Samsung galaxy S10 plus review

Now it's been years since Samsung making its own flagship smartphones and this year on its 10th anniversary it launched Samsung Galaxy S10. but wait it's not only one phone but this time Samsung launched four smartphones of its S series. First comes the cheaper S10e(699$), S10(799$), S10 plus(999$) and then comes a beefy 5G S10 with more price tag though its not known now what the price will be.

Today we’re looking at the S10 plus.

BUILD

This is the area where samsung never compromise and this time is no exception. The build of the phone feels very premium with both sides having curved glass sandwiched in an aluminium frame. And as with every glass smartphone this phone also feels slippery and prone to fingerprint smudges. And as you expect in 2019 the front of the screen is all display but this time there is a hole in the display. A punch hole. This holehouses the front facing camera only and in the S10 plus there is dual front facing cameras so its pill shaped. The S10 phones which have single front camera has a real tiny circular hole not a pill. In my opinion the power button of the galaxy S10 plus is too high for people with medium or small hands. It's in the top most region. On the left yu get volume rockers and a bixby button and yes, it still exists. Though this year samsung allowed the bixby button to be remappable(more on this later).

DISPLAY

In the display section as previous years Samsung still takes the crown and this year also they made the best display on any phone. The galaxy S10 plus has an excellent quad HD super amoled display with HDR 10 support. The display is colourful, vibrant and bright. It’s expected from samsung to give this level of display on their flagships. But now let's talk about the all new bells and whistles about the new generation of displays and that is the punch hole or a hole in the display for the front facing camera to avoid the bothersome notch. I would say I really prefer the hole over a notch(R.I.P Pixel 3XL). The hole is not that noticeable when you’re working or entertaining yourself with your phone. The Galaxy S10 plus has a pill shaped hole due to the dual front facing camera and though its slightly noticeable, but it's better than a notch. Though there is one con with the display and its with its curved edges. As you know with previous models everyone complained that they mistouch areas on the edges due to the curved edges and this year also the problem exists. Sometimes when you try to use the opposite side of the screen, due to the curved edges mistouch happens. Samsung gives you options to scale down your display from 1440p to 1080p or from WQHD to FHD and HD, this helps to reserve your battery life when you’re low on charge and you can also scale down if you want more battery life, but you will not get those sharp pixels that you should get on WQHD.

S10 PLUS(LEFT pill shaped hole) vs S10(RIGHT cicle hole)

PERFORMANCE

It think you already guessed it, as with every year Samsung used to give top-tier specs on its flagship phones and this year is no exception. All the Galaxy S10 models comes with Snapdragon 855 chipset which is Snapdragon’s 2019’s flagship chip. Yes you heard it right, even the lower priced 750$ Galaxy S10e also comes with Snapdragon 855. The Snapdragon 855 has some great improvements over its previous iteration, its 45% faster than snapdragon 845 and its biggest highlight is the ARM Cortex A76 based cores. It's also has 20% boost in graphics department. If you want to know more about snapdragon 855 then I’ll write about it in some days.

Samsung also gave a lot of ram options from 6GB to 12GB. The lower end base variant Galaxy S10e comes with 6GB of ram while galaxy S10 and S10 plus’s base variant comes with 8Gb minimum ram and 128GB of storage. With these amount of rams there is no lag in day to day tasks in the galaxy s10 plus. Everything you through at it runs smoothly without any lag and games just flies through.

CAMERA

Talking about the camera, the Galaxy S10+ has a triple camera setup with dual OIS support. The most important lens is 16 mp ultra-wide angle lens with 123 degree field of view, second is a standard 12mp wide lens with 77 degree field of view and a third 12 mp telephoto lens.

The standard camera as with previous version supports dual aperture between f/2.4 and f/1.5. The galaxy S10 camera supports 2x optical zoom and 10x digital zoom. You can check yourself in the camera samples below. For full resolutions click here

BATTERY

The galaxy S10 plus has 4100 maH battery which is good for both a heavy user and an average user. You can use your phone all day with gaming sessions also and still at the end of the day you will have 20% to 30% charge still left. Though this not a 2 day battery life phone because of that bigger display but you can have a full day without any issue. The one downside of this phone is the speed of the charging as it only ships with a 15W charger and supports Qualcomm Fast Charge 2.0. That's old now and companies like Huawei and oneplus ships with chargers form 35W to even 40W. Though one special edition of Galaxy S10 family known as S10 5G supports 25W fast charge but its a limited edition and its still not released so if you plan to buy galaxy S10 plus which is the top variant now then you have to live with 15W charger in 2019.

It supports wireless charging but it also supports wireless reverse charging which means you can charge another phone with your phone.

I don’t find this feature a very practical one and you will not use it day to day but in certain circumstances it might come handy like your friend need some charge or you have some wireless earbuds that you want to charge. And one thing to note is that this wireless reverse charging is very slow.

Samsung Galaxy S10+ software and biometric security

This time samsung deserves some love for its software as it's not like that annoying touchwiz with chunks of feature which you don’t use ever and it's also not like Samsung Experience UI. the new iteration of Samsung’s software is known as ONE UI which I would say is not like very close to Stock android like OXYGEN OS on oneplus but OneUi is very pure this time with loads of annoying features drained away and with very good customizing options. It's easy to use daily and its fast.

Coming to security this time you get an in-display fingerprint sensor in the Galaxy S10 plus. This not an optical in-display fingerprint sensor rather its an ultrasonic fingerprint sensor which is pretty accurate and it works even you have wet hands. But it is a little bit slower than optical fingerprint sensors( note:- optical fingerprint sensors and optical in-display fingerprint sensors are different things.). Coming to face unlock, unlike previous generations of Note and S series the Galaxy S10 plus and regular S10 doesn’t have an Iris Scanner, so the phone completely depends on its camera for face scanning and as a result its less secure. Coming to the ports, the Galaxy S10 plus has USB-C, a headphone jack(yes, it's still there) and a bixby, which is also there :(, though this year its remappable.

VERDICT

If you’re convinced then yeah, you can go and buy one but if you’ve some confusions comment below and from my side I would say the Galaxy S10 plus has all the bells and whistles to survive in 2019 and it’ll remain a great option throughout the year. If’re after a flagship in 2019 which checks all the boxes the Galaxy S10 plus should be your go to smartphone, don’t look anywhere, just go and grab one.