Thank you very much for this comprehensive review. I recently bought the A9 2018 for my wife, despite its negative reviews on camera image quality. I have an A8+ and I am totally happy with the images.

I came to the same conclusion like you that images from the A9 2018 main camera were kind of ok but certainly below expectations and even worse than with my A8+.

HOWEVER, I did run a number of test images with a surprising conclusion: SAMSUNG seems to have got the HDR algorithms wrong. With HDR on, the image isn't sharp at all and looks blurry in its details. Definitely a letdown. But when switching HDR to OFF, suddenly details come out sharp and the images are clearly a class better than on my A8+. What does this mean? I will leave HDR on OFF, and only use it eventually in scenes of very high contrast and if sharpness is not so important.

I hope that SAMSUNG will work on its HDR software. The quality could be there, if the HDR would be done right. A new firmware should fix this problem. SAMSUNG, please listen!