Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus Review: Predictably brilliant, but is it the BEST?

Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus Review

 

for most of the past decade as Samsung Galaxy S has been the default choice for most of us who don't want an iPhone in part that's a consequence of Samsung's colossal marketing budget and retail
dominance here in the West but equally Samsung didn't get to where it is by making crappy phones the recent Galaxy S pedigree is one of consistent.
predictable brilliance and in its 10th anniversary year the king of the Android world continues to reign supreme to quickly recap the Galaxy S 10 series is in fact made up of four phones the
Galaxy S 10 S 10 E and s 10 Plus you can buy right now as well as a bigger slightly upgraded 5g version debuting some countries later in the year in this review I'm going to concentrate on the top model most of us will be considering.

the S 10 plus most of this review

applies to the standard s 10 to across all three models though you witness the latest evolution of the design language Samsung started way back with the galaxy s6 lustrous metal and shimmering glass each color has its own slightly iridescent hue and the aluminium side walls are now polished into an
ostentatious mirror finish this year Samsung flagship is a touch more angular
and a lot shinier than last year's models it's a little easier to one hand as a result though still very slippery all of the time which is why you may want to pick up a skin from this video's sponsor D brand not only the D brand's high quality device skins give your s10 a unique look but it'll also go a long way towards making sure it doesn't fly out of your hand when you try take a photo or tap out a message I'm a big fan of D brands concrete and bamboo finishes that you see here which really change up the enhance feel but these guys have a ton of different textures and colors in

skins for all three Galaxy S 10 models

hit the link in the description to take a closer look in any case truth be told the back of the s10 isn't all that different from the back of a million other Android phones aside from a bit of branding the only thing that stands out is this new triple camera panel that's because the fingerprint scanner now lives in the display around the front oh and about that display the six point four inch screen of the s10 plus fills out more of the front surface than ever before with this little pill shape cut out there for the dual selfie cameras on the smaller rest hands you get just one hole punch cut out for a single selfie shooter it's a sign of how refined and uncontroversial the rest of the tense design is that this one element
has some people up in arms

Samsung stock wallpapers do a good job of hiding it but honestly even when I'm in a regular app I have a hard time caring about the screen cutouts it's there I can deal with it and in my time with the phone I found it less distracting than most of the notch based alternatives what the cutout provides is the impression of a larger screen area with virtually no noticeable borders to the point where the first generation infinity displays seem dated by comparison

obviously display quality has always been a strength for Samsung and I'm sure

exactly no one will be surprised to see that the s10 plus screen walks away

with top marks from specialist reviewer display mate these days a best-in-class screen is just par for the course for a new Samsung flagship I have been truly impressed with this phone's display
though particularly under the very bright sunshine here in Barcelona and
that's me personally coming from a galaxy note 9 which already had a
phenomenal screen.

flagship phones have been basically fast enough for the past couple years now nevertheless Samsung layers on the upgrades in its s10 models in both the s10 and the STM plus you get eight gigs
of ram plus 128 gigs of storage a welcome upgrade considering the base
model s9 had only four plus 64.
number-crunching power is provided by either core comp snapdragon 855 which i've been using here in this US model of the galaxy s 10 plus or Samsung's own
Exynos 98 20 oversees both chips are lightning quick on Android 9 PI though
with one disappointing difference that we'll get to later in this review an
equally important part of this phone's hardware is the handful of features that
stand as the antithesis of the iPhone the S 10 plus still has a headphone jack

and removable storage and in Europe and Asia optional dual SIM support if you buy unlocked in fact these days the inclusion of a fingerprint scanner at all is kind of a rebuff of Apple the S
10 nest m+ include a new ultrasonic in screen fingerprint scanner from Qualcomm that's a little better than the previous generation of optical scanners but honestly still far from perfect it's slower and less reliable than the capacitive sensors of the s9 and Note 9 requires more pressure on the screen to
use and is probably the phone's biggest Hardware weakness overall the good thing
face unlock is also supported and works pretty reliably so neither of these
unlock features is 100% perfect but it is good to have options.

not only has Samsung's Hardware undergone its biggest transformation in two years the software has also seen a major overhaul we got a preview of the

Galaxy S 10 software with the Android Pi updates on the Galaxy S 9 and note 9 

and the S 10 itself ships with version 1.1 of Samsung's one UI also based on Android PI 1 UI includes a bunch of

changes designed to reflect the nature of modern smartphones and to help with
one-handed use on these super-tall handsets at the same time there are some

purely cosmetic changes that move us away from the sci-fi polygonal aesthetic

of the old Samsung experience 9 icons and menus are big blocky chunky rounded

and colorful the layout of many of Samsung's own apps has also been changed

to move important controls down to the bottom of the screen for easier reach

ability while at the same time there's this over scroll animation that fills

out the top part of the screen and lets you reach many items at the top more

easily Suchong also has its own system level night mode toggle now which you can

either set on a timer or use permanently Samsung has finally gotten on board with

digital well being - with its own version of Google's screen time

management feature you can track which apps you're using and limit your overall

time or time within specific apps plus if you want to take advantage of the

entirety of that 6.4 inch display Samsung has a new fullscreen gesture

mode that lets you swipe up from where the on-screen keys would normally be for

most of my time with the S 10 plus though I've kept with the good old

fashioned on-screen buttons one UI as a whole is a bit more approachable than

Samsung's earlier software but it still feels like you're using a Samsung phone

right down to some of the animations and the haptics and even the occasional UI

blunder like the folder view here which is bafflingly hard to reach with only

one hand of course Samsung's bixby assistant returns - as well as bakes me

home getting a bit of a visual overhaul bigsby routines now lets you program

things to happen automatically based on the time of day the location battery
level and a bunch of other criteria

that's on top of everything else that bigsby could already do like using bit

speed vision to find information on your surroundings but if you're not a fan of
Bixby and I know that applies to a lot

of people and finally a single press of the victory button can now be remapped

to do other more useful things honestly one UI is

about the best we could have hoped for from Samsung software in 2019 despite a

few visual quirks one UI is mature speedy and generally good-looking this

is the first Samsung reviewer I've had basically no software complaints and

that's no small achievement for the company one of the big upgrades you're

probably gonna see coming from an older galaxy is the s tens new triple camera
setup unlike last year both the regular and the plus models have the same three
rear cameras there's an upgraded version

of the 12 megapixel sensor from the s9 with the same F 1.5 to 2.4 variable

aperture and that's paired with the 2 x telephoto also a 12 megapixels and a new

16 megapixel ultra-white camera the first inner Samsung flagship all three

cameras also benefit from Samsung say I see knee enhancement from last year's

phones which now comes with a couple of new features best shot detection can


help you figure out the best framing for your photo though I found this gave me

very mixed results and there's also a new night modes well sort of we'll get

to that one later the super slo-mo feature from the s9 gets a modest upgrade to it's still 960 frames per

second and 720p but the duration has now doubled to a more generous 0.4 seconds

you will still need plenty of natural light to use this mode however to be

honest though the main and telephoto cameras are pretty minor of great compared to last year's galaxies I've seen subtle improvements in exposure and dynamic range compared to the note 9

I've been using recently but you really have to pixel peep hard to see the difference more than either the main or the telephoto the real reason to get

excited about photography on the s10 is that new ultra wide camera I've enjoyed

cameras like this on LG and Huawei phones over the years but I think samsung's version is the most versatile I've ever used it even holds up remarkably well in low lifes better than either the LG v 40 or while a May 20 pros wide-angle cameras dynamic range in color clarity is exceptional and you get a field of view that's just wide enough to shoot dramatic shots without distortion starting to creep in fact wide-angle video on the s10 plus.

might be my favorite part of the entire camera experience the main difference compared to
ultralight cameras in other phones isn't the image quality alone though that is, impressive it's how well Samsung's image.

stabilization works even with this incredibly vast viewports and even in extremely challenging lighting like shooting directly into the Sun here no other phone camera does this better that
said I did still run into a little bit of performance wonk when quickly
changing between the three rear cameras.

particularly in video mode around front the s10 plus is differentiated by its twin selfie camera setup which gives you
an optional wider view while also helping with depth calculation in some of the front-facing portrait effects the extra field of view isn't as wide as the pixel threes and generally I found this
wasn't all that useful compared to shooting with the wide-angle front camera on the pixel while we're talking.

portrait effects by the way Samsung's live focus mode is back and a little bit
more reliable than an older galaxy phones plus it's been upgraded with some
neat visual effects like color pop and it's funky crash zoom effect
it's classic Instagram fodder for sure, but also a pretty fun addition to
complement the straight-up portrait mode so we've established the galaxy s10 has excellent cameras but as good as they are there is one big thing missing from the equation that's a top tier dedicated
low light mode the s10 has a feature called bright night that activates
automatically in darkest scenes but this isn't even in the same league as the champion of low light that is Google's night sight mode difference is the pixel 3s camera trades speed for imaging
excellence with Samsung it's the reverse.

for the most part the results in the s10 plus are perfectly fine really good even

in low-light conditions but for a phone this expensive they're lacking that you're dropping star quality that you get from say a pixel 3 or a huawei p20, probe anyway let's round out by talking
battery performance the s10 plus boasts a major upgrade in capacity compared to the s8 and s9 with 4100 milliamp hours built-in even more than last year's galaxy note 9 and the Snapdragon 855.

version I've been using is giving me epic longevity it's at that magic 5 to 6

hours screen on time mark across a full day that means that whatever I'm doing I

don't need to worry about my phone dying I know with confidence that it's gonna

last well into the evening and perhaps even beyond what's a little disappointing is that even though
samsung's wireless charging spec is faster than ever on the galaxy s 10 it
still lags behind Huawei oneplus and

other Chinese brands on why of charging speeds with such a large battery that's

a downside should you ever run into the need for a midday refill plus although
the Snapdragon Galaxy S 10 has been

delivering great battery life for me we're hearing mixed results from other

members of the Android central team who have the Exynos version that's

compounded by reports that the Exynos models also score lower in synthetic

benchmarks will circle back on performance on the Exynos models in a

future video so the unavoidable question with any new Samsung flagship is whether

it's the best Android phone you can fire right now for the galaxy s 10 plus I've

used I think undoubtedly the answer is yes it's easy to get drawn into how one

or two phones can beat it in one or two areas for the overall package the

consistent quality across everything this phone does is where Samsung wins

that makes the Galaxy S ten series an easy pick

just about everyone it is predictably brilliant it is the safe choice once again and this year that safe choice is better than ever before that's gonna wrap up our Galaxy S 10 plus video

review thanks again to D Brown for sponsoring this video hit the link in the description to check out their line of skins for all three, Galaxy S 10 models thanks of course to all of you for watching and remember to

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