I’ve spent 48 hours with Samsung’s latest flagship phone and the Galaxy S10 Plus is shaping up to be an excellent, if slightly predictable, entry in the series.
It’s got a glorious screen, slick body and the few shots I have so far taken with the triple-array camera on the back seem to a step in the right direction. We’ll have a full Samsung Galaxy S10 review and Samsung Galaxy S10e review for you soon, along with a thorough look at the S10 Plus, but for now here are our initial impressions after a couple of days.
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Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus Price and Release Date
You can pre-order the Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus right now, with the phone shipping on March 8. If you pre-order now you can pick up a pair of Galaxy Buds for free. That seems like a good deal to us.
Prices in the UK start from £899 for the 128GB model and £1099 for the 512GB model. If you want the Performance Edition – the version with 12GB RAM and 512GB storage – you’ll have to part with £1399. That’s a serious amount of money for a phone. Not quite as much as the £1800/$1950 Samsung Galaxy Fold, though.
In the US it’ll cost $999 for the 128GB model and $1249 for the 512GB version. That 1TB edition costs $1499.
In the UK it looks like all major carriers – EE, Vodafone, Three and O2 – are stocking the phone, alongside Virgin Mobile and Tesco Mobile. Check out our Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus pre-order deals for all the latest news on pricing and the best offers.
Samsung Galaxy S10 Pre-order Deals
Samsung Galaxy S10 with free Samsung Galaxy Buds worth £139
Samsung Galaxy S10 with free Samsung Galaxy Buds worth £139
Claim a free pair of Samsung Galaxy Buds worth £139 if you pre-order the Samsung Galaxy S10 before March 7th.
Samsung Galaxy S10 128GB Black – 60GB of data on EE with free Samsung Galaxy Buds
Samsung Galaxy S10 128GB Black – 60GB of data on EE with free Samsung Galaxy Buds
A great deal with nothing to pay upfront for the brand new Galaxy S10. This pre-order deal also includes the Samsung Galaxy Buds.
Samsung Galaxy S10 128GB Black – 30GB of data on O2 with free Samsung Galaxy Buds
Samsung Galaxy S10 128GB Black – 30GB of data on O2 with free Samsung Galaxy Buds
If you're willing to pay a small upfront then this deal takes your monthly cost right now. You also have the chance to win a £1000 Currys PC World gift card on top of the free Samsung Galaxy Buds.
Watch: Galaxy S10 vs S10+ vs S10e
Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus – Screen
The star of the S10 Plus show is its utterly gorgeous 6.4-inch screen. Samsung’s screens remain the best in the business.
Like previous flagships from the company, the panel here uses OLED tech (Super AMOLED, as Samsung calls it) ensuring perfect blacks, colours that pop and proper support for HDR video. It slopes gently at the sides, too, giving the impression that the panel is melting into the metal sides.
Samsung is claiming that the display can reach 1200 nits of brightness, which is a notable improvement on the 1000 nits claimed for the S9. Having a brighter screen not only gives you better-looking HDR video, but it ensures the handset remains usable in sunlight and general outdoor situations. Samsung reps couldn’t confirm whether you’ll be able to manually up the brightness all the way to its peak, as you can with the LG G7, or whether it will jack up automatically in certain situations.
I have already watched a few hours worth of video on the phone and the screen is consistently stunning. It works very well in bright conditions too, however I have yet to properly test that 1200 nits claim. Side-by-side with the S9 it does seem a tad brighter to my eyes, though.
To try to get the highest screen-to-body possible (here it’s 93.1%), Samsung has removed the majority of the phone’s top bezel. Instead, it now sits the front camera in a pill-shaped cutout in the corner of the screen, not too dissimilar to how it works on the Honor View 20. The cutout is larger here than on the Galaxy S10, since the Plus has two cameras: a 10-megapixel sensor paired with an 8-megapixel one for depth-sensing.
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I remain torn over this type of notch. The screen here is glorious, but the cutout does get in the way. Apps that are overly reliant on white colour schemes make it standout a lot and I’ve found it hard forget about so far. Apps like Netflix and Amazon Prime take the cutout as a notch and that means you get slightly lopsided video when streaming. With YouTube you can expand the video all the way around, which looks a whole lot better.
The final trick of the display is the ultrasonic fingerprint sensor. This replaces the rear-mounted sensor on the previous generation of device, and it follows Huawei and OnePlus in putting the tech into the display. Samsung’s implementation is a huge improvement: after the fairly slow setup process digits are read very quickly and while I wouldn’t say it’s faster than traditional physical sensors, it’s been good so far.
Also, as it’s ultrasonic rather than optical (like the OnePlus 6T and Mate 20 Pro) the screen doesn’t need to be turned on for it to work.
Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus – Performance
In typical Samsung fashion, the Plus model packs all the features of the smaller phone and adds a couple of extras into the mix. Alongside the aforementioned 1TB storage option, you can also up the RAM to *gulps* 12GB.
The version I have for review packs 8GB RAM, 128GB storage and the Exynos 9820 8nm chipset and it feels smooth and fast. I would expect that for a new phone though and I haven’t benchmarked it yet. It’ll be interesting to see how the scores compare to an iPhone XS.
In addition, there’s a huge 4100mAh battery inside, and an extra depth-sensing camera on the front of the device. This is a seriously stacked smartphone, and it even makes room for a headphone jack.
Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus – Camera
There are three cameras on the back of the S10 Plus, with a further two on the front. The rear camera is made using an optically stabilised 12-megapixel main sensor with an aperture that can shift between f/1.5 for night shots and f/2.4 for the day, along with an ultrawide 16-megapixel f/2.2 sensor and, finally, a stabilised 12-megapixel tele sensor.
Of the three, the new addition is the ultrawide sensor and the implementation here seems similar to the one used by Huawei in the Mate 20 Pro. In the app, you can zoom out to enter wide view and there’s somewhat of a fisheye effect on the results. It’s a nice camera to have, allowing for far greater creativity.
The images I have shot so far, which you can see below, all look good and have distinct Samsung characteristics: seriously bright colours, plenty of detail and a nice contrast. Wide camera aside though, I wouldn’t say there’s too much difference between this and the S9. Maybe that opinion will change after a few more days of use though.
There’s also a notable lack of a dedicated Night mode here – a feature that has become increasingly popular on other Android phones. Google’s Night Sight, for example, improves and brightens low-light shots by snapping multiple shots in varying exposures and combining them together. I’d have put money on Samsung including something similar.
On the front of the S10 Plus is a main 10-megapixel selfie camera, paired with an 8-megapixel unit for adding depth data to portrait shots.
Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus – Software
All new entries in the Galaxy S series ship with the Android 9 Pie and One UI. This is Samsung’s reinvention of its software and it’s already available on certain versions of the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy Note 9.
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The focus is on being able to use apps one-handed, with frequently used items pushed down towards the bottom of the screen. The camera UI now has a very iOS-feel to it and there are AI-based elements too. The whole system is meant to learn your behaviour and therefore allows you to open those frequently used apps quicker. Whether this actually work remains to be seen.
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There are also new icons everywhere, a system-wide dark mode that looks great on the OLED display, and a new look for the Bixby homescreen. Overall, it’s a big step forward for Samsung’s software, even it does still feel very removed from Google’s vision of Android.
Samsung Galaxy S10 Pre-order Deals
Samsung Galaxy S10 with free Samsung Galaxy Buds worth £139
Samsung Galaxy S10 with free Samsung Galaxy Buds worth £139
Claim a free pair of Samsung Galaxy Buds worth £139 if you pre-order the Samsung Galaxy S10 before March 7th.
Samsung Galaxy S10 128GB Black – 60GB of data on EE with free Samsung Galaxy Buds
Samsung Galaxy S10 128GB Black – 60GB of data on EE with free Samsung Galaxy Buds
A great deal with nothing to pay upfront for the brand new Galaxy S10. This pre-order deal also includes the Samsung Galaxy Buds.
Samsung Galaxy S10 128GB Black – 30GB of data on O2 with free Samsung Galaxy Buds
Samsung Galaxy S10 128GB Black – 30GB of data on O2 with free Samsung Galaxy Buds
If you're willing to pay a small upfront then this deal takes your monthly cost right now. You also have the chance to win a £1000 Currys PC World gift card on top of the free Samsung Galaxy Buds.
With the Galaxy S10 5G edition not out until the summer, it’s the S10 Plus that currently sits atop the line – and it’s certainly worthy of its lofty spot. This is a powerhouse, with those ridiculous options of 1TB of storage and 12GB of RAM. And don’t forget about the glorious screen either, nor the slick design.
The post Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus Review: 48 hours with Samsung's new flagship appeared first on Trusted Reviews.
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