Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus

Samsung ushered in a major design refresh this year, something that it now does once in every two years. The biggest change is that the S10 Plus display stretches further to the top and engulfs the selfie snapper while doing so. The end results are extremely narrow bezels on all sides (93% screen-to-body ratio) and some status bar space penalty.

Samsung uses a 6.4-inch QHD+ dynamic AMOLED display with a more conventional 19:9 aspect ratio (as compared to last year). Once again it’s nearly impossible to beat Samsung when it comes to high-end phone displays. As expected, the display is HDR 10 supported, super vivid, and super sharp. But the best part this year is that Samsung has managed to cut blue light further by 42% (by using a new Blue OLED) which should help avoid eye fatigue.

The new biometric reader also renders 3D touch home button redundant, which is why it’s not there on the S10 Plus (We kind of miss having it). Another omission is the Iris scanner, but that’s something we won’t miss. It didn’t work well for people wearing specs, anyway.

The Face Unlock feels like an improvement (and there is a slick face unlock animation too). Lift to wake gesture is turned on by default, and if you have Face Unlock configured, your phone will most probably unlock before you get to place your thumb on the ultrasonic fingerprint sensor.

The common denominator between all Galaxie S10-series phones is the chipset – 8nm Exynos 9820 for India and SD 855 for the US. We were perfectly happy with the performance of Exynos 9810 on the Galaxy S9 Plus (even in the long term) and the Galaxy S10+ is faster, supports latest connectivity options and has a more advanced camera ISP.

The phone supports HD streaming, Dual VoLTE, and WiFi 6. The UFS 3.0 didn’t make the cut for S10 or S10+ (Unlike on Galaxy Fold). But the base variant starts with 128GB storage, going all the way up to 1TB. RAM capacity starts at 8GB.

Samsung has focused on adding extra sensors and more AI modes. Samsung didn’t talk much about any magical algorithms or pathbreaking image computation techniques, kind of like what Apple and Google did. The camera on the Galaxy S10+ is not a radical improvement over what we have on Galaxy Note 9, but it’s still better. The metering has improved, particularly in harsh sunlight.

The 4100mAh battery supports fast charging and reverse wireless charging. As of now, we are getting a convenient one-day mileage, but not more. The battery drains faster than our Note 9, and, going by the global reviews of S10+, we are guessing that the Exynos 9820 is not as battery efficient as the Snapdragon 855.

The phone supports fast charging and fast wireless charging. Post Note 7 fiasco, Samsung has been understandably playing safe when it comes to batteries, which perhaps explains why their fast charging is still behind the likes of VOOC, SuperCharge or WarpCharge.read more →