Of all of the bullshit tech out there I’m not sure why you chose ray tracing to pick on. I remember how cool stuff like pov-ray was in the 90s and how cool it would be to have good lighting in real time some day. It’s kind of here now and it adds some flair to certain games. Far from essential but it’s more interesting than the bullshit “innovation” that happens elsewhere these days. Phones are miserable for this.

The S9 was a solid choice and came with expandable storage, a headphone jack, and a notification LED - which I miss dearly… but by goodness is it slow as hell and stopped getting security patches.