Samsung Galaxy A9 (2016) review: A-lister

Gallery

The TouchWiz gallery orders photos by time, but you can switch to folder-based Album view. Sharing options include wireless printing, Android Beam and Wi-Fi Direct, but no DLNA (or other way to send an image to your TV).

TouchWiz Gallery

Several image editing tools are available - from basic cropping, to collage making, to a more capable editor (which supports image correction, effects and drawing).

An additional option lets you pick several photos and stitch them into an animated GIF.

Music player with advanced EQ features, FM radio

The Galaxy A9 (2016) gets the full-blown Samsung music player. This includes the SoundAlive tool, which has an intuitive interface to tuning the equalizer (a manual 7-band equalizer is available for more knowledgeable users).

Music player

Adapt Sound is even simpler. It tunes the EQ to your hearing and your particular pair of headphones by playing multiple frequencies and asking how well you hear them. Smart Volume automatically adjusts the volume of tracks from multiple sources.

Equalizer and other settings

The player itself has a straightforward UI with most functions available as shortcuts on the Now Playing screen. You can browse files by folders, which is great if your library doesn't have well-organized ID3 tags.

The Galaxy A9 (2016) also has an FM radio built in (something many Galaxy flagships do not). It can record radio broadcasts (though this may be disabled in some regions). There's no RDS though so the app won't show the name of the station.

FM radio • All stations (with no RDS names) • Recording a broadcast

Video player

The video player is the only app that works in pop-up window, a feature dating back to the Galaxy S III.

You also get full subtitle support with advanced features to modify their appearance.

The app lets you play only the audio (if you just want to listen to a music video) and to play the audio via Bluetooth (if you have a BT-enabled speaker handy).

Browsing videos • Video player • Subtitle settings • Pop-up play

There's an "Editor" option too though that may be overstating it - it just lets you trim the video.

Again, there's no DLNA or another wireless method of sending the video to a bigger screen. No wired ways to do it either.

Audio output is solid

The Samsung Galaxy A9(2016) may be much larger than its 2016 A-series stablemates but its audio output is absolutely identical to that of the Galaxy A7 (2016) and Galaxy A5 (2016). The phablet aced the first part of our test, posting great scores and showing great loudness.

Plugging in our standard headphones did cause some damage - volume dropped to only average, stereo crosstalk rose to a similar rating and some distortion crept in. A solid performance, but not quite the best you can find up there.

Here go the results so you can do your comparisons.

Test	Frequency response	Noise level	Dynamic range	THD	IMD + Noise	Stereo crosstalk
Samsung Galaxy A9 (2016)	+0.02, -0.07	-95.2	92.9	0.0065	0.010	-93.4
Samsung Galaxy A7 (2016) (headphones)	+0.40, -0.02	-91.6	92.2	0.028	0.250	-65.6
Samsung Galaxy A7 (2016)	+0.02, -0.07	-95.1	92.8	0.0058	0.0097	-95.3
Samsung Galaxy A7 (2016) (headphones)	+0.42, -0.03	-92.7	84.1	0.014	0.260	-53.1
Huawei Mate 8	+0.01, -0.03	-97.8	99.1	0.0054	0.0087	-97.3
Huawei Mate 8 (headphones attached)	+0.02, -0.09	-97.3	97.9	0.015	0.078	-81.3
Huawei Nexus 6P	+0.03, -0.01	-94.7	90.0	0.0029	0.010	-94.3
Huawei Nexus 6P (headphones attached)	+0.02, -0.20	-96.2	83.2	0.041	0.147	-37.7
Nokia Lumia 950 XL	+0.01, -0.08	-91.6	91.7	0.0035	0.012	-89.3
Nokia Lumia 950 XL (headphones attached)	+0.48, -0.07	-90.4	91.5	0.011	0.293	-55.6
Sony Xperia Z5 Premium	+0.01, -0.03	-95.9	89.6	0.0034	0.012	-95.5
Sony Xperia Z5 Premium (headphones attached)	+0.11, -0.40	-95.6	80.7	0.0057	0.227	-55.2

Samsung Galaxy A9 (2016) frequency response

You can learn more about the tested parameters and the whole testing process here.