The Samsung Galaxy A9 (2018) is the world's first rear quad-camera smartphone ever! BUT, does the camera performance justify the premium price?
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| The rear quad cameras of the A9 (2018) |
The rear cameras are composed of a 24MP f/1.7, a 10MP f/2.4 telephoto 2x optical zoom, a 8MP f/2.4 ultra-wide, and a 5MP f/2.2 depth sensor with autofocus and LED flash. while the front facing camera is a 24MP F2.0 with LED and screen flash!
The rear camera also has the new 'Scene optimizer' tab along side the Auto, Live Focus, Beauty, Pro, Slow Motion, AR Emoji, and Hyperlapse.
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| 8MP f/2.4 wide lens with 120 degrees field of view |
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| 24MP f/1.7 standard lens |
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| 10MP f/2.4 Telephoto |
In the auto tab, you are given a slider that slides to each of the three different cameras that you want to use.
While the front facing camera has the usual Selfie Focus, Selfie, AR Emoji and Wide-Selfie modes.
Priced at a whopping PHP 32,990, is the camera performance worth the premium price point? Let's find out.
Disclaimer: The Galaxy A9 that was loaned to us for several hours is pre-production so performance may improve until the retail unit has been released.
Camera Samples
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| Standard lens daylight! |
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| Telephoto/2x zoom lens daylight! |
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| Wide-angle lens daylight! |
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| Standard lens indoors! |
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| Telephoto/2x zoom lens indoors |
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| Wide lens indoors! |
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| Standard lens in lowlight! |
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| Telephoto/2x zoom lens in lowlight! |
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| Wide lens in lowlight! |
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| Daylight selfie! |
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| Daylight selfie focus! |
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| Indoor selfie! |
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| Lowlight selfie! |
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| AR Emoji Selfie! |
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| Panorama Selfie! |
The standard lens from the rear camera produces decent details, colors, and good contrast in daylight. In lowlight, it softens because of the grain and noise reduction, but it is well controlled.
The telephoto lens images that aren't as sharp or vibrant as the standard lens and it even appears over sharpened. In lowlight it performs nearly as good as the standard lens but struggles more with light sources which blows out the highlights quicker than the standard lens.
The wide lens is the softest of three especially for those who looks at pixel level. It also produces a darker exposure when focusing/exposing at the same point in the frame.
In lowlight, noise is more apparent than the standard or telephoto lens which causes more softness. Compared to other wide-angle lenses, this is one of the better wide angle lens cameras.
When shooting the same subject with the three cameras, the exposure and white balance changes. It may be due to the different optics and sensors involved. It is noticeable when comparing images side by side.
The 24MP selfie camera produces highly detailed images with good color reproduction and decent contrast when shot in daylight. In indoors and low light situations noise appears but is negligible.
We did notice that it had a hard time adjusting white balance with orange or warm colored light sources.
The detail from the standard rear camera and the selfie camera are okay while the wide angle camera and telephoto camera produces images that are softer than the standard camera but performs near or on par with similarly priced phones with similar concepts.
It also struggles with white balance and the post processing on the telephoto lens tends to be oversharpened.
Samsung may need to tweak their post processing for the upcoming smartphone. It should improve given that we used a preproduction unit.
The Samsung Galaxy A9 (2018) is priced at just PHP 32,990 and will be available nationwide on December 1, 2018!
Do you agree? And have you noticed something we missed? Tell us in the comments below.
Stay tuned for our full review!
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