselage. However, for some unknown purpose, the fingerprint identification module is designed to be almost parallel to the cameras, which is higher than the rear fingerprint position in traditional cognition. It is difficult to reach with one hand and it is very awkward to use.

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

Friends who have used Galaxy S8/S9 series know that Samsung has built a mature full-screen interactive experience through piezoelectric and linear motors. The virtual Home button integrates pressure sensing. When the screen is pressed heavily, the area will be unlocked directly, accompanied by vibration feedback, which makes up for the deficiency of virtual key "confirm".

However, Samsung Galaxy A9 Star is not equipped with touch-sensitive control+linear motor. The virtual Home button under the information screen can only be awakened by long press, and there is no vibration feedback. Sometimes you don't even know if you are in the right position, and the experience is greatly reduced.

Know you better, bixby.

Samsung Galaxy A9 Star incorporates Bixby artificial intelligence, and a Bixby button is specially set on the left side of the fuselage. Press it to call out Bixby directly, and long press it for voice interaction, which is consistent with the flagship product and ensures Bixby's experience in A9 star.

From the actual experience, Bixby's long sound sentences are more natural, not harsh, and the logic of the language has been strengthened. It can be analyzed by combining the semantic and contextual factors before and after, so as to make a more accurate reply.

To give a simple example, the author asked bixby, "What's the weather like today?" Bixby will call up the weather forecast and broadcast the weather by voice. At this time, if you want to know more about tomorrow's weather, just ask "What about tomorrow?" Bixby will naturally contact an order, understand this order, and directly broadcast tomorrow's weather. It can be seen that the interaction with Bixby is not mechanically repeating instructions, but obviously closer to the communication between people.

Comprehensive and convenient AI experience

What's exciting is that Bixby can change the way of mobile phone interaction, making it "easy to talk", not only involving system applications, but also supporting the operation of some third-party applications, such as WeChat, Alipay, Weibo and ofo bike sharing. When you are bored, say "open WeChat circle of friends" to Bixby and you will jump directly to WeChat circle of friends. Say "send XXX yuan red envelope to XXX" and you will jump directly to WeChat red envelope payment verification page. Even the amount of the red envelope is filled in, and you only need to brush your eyes to pay successfully, completely freeing your hands.

At present, there are 17 third-party applications optimized for Bixby, which support Weibo, WeChat, Alipay, bicycle sharing, video, music, maps, shopping and other applications, and can basically meet daily needs. In the future, Samsung Bixby will also cooperate with other applications in depth to cover more applications.

In addition to voice, Bixby also integrates computer vision functions, thus creating Bixby Vision. What new things are encountered in life, Bixby can identify them at a glance, which is convenient for in-depth understanding. Bixby's visual entrance is hidden in the camera. After it is turned on, Bixby instantly becomes an intelligent AI, which can recognize objects and people and support multi-language translation.

Bixby and eggs.

Bixby incorporates many eggs, such as improvisation. Say "Hello Bixby, I want to compose music" to Bixby, and Bixby will immediately offer several styles and genres to choose from. After the author makes a choice, he can draw several curves at will, and Bixby can improvise music according to this curve, which is very fresh.

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

Taking pictures is also unambiguous.

As for the camera, Samsung Galaxy A9 Star is also unambiguous. The dual cameras with16 million+24 million pixels are all F 1.7 large aperture, which supports PDAF phase focusing. Among them, the160,000 pixel camera is the main force of daily imaging, and the 24 million pixel sub-camera is responsible for portrait mode imaging on the one hand, and supports the "four-in-one pixel" technology on the other hand to ensure more exposure in dark light and improve the quality of night shooting. The two cameras will switch the ambient intelligence according to the ambient light to ensure the best imaging effect.

From the parameter point of view, the camera of Samsung Galaxy A9 Star has certain characteristics. Let's interpret its imaging strength through proofs.

In a well-lit environment, the color reproduction of Samsung A9 Star is accurate, and the resolution of16 million pixels is enough. Consistent with Samsung's customary training, the brightness of the picture will be the first to be guaranteed, so there will be occasional overexposure, such as the bark of a parrot sample exposed.

In macro, Samsung A9 star is not surprised, focusing is accurate and fast, the main body of the proof is focused, and the background is naturally blurred.

Samsung A9 Star's performance at night is also worthy of recognition. The brightness of the picture is sufficient, the details are also reserved, the tolerance is good, the noise is well suppressed, the smear feeling is not obvious, and the impression is good.

In portrait mode, the edge cutout of Samsung A9 Star is more accurate, the background is blurred naturally, and there is no serious injury. The blurring degree can be modified at any time in the later period.

On the front camera, Samsung A9 Star uses a 24-megapixel camera, especially adding the studio light effect function, which can simulate the effects of left and right lighting, predicted lighting and right lighting in real time. It is reported that these lighting effects are all adjusted by professional photographers, which makes people look more prominent and the photos more artistic.

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

See also Snapdragon 660.

Samsung Galaxy A9 Star is equipped with Snapdragon 660 mobile platform, which is also the strongest Snapdragon 600 series product in Qualcomm. It has been widely used in the same price products and accumulated a good reputation. Snapdragon 660 adopts Kryo 260 semi-custom architecture, with built-in Spectra ISP, Hexgon DSP, X 12 LTE modem, etc. It has made a breakthrough in computing performance, image processing and practical experience.

Snapdragon 660 adopts 14nm FinFET technology, 8-core Kryo 260 architecture, 4+4 dual-cluster design, with the highest running frequency of 2.2GHz and built-in Adreno 5 12 GPU. It is worth noting that Snapdragon 660 does not adopt public ARM architecture like Snapdragon 625, but introduces semi-customized Kryo 260 architecture for the first time, which has better performance and power consumption.

Taking Ann Bunny's running score as an example, we can see that Snapdragon 660 easily broke through 1.3 million, and GeekBench also scored 1.6 million for single core and 5900 for multi-core. CPU performance is basically the same as the flagship platform Xiaolong 820.

It is worth mentioning that the 8-core of Snapdragon 660 has inherent advantages over the 4-core of Xiaolong 820, which is not only reflected in the operational advantages of multi-core, but also in the actual experience. Multi-core means that more thread tasks can be processed at the same time, and it is smooth and not stuck in scenarios that require multi-thread calls such as application startup and task switching.

As for the game experience, Snapdragon 660 has supported the glory of the king's high frame rate mode, and provided multi-thread optimization, running smoothly without any pressure. Snapdragon 660, a high-performance mobile game like Chicken Eating, is limited by the performance of GPU, so it is relatively difficult to run with high image quality. It is recommended to run with medium special effects.

abstract

From the product level, Samsung Galaxy A9 Star is a mature product. Snapdragon's 6.6 million and 24 million dual cameras are the mainstream level at present, and the imaging performance is not inferior to any products at the same price. It also has Bixby experience and NFC function consistent with the flagship model, and the price of 2999 yuan shows some sincerity. But fortunately, I got a ride on the full screen, and the overall value is acceptable. Coupled with Hua Chenyu's endorsement and Samsung's brand influence, this mobile phone will have its good competitiveness, which is worth considering.