Samsung Galaxy S10 Details:

Display

What Samsung has nailed is the display quality. When I used the Note 9 for a while, I never thought Samsung could actually better it. And to my surprise, the Dynamic AMOLED panel is just great, the colors, the vibrancy, the sharpness, everything is just too good. And the screen bleeding over the edge makes this the best-designed phone for me. But the same infinity display brings in accidental touches. Even with the Accidental Touch Protection setting enabled, you will register a few unwanted touches, especially with one hand usage.

The Galaxy S10 has a 6.1-inch screen while the Plus model comes with a 6.4-inch screen. And me, personally, I like the larger displays as you get to see a lot of content on it. But most of the people I know have leaned towards the Galaxy S10 due to its “compact” design as it fits comfortably on the hand.

Also, the Blue light filter here is improved. What Samsung did is shift the “eye straining” blue light of the 450mm wavelength to a safer 465mm wavelength, which means my eyes are less stressed and I am less fatigued.

Performance

Talking about the processor, the units we reviewed are powered by the Exynos 9820. It excels all the benchmark tests and as far as the performance is concerned, initially I faced this PubG issue on the phone. See at first when I started playing the game, I had no problem at all. But reading all the posts about it lagging, I reinstalled it and that brought in the lags. And those lags were crazy, I start walking from somewhere and a few seconds later, I end up in the same place. This was obviously fixable through software updates, and Samsung has looked into it yet. I recently received an update on the phone which seems to have fixed the issue completely. Other than that, I have had no problem with the S10 as far as the performance is concerned. It easily handles all other games, and its RAM helps with the multi-tasking effectively. There have been no stutters anywhere, and you will get the almost perfect flagship experience with the phone.

Other than these two issues, I have had no problem with the Galaxy S10 as far as the performance is concerned. It easily handles all other games, and its RAM helps with the multi-tasking effectively. There have been no stutters anywhere, and you will get the almost perfect flagship experience with the phone.

Software

And part of this is also due to One UI, Samsung’s new and improved user interface. The software is really light, and even with a lot of customizations in its bag, it is really smooth. Gone are the days of laggy Samsung phones. Samsung has also made this UI by keeping tall phones in mind. If you have small hands, you will really like how the whole interface tries to bring most of the things down for the ease of use. However, I think that this UI’s icons are quite cartoonish and also the notification shade is too big for my taste.

Camera

The cameras on the Samsung top of the line phones always have one of the best, it still not the best out there. The S10 is simply not as good as the Google Pixel 3. But maybe it lies somewhere in the top 4 list.

If you go by the specs, there’s the same primary lens as the S9 and Note 9, the same 2X telephoto lens, but we’ve got a new ultra-wide lens. So, you really get a complete package in the optics department.

When I got my hands on the Galaxy S10 a few weeks ago, I really wanted to see what Samsung had in mind with the camera. So, I went to a few places just to test out the triple cameras on the back. If you go by the specs, the phone has a primary lens, a wide-angle camera, and a telephoto lens. So, apart from the depth sensor, you really get a complete package in the optics department.

Until the Huawei P30 came out a few days ago, the Samsung Galaxy S10+ was the joint top on DxOMark’s camera rating, and after using the cameras in real life, well I think they are one of the best around.

Ultrasonic Fingerprint Scanner

Up front, the Samsung Galaxy S10 comes with an ultrasonic fingerprint scanner. Now if you get the angle right, you can even see the sensor under bright sunlight. But this sensor is completely different from Huawei’s or OnePlus’ optic sensor as it takes a 3D map of the fingerprint by projecting out sound waves. Pretty cool right?

It’s fast and will also work when you have wet fingers. But I would say a couple of the phones with optic sensors can match the speed. And, it’s not accurate like all the other in-display sensors. It gets the readings right most of the time, but still, there are a lot of times throughout the day it doesn’t get them right. But this is the first generation of the technology, and I can wait to see its development.

What I found weird was when you get the angle right, you can even see the sensor under bright sunlight.  I freaked out that day because I thought I had a faulty unit, but it is how it is.

Battery

Now, the battery is where the Galaxy S10+ has a big edge over the S10.  While the S10 lasts for a typical day, the bigger battery of the S10+ will give you a little bit more. But that completely depends on your usage. To endure the battery life, I toned down the resolution of the display to 1080P, because, with QHD+ resolution, the battery life is really low, especially on the S10.

Also, like with the PubG issue, there were a lot of people complaining about battery life. Apparently, if you make VOIP calls like from messenger or WhatsApp, it won’t go into deep sleep and will remain active until you restart the whole device. So, the battery isn’t that efficient on this Exynos variant compared to the Snapdragon version. But again Samsung has solved this issue with the software update. Yaay!!

As for the charging time though, the Galaxy S10 takes about 2 hours to go from 0 to 100% which is slow for a flagship phone. It’s because Samsung is still using the 15Watt charging tech that was first used on the Galaxy S7.

Huawei has a 40Watt charger, OPPO has got a 50Watt charger and Xiaomi is coming with the whooping 100Watt charger, and even S10’s 5G version has a 25Watt charger, so the 15 Watt charging speed on a flagship phone is something not very fancy.

Conclusion

So, the Samsung Galaxy S10 and S10+ are great devices for sure. But I feel like the updates that Samsung has brought are incremental and not worth upgrading if you’re already an S8, S9, Note 8 or Note 9 user. However, if you are using the S7 or its predecessors this is the right time for you to upgrade. Or even if you are coming from a midrange phone like I did, the S10 would be a great upgrade.

So, here’s my final conclusion: if you’re looking for a flagship phone right now, go for the S10 or S10+. You won’t regret it, I haven’t!