Samsung unveiled new smartphones with largely unchanged designs and incremental improvements such as a better camera.
Though Samsung already has one of the best smartphone cameras, it is looking to produce even better low-light shots, while offering a video mode that appears to freeze fast-moving objects.
The Galaxy S9 phones were unveiled on Sunday in Barcelona, Spain, and will be available March 16. Advance orders begin this Friday.
Analyst Carolina Milanesi warns that while the camera offers great improvements, it's competing with already good cameras in earlier Samsung phones.
The new AR Emoji feature scans a user's selfie and maps 100 features to create an animated emoji of their face which can then be shared in messages.
It follows the launch of Apple's Animoji feature on the iPhone X, which enabled users to animate a small collection of common emoji using their own facial expressions.
The Galaxy S9 has a 5.8-inch quad HD+ Super AMOLED display, while the S9+ has a larger 6.2-inch display.
Samsung's new flagship phones also feature slow-motion video capturing support, as well as an enhanced version of artificially intelligent assistant Bixby.
The assistant, which has previously struggled to compete with Amazon's Alexa and Google Assistant, can now automatically identify and provide information on objects seen through the phone's camera, as well translate languages in text in real time.
PA/AP
