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Anything and everything you could want in a phone — that’s what Samsung’s latest Galaxy S10 and S10 Plus have to offer. Reading the specs list, it’s mind-boggling to see the amount of tech packaged inside. An ultrasonic in-display fingerprint sensor? Check. A selfie camera that can capture videos in 4K UHD? Yep. A headphone jack? Surprisingly, yes. The hardware is superb, the technical specifications top-notch, and the software is far more intuitive and visually pleasing than ever before.

The problem? Convincing people they need to spend $900 or $1,000 for all this tech. Phone prices continue to rise — these are the most expensive Galaxy S-series phones to date — but smartphone sales stopped growing in 2018 for the first time. Is everything in the Galaxy S10 and S10 Plus enough to make people want to upgrade? Or is it all going to hinge on next-gen products, like 5G phones or the wave of foldable phones? We spent some brief time with the new phones to find out.

Want to learn more about the Galaxy S10e? Check out our impressions on the lower-cost phone.

SPECTACULAR DISPLAY, ELEGANT DESIGN

Clean and elegant are the first words that popped into my head after looking at the new S10 and S10 Plus. The differences over last year’s Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus are small, but impactful — drastically altering the design of the phone.

The bezels around the screen have shrunk and look razor thin, and this is thanks to the new hole-punch Infinity-O display. A laser cuts out a small hole from the screen without damaging pixels, allowing the camera to float at the top like a hole-punch in a piece of paper. It looks better than the notch design that was present in a lot of phones in 2018, and while a true full-screen experience would be ideal — similar to the Oppo Find X — Samsung’s approach here still looks great. This is subjective, though, as you may find the hole-punch camera design awkward or unattractive. To me, it makes the screen look a whole lot more futuristic, and it’s hard to take my eyes off it.

The S10 and S10 Plus have 6.1-inch and 6.4-inch screens, respectively, and they utilize Samsung’s new “Dynamic AMOLED” display technology. They are the first screens to be HDR10+-certified, which means you’ll see sharper details with incredible color accuracy. Indeed, the colorful screen is beautiful, and the Wide QHD+ resolution ensures everything looks crisp. Samsung’s smartphones have the best displays — it’s why many other manufacturers use its panels in their phones — and from what I’ve seen so far, the quality hasn’t changed.

Wait, so where did the fingerprint sensor go? It’s under the display on the front! It’s an embedded ultrasonic fingerprint scanner, which captures 3D contours of thumbs and fingerprints. This offers better anti-spoofing measures than traditional optical sensors, which simply rely on an image of a fingerprint, according to Samsung. There are machine algorithms in place to prevent spoofing, and the fingerprint data never leaves the device as it’s stored in the chipset’s Knox TrustZone, a guarded area for sensitive data.

Like the fingerprint sensor on the back of phones, you do need to precisely place your thumb or finger on the right spot — at the bottom of the S10 or S10 Plus — to unlock the phone. I tested it a handful of times, and it always unlocked the phone quickly, which makes it one of the best in-display fingerprint sensors I’ve ever used. It wasn’t unusual to run into reliability issues on other in-display sensors, like those on the OnePlus 6T or Huawei Mate 20 Pro, which use different technologies.

The in-display fingerprint scanner has a FIDO (Fast Identity Online) Alliance Biometric Component certification as well, which means it has been tested to ensure top-notch security. It’s secure enough to be used to authenticate payments in Samsung Pay, or be used to access sensitive apps like the one for your bank.

Unlike previous Samsung phones, there’s no iris scanner — the biometrics security in the S10 phones is handled by the ultrasonic fingerprint scanner. A face unlock option is available via the hole-punch camera, but it’s not as secure and can only be used to unlock the phone. That’s disappointing as it’d be nice to have both a secure fingerprint option as well as a secure face unlock alternative like Apple’s Face ID.

How did the phones feel in my hand? The S10 Plus is tall and is difficult to use one-handed; I wish the volume rocker was a little farther down, as it would make it easier to reach. Handling the S10 is more manageable, so it is the far better option for people who want a smaller phone, obviously (the new Galaxy S10e is technically the smallest of the lot, at 5.8 inches, but that’s a different product). That being said, both the S10 and the S10 Plus have almost the same tech — it wasn’t the case with previous Galaxy S-series phones — so you’re not compromising much by opting for the smaller S10 this time.

I should note there are two special editions that use a different material. The 512GB and 1TB Galaxy S10 Plus variants will come with a glass front and a white or black ceramic back plate to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the Galaxy S-series. These phones feel far more luxurious than the all-glass models, offering better durability and scratch resistance.

I’m happy to see Samsung still including the headphone jack for those holding on to their 3.5mm earbuds and headphones. You can avoid the dongle-craze by going with the S10 or S10 Plus, but you can also use Bluetooth wireless earbuds if you want. The phone is also IP68 water resistant, so it can be submerged underwater up to 1.5 meters for 30 minutes.

POWERFUL SPECS, BUT NO 5G

The Galaxy S10 and S10 Plus are powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 855 processor, which is the flagship chipset that will power most Android phones this year. There’s a massive 8GB of RAM in both, except the 1TB Galaxy S10 Plus model, which comes with a whopping 12GB of RAM. Both phones start with 128GB of storage, but there’s a MicroSD card slot in case you need to add more space.

What the Galaxy S10 Plus has — and the smaller S10 lacks — is a vapor chamber cooling system to keep the phone from overheating while you perform intensive tasks, like heavy gaming. It means the phone should deliver better performance for a longer period of time, but I’ll need to test both phones to see how much of a difference it makes. Samsung also said both phones are optimized for the Unity engine, which is used to run a lot of games, and it means you can expect better frame rates and latency when gaming.

Safe to say, you should not expect any kind of performance issues on either of these phones. I didn’t run into any problems in the brief time I used the phones — moving around the Android 9 Pie operating system was snappy and fluid. It will feel even better the more you use it, as Samsung said the phones now deliver faster app launch times as they learn your habits, pre-loading apps when it knows you’re going to use them. So, if you usually launch YouTube at night before bed, the app will be pre-loaded and ready to launch instantly around that time.

Speaking of the software, it’s Samsung’s new One UI interface layered over the latest version of Android. It looks good, and is more intuitive as it places crucial interface elements toward the bottom of the screen for easier access. 

TRIPLE CAMERAS

One of the more noticeable changes over last year’s S9 and S9 Plus is the addition of a third camera in the new phones. Both the S10 and the S10 Plus have the same exact rear camera setup: The standard 12-megapixel lens with a variable f/1.5 to f/2.4 aperture (which Samsung first debuted last year) is paired with a 12-megapixel telephoto lens with a f/2.4 aperture, as well as a 16-megapixel ultra-wide-angle lens with a f/2.2 aperture.

The latter lens is new, and it means the camera is more versatile. Want a close up? Use the telephoto lens for 2x optical zoom. Need to capture a group picture or a landscape? Swap to the ultra-wide-angle lens. Transitioning between these lenses is fast — either tap on the respective lens icons or just pinch in or out within the camera viewfinder and the phone will automatically swap to the relevant lens.

Over on the front, the Galaxy S10 and S10 Plus have a 10-megapixel lens with a f/1.9 aperture, and what’s impressive is its ability to capture 4K UHD video — perfect for vloggers. The S10 Plus differentiates here with an additional camera on the front. It’s an 8-megapixel lens with a f/2.2 aperture, and Samsung said it’s purely there to help capture better depth data. It means the S10 Plus will likely capture better portrait mode selfies, and maybe it’ll finally mean Samsung’s AR Emojis will look as good as Apple’s Memoji.

BEEFY BATTERIES

Take a look at our Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus reviews and you’ll see I complained about battery life on both phones, as they barely got me through a full work day with medium to heavy use. Samsung has remedied this with the new phones, outfitting the S10 with a 3,400mAh battery, and the S10 Plus with a 4,100mAh capacity (that’s a 400mAh and 600mAh increase, respectively). There is more tech in the phones, though, so it’s unclear just how much more battery life one can expect. The S10s charge via USB-C or wirelessly.

But the S10 and S10 Plus have a trick up their sleeves — they can wirelessly charge other Qi-enabled products through a new feature called Wireless PowerShare. It’s something Huawei first deployed in the Mate 20 Pro (called Reverse Wireless Charging). Place another Qi-enabled product — like an iPhone XSor Samsung’s own Galaxy Buds’ charging case — on the back of the phone, and it will recharge by sapping energy from the S10. It’s handy when you need to boost up someone else’s phone battery, or if your earbuds are dying.

When I tried this on the Mate 20 Pro, the phone lost a ton of battery power and didn’t deliver enough to the phone it was charging up, so it was hardly efficient. It was helpful in a pinch though, so you can expect more or less of the same with the S10 and S10 Plus.

Disappointingly, the phones still only support Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 2.0, so it will take some time to recharge them with the charging cable in the box. Phones like the Razer Phone 2 support Quick Charge 4+, which helps juice up massive batteries in a relatively short time, so Samsung is severely lagging here.

PRICE AND AVAILABILITY

The Samsung Galaxy S10 and S10 Plus come in Prism Black, Prism Blue, Flamingo Pink, and Prism White color options in the U.S. — more colors are available globally, like Prism Green.

The base model (128GB) Galaxy S10 and S10 Plus start at $900 and $1,000, respectively. Opting for more storage will mean you have to pay more, of course. Pre-orders start on Feb. 21, and the phones ship on March 8.

The Galaxy S9 cost $720 when it launched, and $840 for the S9 Plus — that’s a $180 and $160 respective price bump for the two new phones. Is it warranted? There certainly are new features and capabilities, but I haven’t seen anything groundbreaking here with the S10 and S10 Plus — they’re just two excellent phones that have it all. We’ll be testing the phones to bring you the final verdict on whether you should part ways with your hard-earned cash to buy Samsung’s latest.

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