Smart Phone Samsung S8 or S9?

I was made aware of an offer today where I can keep my $25.00 a month unlimited Canada wide talk and text plan and get a free Galaxy S9 if I lock in the rate for two years. Is the S9 better than the S8? Lots of phone options but I just want a really good camera and video because that's all I use the phones for except for occasional browsing on free wifi. Personally I'd prefer a phone with a removable battery instead of these phones where you have to heat the edges and peel away at everything to replace the battery but I haven't seen a decent camera on any phone with replaceable batteries.

The S9 has a better and faster processor than the S8.
Just got my wife an S8 with a cracked front screen for $100. Ordered a kit to have the screen replace.

Which carrier in Canada is offering the $25/month with 2 year contract?
Any carrier offering free phone will somehow charge you in another way. What is the up front cost?

My wife’s cell plan is $35/ month with unlimited local talk, text and 5 gb of data.

Canadian pay too much for cell serve and cornered by the market by the big 3 cell companies. It is way cheaper in the USA.

Thanks for the info. If you want no contract and no free phone, lucky mobile does the $25.00 a month plan. It's the one I have at the moment and no gimmicks at all. They also give you 1GB of data if you let them withdraw monthly the payments from you credit card otherwise it's 500MB of data and you don't need worry about extra charges as they just throttle back when you reach your data limit and let you use it for checking emails for free unlimited. Lucky uses the telus/bell towers so they cover all of BC.

Sorry just read your email a second time. If you migrate over from Lucky to Virgin, virgin will honor the $25.00 a month but will exclude the data.

Lucky and Virgin Mobility are under the Bell umbrella.
I am currently with Virgin with LTE but Good info when I decide to switch but Lucky only offer 3G.

I think data is 3G and they use LTE for calling or something like that. On my Wife's phone she uses the Line App to keep in touch with her relatives in Asia and it never seems to ever hang on 3G.

CAD $25 for 1GB of data if you let them cash in advance on your credit card and 500MB otherwise?

Am I hearing right? That's crazy!

CAD $25 right now equals ≈€17.10, now take a look and use the sliders in the following page to see what my provider would give you for that money where I live: https://simyo.es

Some examples: 12GB + 200min €15, 12GB + unlimited €18, 22GB + 20min €16.50, 22GB + 50min €18…

I've been with this company since mid 2008, transparent, very good service and multiple GB packs for free every summer and every Christmas (right now still using my 20GB free 1 month summer pack LoL). Guess they do not usually lose customers.

Concerning the mobile phones there's not much difference in hardware as far as I understand. The most important factor is imho the software, so I always resort to rooted, mature custom ROMs (see XDA Developers forum). Other than this, none of them is really of my liking. I really can't stand all these (massive) newer super wide/super long screen fully bezel-less smartphones. Seriously.

And it’s even cheaper in France.

If I remember well, my cousin had unlimited everything for like 17,50 Euros…

Besides, I don’t even care that they are overcharging us. I actually do though, a lot.

However, that’s where downloading on my music, GPS maps, photos, videos, shows and everything else not app related, on my 128GB mSD card.

I’d rather buy an even larger microSD card than give them any more than the 15$CA that I’m currently giving them.

Some good deals in there in Spain and France that's for sure. Canada has always been expensive overall as they allowed for so long only a few players in our market. Not so long ago they forced them to lease some of their bands to bring prices down.

Barkuti, I don't like the newer phones either but I do want a decent phone with a decent camera and video as well as using wifi now and then. I really hate that they make phones with good cameras but non removable batteries. What a pita to replace batteries in those things. All those companies are crooks as far as I'm concerned.

The S9 is an excellent phone with a very good robust battery, and a nice camera.

That's good to hear thanks. I think I should take the offer before it's gone then. I heard when playing with the pro settings in the S9 it can really produce nice images if one knows what they are doing.

The battery thing doesn't really frightens me, I've already repaired a few smartphones and two more laborious battery replacements are on the way: my current Lenovo Zuk Z2 Pro (got it on a second-hand eBay deal for €170, in perfect condition) and my brother's Huawei P10.

Modern “high-tech” smartphones are a lot more complicated on the inside than yesteryear's inexpensive stuff. I had the “pleasure” to swap an S8 display (without frame) and @#$%, that was a lot of sweat. Also replaced the chassis, battery and screen in my nephew's iPhone S6, which also was a bit of a dissapointment because soon after the screen replacement his home button stopped working and there I learned Apple bastards pair the fingerprint sensor buttons with their smartphone motherboards, thus you have to die in their official service centers if you want your fingerprint sensor to work after replacement. Comparatively speaking, working on a Moto G 2013 is a piece of cake.

I may have to set up a small repair workshop, just have to finish a led lamp for my studio room.

Doesn't frighten me either, but it should be easily removable. They pretend it's to keep the phones splash proof but that's nonsense. I personally just carry around a Sonim xp1520 bolt sl. It's all I need and about a month ago I forgot it on my car roof at Walmart and found it an hour later on the highway when I backtracked all my movements still working and good as new.

Yes, it's just a cop-out to really mean they don't @#$% care about removable batteries. In my opinion it has a little sense, which is eliminating the battery contacts' problem and random reboots. But just this. They could design devices in a way that the battery, even if not removable in 4 - 5 seconds, could be replaced in a matter of minutes with little equipment (go check some iPhone 4/4S battery replacement videos, for example). There's a total lack of interest, though. This may also have to do with the fact that, some people say, even if you “power down” a modern smartphone there is some stuff inside which keeps powered on at all times.

I wouldn’t worry about the battery. I gave my Son my S6, and it’s been working everyday for the last 4 1/2 yrs. and still working just fine.

In Italy Iliad has this offer:

Unlimited minutes and SMS
50 GB / month in 4G / 4G+ in Italy
4 GB / month in Europe
Unlimited minutes to more than 60 destinations abroad (fixed or mobile)
No constraint, with price guaranteed forever
cost: 7,99€ per month

Good luck to ever see those rates in Canada. I really like the unlimited minutes to over 60 destinations.

Yes, those - Giga 50 - iliad Italia figures posted by The Last Katun are straight crazy. Comparatively, the - item - deal seems wrong, 40MB + 40MB? WTF?

But right now I'm still fine with my 20min + 500MB usual monthly plan of choice at €3.50 (CAD ≈$5.12). Unused data accumulates over a 3 month max expiry period…

S9 is pretty good. As a long time Samsung user, try to buy the latest flagship as possible if there is no budget issue