- [Michael] In a world in which smartphones
like this exist, it's kinda hard to care
about ones that look like this.
But while the Samsung Galaxy Fold looks to reinvent
the smartphone for tomorrow, the Galaxy S10 Plus
looks to perfect it for today.
And it gets really close to doing just that.
(upbeat music)
I've spent two weeks on two continents
with the Galaxy S10 Plus, the most capable
of the three main Samsung flagships this year.
This is not the phone most folks will buy.
The Galaxy S10 brings most of the same features
for substantially less and even the cheaper S10e
is a monster of a smartphone.
The S10 Plus is where Samsung gets to flex a little,
with a bigger display and more storage and RAM options,
plus an optional ceramic finish.
The most useful plus feature by far, is the big battery.
Taking a brand new phone into the mayhem of a trade show,
as I did at Mobile World Congress last week
is the nightmare that phones have
when you put them to sleep.
But with a 4100 mil amp hour battery,
I was able to use the S10 Plus for 18 hour days.
Days full of shooting my own photos and video
and then lending it to Alex Dobie
for Android Central's coverage.
All the time ferrying constant message traffic
while immersed in an RF swamp
of overloaded cell and wifi networks.
Now I could kill it if I tried.
Toggle that always on display and you'll burn
between one and 3% more juice per hour.
But if you use it with even a cursory thought
toward power management, the S10 Plus is a battery champ!
The only way to kill it in a hurry is to use a feature
I first checked out on a Huawei phone.
Switch on wireless power share and you can transmit power
to another device, like the Galaxy Buds
or Galaxy Watch, no cable necessary.
Just don't go thinking you can be the Robin Hood
of amp hours for all your friends' phones.
While it's possible to charge other handhelds,
it's not efficient and it's not fast.
I'll show ya, I'll pop my Pixel 3 on here
and toss it into the time lapse chamber.
We'll come back in a sec so you can see what I mean.
I'm jonesin' to get to the camera folks,
but we need to touch on what's on screen first.
While Samsung phones usually sport speedy performance
out of the box, they've never felt this smooth before.
The combination of response of interface
with the screen coding that I swear is slicker than usual,
it means that over used expression of buttery smooth
applies more than ever here.
The 6.4 inch display those graphics are riding on,
is once again, being called
the best you can find on a smartphone.
Where it improves over the Galaxy Note 9
is in max brightness, this year peaking at 1200 nit.
And honestly, even the Note 9 was brighter
than most folks will ever need outside the desert.
It's also HDR Plus certified and it hides
a 3D sonic fingerprint reader beneath it which,
while not as fast or accurate as a capacitive sensor,
seems to work better than optical scanners.
In short, for other smartphones that try to live up
to this screen, well tell 'em, Oscar from Armageddon.
(electronic music)
That sound is coming curtesy of Samsung's typical
half front, half side dual speaker arrangement.
For phone calls, this is a wonderful system.
Callers are plenty loud and in speaker phone mode,
sound comes from both earpiece and speaker ports.
Which I think is a first, and even if it's not,
it's exceptionally rare.
As for media playback, well it's loud and clear enough,
but I still really don't like side firing speakers at all.
I wish Samsung would give us true front firing speakers
like the Pixel 3 does.
Oh, and speaking of the Pixel,
that's our time travel timer trilling away.
So let's see what 30 minutes
of wireless power share gave us.
Okay, the Pixel that started at 10% is now at 22%,
while the galaxy that started at 80% is down to 60.
And that means the Samsung sacrificed 20% of its capacity
to top up the Pixel by 12%.
So again, if you need to charge someone else's phone,
you can but for the most part,
you'll wanna stick to the watch and the buds.
And folks, if you'll permit me one more Pixel 3 reference,
I'll use it to kick off the camera chunk of this review.
Google's Night Sight beats the devil out of anything
the Galaxy S10 can do in low light.
But, Samsung's phone has a huge advantage
in any situation where you need to cram more into the frame.
I've been praising wide angle phone cameras
since LG made them a fixture about three years ago.
But too often, LG and later arrivals like Huawei
made you sacrifice quality for that wide angle shot.
Samsung achieves what I think is a sensible compromise.
It does fall off a bit on image quality
by using a lessor sensor and omitting OIS,
but it makes up for those hardware gives
with intelligent software stabilization and processing.
Not to mention being the first manufacturer
to put the lens controls where
an actual human can reach them.
Pro tip, press and hold the shutter button
and you can drag it anywhere.
Also, you get very wide 123 degree field of view,
rather than the 107 degree lens
that LG started sneakin' into recent phones.
And you don't get the reduced frame rate in video mode
that Huawei's wide angle suffers from.
The new camera even helps with Samsung's
usual dash of fun features.
When your shooting live focus, now you don't have to
back six feet away from your subject
to take a portrait shot.
In some, this is the best smartphone
wide angle camera I've tested.
And when you pair it with the standard
and telephoto cameras, it makes the Galaxy S10 Plus
the most versatile camera phone there is right now.
We'll see if that holds when the Huawei P30
launches in a few weeks.
And if you wanna make sure you don't miss my coverage
on that, please subscribe to the Mr. Mobile on YouTube.
It's been a bit of a love fest so far,
so before we wrap up, let's touch on
the three things I'd change.
First, you'll notice there's a dual selfie camera
on the front side and while I was hoping
for an ultra wide angle lens there too,
unfortunately the second shooter is
just a depth sensor for more of those portrait shots.
Second, the phone's software is based on Android Pie,
but the new One UI, a topic I find simplistic.
To me, it looks like it was designed for folks
whose next phone might be a Jitterbug.
Actually, you can magic it away with the built in
themeing tools or a custom launcher.
And third, the much badgered Bixby.
Some of you think we reviewers beat up on Bixby too much,
so let me tell ya, the first thing Samsung's
not very useful assistant did when I took this phone
out of the box was to tell me that a flight
that wasn't scheduled until the next day
was in fact, taking off in 19 minutes.
Way back when the Galaxy Note 9 launched,
I think it got me lost somewhere in Brooklyn
looking for a coffee shop.
So you can understand why some of us want to remap
the Bixby button to the infinitely better Google Assistant.
Like many other manufacturers allow you to do.
While Samsung has given an inch,
it's not yet allowed us to take the full mile.
While you can now reprogram the Bixby button
to another app and that other app can be
almost anything you like, it can't be Google Assistant.
Let's hit that conclusion.
I'm not even gonna bother with a rhetorical setup, yes.
The Galaxy S10 Plus is worth the money.
Again, it's not the best value you can get from Samsung.
That's probably gonna be the S10e.
And if you wanna save even more, you can sacrifice
a lot of features to get the 6T from OnePlus.
But if your finances or your carrier plan mean
a thousand dollar smartphone is something you're open to,
I can't think of a better balanced one than this.
Just make sure you protect it with a custom skin
if you're a butterfingers like me.
Dbrand is today's sponsor and they sent me
40 billion different looks for this thing.
The newer Matrix and the newest Swarm finishes
caught my eye, but for the S10 Plus,
I'm partial to concrete.
Get 20% off through Friday, March 8th with no coupon
necessary, hit 'em up at the link in my description.
And thanks to Dbrand for sponsoring.
Folks, I've padded out this review with some clips
from Alex Dobie and Hayato Huseman's excellent
cinematography building that Android Central Galaxy S10
review, be sure to check it out androidcentral.com.
And I'd like to cover one more from the S10 family
before too long, let me know in the comments
whether you're interested in the S10
or the more affordable and more colorful S10e.
Until next time, thanks for watching
and stay mobile my friends.