Samsung’s new Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ flagship smartphones were made available for preorder last weekend, and there is precious little question that they’re currently the hottest Android handsets you can buy. We explained as much in our in-depth Galaxy S9 review. Even still, early news from insiders suggested that preorders are far lower for the Galaxy S9 duo than they were for last year’s Galaxy S8 and S8+. And now we’re hearing similar news about launch sales; a report out of South Korea suggests first-day sales of the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ were much lower than first-day sales of their predecessors.
Did Samsung make a mistake by launching an “S” update this year? By that, we are of course referring to Apple’s old practice of releasing phones that have the same design as their predecessor, but with big upgrades to performance and features. Early rumors had suggested Samsung was actually working on different Galaxy S9 and S9+ models with a big visual overhaul, but it decided to cancel those models for reasons unknown.
We’ll never know if those Galaxy S9 models would have fared any better than the ones Samsung ended up announcing, but we do know one thing: The Galaxy S9 and S9+ would have looked so much hotter if Samsung had just stolen the iPhone X’s notched design like just about every other Android phone maker out there.
The general tech-loving public is still torn when it comes Apple’s notched display design on the iPhone X. Some love it and others hate it. Just about every comment we’ve seen from people who actually own the iPhone X is positive, though, suggesting that the design is adored by people who actually try it instead of just looking at pictures of it on the internet.
Most of the negative comments seem to come from hardcore Android fans, but that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. Of course, they’ll have to get used to that notched design since nearly every Android smartphone maker on the planet is stealing it from Apple. The Cupertino-based company has been a leader in smartphone design since the very first iPhone debuted in 2007, so seeing the company’s rivals rush to copy the iPhone X’s notch shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. In fact, we recently shared a graphic that shows 20 different Android smartphones that ripped off the iPhone X’s design. Twenty!
We’re big fans of Samsung’s Galaxy S9. It’s gorgeous. But now that we’ve seen what the Galaxy S9 would look like if it had copied Apple’s iPhone X design instead of reusing the Galaxy S8’s design, we kind of wish Samsung had copied Apple just like everyone else.
Graphic designer Martin Hajek has been known to dream up sleek designs of unreleased smartphones. But he also sometimes plays with designs once phones have already been announced, and that’s exactly what he did with the Galaxy S9. In a new post on his blog, Hajek imagined what Samsung’s new Galaxy S9 might look like if it had a notched all-screen design like the one Apple introduced on the iPhone X. The result, as you’ll see in the following images, is fantastic.
In Hajek’s reimagining, the Galaxy S9’s Super AMOLED display stretches all the way down to the bottom of the phone’s face. The bezels on the notched S9 are even narrower than they are on the iPhone X, though the notch at the top of the display is a bit larger. In reality, Samsung would’ve been able to use an even smaller notch than the iPhone X, since it wouldn’t have to house all the complex components from Apple’s TrueDepth camera.
There is definitely a bit of irony here. Samsung, the company that rose to become the top smartphone vendor in the world by shamelessly copying Apple’s software and hardware designs is one of the only Android vendors out there that isn’t stealing the iPhone X’s notch. But this time around, we really wish it would have.
Check out more images of the notched Galaxy S9 on Hajek’s site.
