Looking at the Galaxy A9 2018, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a flagship-level phone, right up there with the Galaxy S9 or the Note 9. Glitzy and glamorous, at least two versions of the A9 will immediately draw the eye from way across a room.

The version dressed in ‘Bubblegum Pink’ starts at the top with a colour that’s indeed reminiscent of candy and graduates to a soft raspberry shade down the length of the phone’s glassy back. While it can remind you of a tall glass of a nice summer drink, it’s the ‘Lemonade Blue’ that’s more inspired by something thirst quenching. This version has a green-to-blue shading that makes you want to keep looking. A third variant, for the more sober amongst us, is a ‘Caviar Black’.

Although all glass, the back of the A9 doesn’t really show finger smudges and can look clean all the time, though you may want to use the transparent case to protect the surface from damage anyway.

A stack of lenses

The other striking and immediately noticeable thing about the A9 is the vertical row of camera lenses lined up on the back — no less than four of them. They look neat and elegant rather than crowding up the back. These lenses of course are the A9’s main claim to fame and offer up various ways of taking photos with the phone.

You may think using four camera lenses is going too far but each is there to do a specific job. Another phone released recently, the A7, had a line-up of three cameras and has a lot overlapping with the A9, but the A9 has better specs in addition to one more camera.

The full picture

On the A9, the pick of the cameras is the 8-MP, ultra-wide lens that shoots in a 120-degree perspective. This makes it a nice option for someone who wants to take a lot of outdoor photos or pictures of landscapes and tourist sites because you can fit in so much more in the frame. This lens makes photos of a beach look particularly nice as you get a sense of the expanse of sky, sand and sea. It’s also nice for taking group photographs when you want to fit everyone in. What happens however is that the people at the edges of the group end up being included in a barrel distortion effect, so you have to get to know the camera and skirt around this — this happens with most wide angle cameras on phones. You also have the ultra-wide feature for the front camera and that’s really fun as you can get plenty of the scene behind you into the picture. Again, great for travellers. The ultra-wide lens however seems to fare better in good light and struggles with indoor shots.

Another of the cameras has a 10 MP lens and is in charge of zooming in 2x on subjects. It does okay with this. A third 5 MP camera takes care of the bokeh effect. Or depth of field. This mode definitely needs good light and will give you on-screen guidance on when it sees enough. The 24 MP standard camera is also nice for those who like to be outdoors a lot.

The selfie camera is also a 24 MP shooter but does a whole lot of over-exposing and softening. If near a light source, it will practically put a whitening mist over you. You really have to shift around to get the right light in a chosen spot. If you’re outdoors in natural light, this won’t be a problem. Overall, it’s a fun camera to take to the great outdoors on a holiday, though one will have to spend some time figuring out when the different cameras with their strengths and limitations work best. If one primarily takes indoor photos, the A9 may not be the best option

Photos will look pretty though because the screen on this phone is full of vibrancy and depth. Unfortunately, the A9 is under-packed in other ways. It works with a Snapdragon 660, which is fiddlesticks when you find similarly priced and cheaper phones use the flagship level Snapdragon 845. The OnePlus 6 and then 6T are a case in point. Even the more affordable Poco F1 uses the 845 and comes with a snappy performance. The cameras and their performance don’t warrant a trade-off for a mid-range processor and an older version of Android. That said, the phone performs just fine and if you’re not someone who pushes the device too far or even cares what specs are on the inside, your experience will be okay. If Samsung had but gone further to make each of those four cameras stellar and made this a full-fledged camera phone, not much else would matter but looking at the entire package, the cameras needed to do better with low light.

Price: ₹36,990

Pros: Upbeat colours, pretty design, world first with four cameras, great screen as usual, decent performance

Cons: Cameras don’t do well indoors, low specs for the price, too many preloaded and duplicated apps, annoying My Galaxy prompts

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