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Second Opinion #61: Samsung Galaxy S10+ Review

2 days ago · 43 minutes

Ryan reviews the Samsung Galaxy S10+ - the fourth phone in his Galaxy experience - from the new display, the punch out camera, to the oddities with the fingerprint sensor, battery certainty, signal reliability, and so much more!

Episode Summary

Pricing
- 3 variants
  - S10e – $750
  - S10 – $899
  - S10+ – $999
- Colors
  - Black, white, flamingo, and ???
- Base models come with 8gb ram and 128gb storage
- Vs Note 9; the pricing is even further out of control; it’s the inevitable ASP price creep syndrome now
- My pricing:
  - Pre-order via BestBuy
  - Turned in my purchased-last-february S9+ for $550 credit
  - Paid a hefty… not really; $508
Display
- Size 6.4’’ display
- Special features
  - Integrated fingerprint sensor; more on this later
  - Up to 1200 nits of brightness
Physicals
- Look and feel, build quality
  - When I first held it, it was adorably light; I was used to holding this glass brick in the Note 9 so this was a difference
  - The side metal is aluminium this time – not sure what it was before, but previously the metal band around feld “stronger”
  - The Note 9 was very Square; very hard edges – this is much more rounded on the top/bottom left/right sides
- Battery
  - 4100 mah
- Charging
  - Usual charging modes; cable and wireless
  - Plus a useless gimmick feature, “reverse charging” that every reviewer has tentpoled; that stops here
- Ports
  - Usual ports; type c + headphone jack
- Speakers
  - Same speaker configuration; stereo in top front and side bottom
  - The top speaker is tucked between the glass and the top bezel; it’s okay
- Buttons
  - Bixby button is still here but with partial remap maybe not totally useless
  - The power button is said to be too high up on the S10+ model
- Fingerprint sensor; under the screen
  - I registered 4 unique fingers; previously on the Note 9 I had only the index-fingers registered, I’d never use my Thumb
  - I could unlock the phone smoothly while it was coming out of pocket without looking; with this new scanner since it’s in the screen, I can have to guess more which means accuracy is down
  - You can unlock from AOD but you have no visual indicator where the sensor is; it’s not in an obvious place, where the android home button is
    - On the AOD, they need to put some kind of reference point down there; allegedly scared of burn in though; even it’s not the finger print visual, even an empty circle, anything
Camera
- 3 cameras on the back
  - 2x, 1x and “1/2x”
  - The
- 2 cameras on the front
- How is it
- Special modes
- Notable features
Specs
- CPU
  - Snapdragon 855
- RAM
  - 8gb
- Storage
  - 128gb base model + I added a 128gb SD card; what is storage and why do I need it?
Software
- OS
  - Wow, Android, what happened to you? Now running with Pie and One UI, the “Samsung Experience” that made from the S8 line to now so successful software wise is gone; replaced with this strange interface
  - List items are often smushed cards or elongated pills
  - Everything is so bright, AMOLED chuckles in the distance
  - The utilities that Samsung Experience is well known for is for the most part still here
- Software Features
  - Updated side-by-side app switcher; always defaults to the previous app which is useful but also annoying since I was trained by previous versions to swipe anyway
  - Raise to wake
    - Possibly the most annoying new feature, every time I touch the phone, no matter if I’m just repositioning it to still see the time on the AOD better; it thinks I want to play and it wakes up
  - Double tap to wake; not used yet but we’ll see
  - AOD
    - Still present, still configurable
    - Icons hangout in color now; this might be done to help keep the AOD pixels from burning out just their “white” pixels, but it makes things harder to see
  - All of the sounds changed again! Oh no, I was so used to the regular and common and consistent Samsung Experience sounds!
  - Other notable features; obviously none from the Note 9 more than the Pen
  - Everyone is freaking out how poorly the Face Unlock feature secures the phone; the Iris scanner is gone and while I didn’t use it previously, I do like Face Unlock, for those times my hands are in gloves or any number of convenient times; I turn this off when I travel – it’s not secure, of course

Attributions

Free Music Archive: Beat Doctor – Organic (electric edit)

Second Opinion is released under a Creative Commons — Attribution 4.0 International license. Feel free to use any or all of it as long as you link back to http://thenexus.tv/so61.

This episode of Second Opinion has a Fringe episode. You should really listen to The Fringe #525: SO #61 — The Edges, The Rim!

Listen to more at The Nexus and follow us on Twitter and Google+ for our latest episodes and news.

Pricing
- 3 variants
  - S10e – $750
  - S10 – $899
  - S10+ – $999
- Colors
  - Black, white, flamingo, and ???
- Base models come with 8gb ram and 128gb storage
- Vs Note 9; the pricing is even further out of control; it’s the inevitable ASP price creep syndrome now
- My pricing:
  - Pre-order via BestBuy
  - Turned in my purchased-last-february S9+ for $550 credit
  - Paid a hefty… not really; $508
Display
- Size 6.4’’ display
- Special features
  - Integrated fingerprint sensor; more on this later
  - Up to 1200 nits of brightness
Physicals
- Look and feel, build quality
  - When I first held it, it was adorably light; I was used to holding this glass brick in the Note 9 so this was a difference
  - The side metal is aluminium this time – not sure what it was before, but previously the metal band around feld “stronger”
  - The Note 9 was very Square; very hard edges – this is much more rounded on the top/bottom left/right sides
- Battery
  - 4100 mah
- Charging
  - Usual charging modes; cable and wireless
  - Plus a useless gimmick feature, “reverse charging” that every reviewer has tentpoled; that stops here
- Ports
  - Usual ports; type c + headphone jack
- Speakers
  - Same speaker configuration; stereo in top front and side bottom
  - The top speaker is tucked between the glass and the top bezel; it’s okay
- Buttons
  - Bixby button is still here but with partial remap maybe not totally useless
  - The power button is said to be too high up on the S10+ model
- Fingerprint sensor; under the screen
  - I registered 4 unique fingers; previously on the Note 9 I had only the index-fingers registered, I’d never use my Thumb
  - I could unlock the phone smoothly while it was coming out of pocket without looking; with this new scanner since it’s in the screen, I can have to guess more which means accuracy is down
  - You can unlock from AOD but you have no visual indicator where the sensor is; it’s not in an obvious place, where the android home button is
    - On the AOD, they need to put some kind of reference point down there; allegedly scared of burn in though; even it’s not the finger print visual, even an empty circle, anything
Camera
- 3 cameras on the back
  - 2x, 1x and “1/2x”
  - The
- 2 cameras on the front
- How is it
- Special modes
- Notable features
Specs
- CPU
  - Snapdragon 855
- RAM
  - 8gb
- Storage
  - 128gb base model + I added a 128gb SD card; what is storage and why do I need it?
Software
- OS
  - Wow, Android, what happened to you? Now running with Pie and One UI, the “Samsung Experience” that made from the S8 line to now so successful software wise is gone; replaced with this strange interface
  - List items are often smushed cards or elongated pills
  - Everything is so bright, AMOLED chuckles in the distance
  - The utilities that Samsung Experience is well known for is for the most part still here
- Software Features
  - Updated side-by-side app switcher; always defaults to the previous app which is useful but also annoying since I was trained by previous versions to swipe anyway
  - Raise to wake
    - Possibly the most annoying new feature, every time I touch the phone, no matter if I’m just repositioning it to still see the time on the AOD better; it thinks I want to play and it wakes up
  - Double tap to wake; not used yet but we’ll see
  - AOD
    - Still present, still configurable
    - Icons hangout in color now; this might be done to help keep the AOD pixels from burning out just their “white” pixels, but it makes things harder to see
  - All of the sounds changed again! Oh no, I was so used to the regular and common and consistent Samsung Experience sounds!
  - Other notable features; obviously none from the Note 9 more than the Pen
  - Everyone is freaking out how poorly the Face Unlock feature secures the phone; the Iris scanner is gone and while I didn’t use it previously, I do like Face Unlock, for those times my hands are in gloves or any number of convenient times; I turn this off when I travel – it’s not secure, of course

Attributions

Free Music Archive: Beat Doctor – Organic (electric edit)

Second Opinion is released under a Creative Commons — Attribution 4.0 International license. Feel free to use any or all of it as long as you link back to http://thenexus.tv/so61.

This episode of Second Opinion has a Fringe episode. You should really listen to The Fringe #525: SO #61 — The Edges, The Rim!

Listen to more at The Nexus and follow us on Twitter and Google+ for our latest episodes and news.

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Related Shows

Most Recent Episode

Second Opinion #61: Samsung Galaxy S10+ Review

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