this video is sponsored by ridge wallet so this is the samsung galaxy s10 a former flagship and
a member of the same line of phones that bought me the samsung galaxy s8 a phone some of you may
remember almost drove me away from android forever that said after many requests and my own curiosity
i finally decided to pick this phone up today we're going to be talking about what i think of
this phone and whether or not i recommend picking this thing up in 2021. first of all as usual we're
going to be taking a look at the specs and this is a little bit of an interesting one because i'm
sure as many of you are aware this phone actually has two separate processes depending on where you
are in the world it's either a snapdragon 855 or a xyenos 9820 i live in europe so i have the xyenos
variant but do bear this in mind if you live elsewhere it also features an impressive eight
gigabytes of ram more than any iphone i've ever tried or indeed ever released comes in either 128
or 512 gigabytes of expandable internal storage which is more than enough for me weighs in 157
grams which is actually quite nice and light compared to what i'm used to over on iphone
and is available in either prism black prism green prism blue canary yellow flamingo pink
cardinal red smoke blue or the one i have here prism white that was a lot of colors so a nice
selection as for key specs excluding things like screen battery and cameras that's pretty much it
if you're new here i tend not to focus on specs too much in my reviews i much prefer talking about
real world user experience so i try to get through the specs as quickly as possible before we go any
further though i do want to give a quick shout out to this video's sponsor the ridge wallet they
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new wallet it's definitely worth checking out the ridge they've given me a 10 discount to share with
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new ridge wallet once again thanks to rich for sponsoring this video it's sponsors like these
that help me to keep running this channel and now let's get back to the video and take a look at the
design and build quality which is simply stunning i've said it before and i'll say it again this
is one of if not my favorite looking phone i'd ever laid my eyes on the prism white color looks
stunning from all angles the three bar camera system is awesome the way the screen simply
melts into the body this thing work of art it's built out of gorilla glass 6 for the front and
gorilla glass 5 for the back which is always nice to see however with these glass back phones as
usual i do recommend the case as if you break this thing the repair bill probably won't be that cheap
especially if you break both sides there's also a nice feeling metal bezel that runs around the
side of the phone and in order to protect it from water it features an ip68 water resistance rating
this means that you can put your phone in up to 1.5 meters of water for 30 minutes and it should
be fine try not to get your phone wet but you have some protection if you do overall more of the same
for modern flagship phones a design worthy of an art gallery but still probably gonna need a case
up next we have the screen the samsung s10 features a curved 6.1 inch 19x9 dynamic oled
hdr10 display with a resolution of 1440x3040 and a brightness of 800 nits in high brightness mode and
honestly it looks amazing watching videos on this thing is truly an incredible experience due to the
combination of that really high resolution nice brightness and good size i find that the screen
is one of the most important features on the modern smartphone and here it's clear that it
excels it also features that always-on technology so if you need to quickly glance at the time you
can simply look down at your phone and be able to see that along with notification previews
and your battery life it's nice and responsive to touch maybe a little too sensitive at the
sides and you may have to adjust your grip if you're coming from a non-curved phone like i
did however due to the adjustment period being fairly short i really don't see this as much of
an issue obviously we have the hole punch design in the top of the screen to make space for the
front-facing camera which may be off-putting at first but after a while it's quite fun trying
to pick out certain wallpapers to camouflage this and it certainly affects the user experience when
watching 18x9 videos less than something like a notch on the iphone overall while it doesn't
feature any of the secondary interaction features that you'll find on the iphone side of things
neither does it have a super high refresh rate the screen is still stunning on the samsung s10 easily
one of the best i've seen and it holds up super well even in 2021. next up we're talking button
placement and while it is mostly good i do have a few gripes i do like how the lock button is
isolated on the one side as well as the general feel however the combination volume up and down
button really isn't enjoyable to use it makes miss clicking much easier than with separate buttons
and it also feels significantly more mushy than the rest of the buttons because of this which
doesn't feel good at all to be honest however the biggest fault in the default configuration is
easily the bixby button it's right next to the volume down keep which makes accidental pressing
difficult to avoid and all these years later it's still nowhere near as good as google assistant or
siri i think the button would have been much more useful as a mute switch so that's exactly what
i remap mine for overall like for the most part buttons do feel nice and tactile they're nice and
responsive and well again separate volume buttons would have been good the button layout is still
mostly solid following on we have the biometrics we get both a face unlock and an underscreen
fingerprint sensor and for the most part these have been pretty good the face unlock did work
most of the time which is always good however i found it to be much less forgiving than the face
id on the apple side of things but for the most part as long as you get a good scan of your face
and you're operating in decent light levels it'll still work pretty well the underscreen fingerprint
sensor on the other hand was an absolute treat coming from apple while i do personally still
prefer physical fingerprint sensors as i find that a little bit more accurate it's a nice feature
especially in this time of wearing masks again for the most part this works great and i have very few
issues with it it does occasionally struggle due to the nature of underscreen fingerprint
scanners but it's still my preferred method of unlocking this phone and i've got to say
once again having multiple biometrics options is a nice breath of fresh air for me next up we have
one of my favorite features and something that is jam-packed on this phone the camera in terms of
specs the s10 features a three camera setup with a 12 megapixel f 1.5 to 2.4 white camera a 12
megapixel f 2.4 telephoto and a 16 megapixel f 2.2 ultra wide if you don't know what those f numbers
mean they're essentially aperture basically the lower that number goes the more light that it lets
in but in terms of performance initially i wasn't too impressed but then for some reason the gallery
fixed itself and i could see the photos clearly oh man was i impressed this is perhaps the best ultra
wide camera i've ever got to use on a smartphone because while it does still have a little bit of
that distortion around the edges it's not quite as noticeable as it is on iphone and the bump in
megapixels on the ultrawide is awesome especially seeing as you're covering more ground this
kind of makes sense colors look nice and vibrant the images are very sharp and there's none of
that smudgy lack of detail like is stereotypical with android overall very solid photo performance
there's also a night mode which in my opinion isn't quite as good as the one on iphone but
there's also a pro photo mode giving you manual control over your camera settings which is nice
to have as stock while i don't like the controls as much the portrait mode is so accurate in what
it blurs out i can totally forgive the lackluster post shot customization the background blur looks
natural edges are super accurate and i really don't have many complaints here there's also a
single take mode which i don't really use a food mode and a plethora of other modes that would take
way too much time to go through individually but overall photo performance on the samsung
s10 is pretty phenomenal but what about video we get 4k at up to 60 fps which looks nice and
sharp if a little less detailed than that of the iphone we also get 1080p at either 30 60 or 240
fps for some of that nice slow motion and if you really need it it even goes up to 960fps in 720p
hdr10 video is also here and overall the video on the s10 is actually pretty decent but what
about the front-facing camera for selfies it's pretty good the color science again looks nice
and while it does make the skin look a little smooth for my liking almost to the point where
it looks unnaturally processed for well selfies this isn't really much of an issue video mode on
the front-facing camera is a similar story good for a casual vlog but again skin can sometimes
look a little bit unnatural overall the camera on the samsung s10 is actually pretty impressive
it took me a little while to warm to it at first but after you get used to it you can get some
really nice photos that are good and sharp and you have a lot of fun tools at your disposal up next
we have arguably the most important feature of any modern smartphone the os and app performance in
terms of operating systems this s10 is running android version 11 launching with android 9
and honestly os performance has been pretty solid performing system functions like scrolling through
menus switching apps and swipe gestures have all been pretty flawless in my experience and despite
my initial reservations i've actually come to quite like the default samsung launcher too now
typically androids don't last as long as iphone so support has always been an issue for me however
it has been confirmed that the s10 will be getting android version 12 this august giving
it three versions of android opposed to the two we typically got honestly the fact that it has this
future update means that at least for the next year there will be no issues with this phone going
out of date in terms of more intensive performance again i've been very impressed the high resolution
bright screen means that watching high resolution content has been a pleasure with this phone and
seeing as i usually watch youtube on my phone it's rare for me to be able to use such a good screen
in terms of gaming again it's more of the same great screen no issues with drop frames especially
as i prefer to play casual games however with all the games i've played on this phone i've never had
an issue with performance overall as long as you keep support in mind performance on the s10 has
been fantastic going back to hardware briefly the s10 not only features built-in speakers but also
a pretty decent built-in headphone jack it could easily drive my status audio CB-1s with no issue
and it's a nice addition in terms of the speakers themselves they get decently loud feature a stereo
configuration for a more immersive listening experience a tune by akg which is always nice
to see and even featured dolby atmos for some surround sound listening overall for some casual
listening like watching a film or putting on some background music the samsung s10 will do a
pretty great job and the addition of a headphone jack means plugging in better headphones or
speakers for louder or more detailed listening easier than ever finally and appropriately last
we're going to be talking about the battery life the samsung s10 features a battery size of
3400 milliamp hours which is nice and big mind you it kind of needs to be the power of that screen
it supports qi charging usb c fast charging and even reverse charging which is actually quite
cool however i mostly use wired charging with a fast charger as i'm simply used to that charging
method and overall i found the battery life to be pretty great i never find myself running lows
throughout the day help i even wrote this video at 11:05 at night and it still had 24 battery
life left granted this will depend on how much you use your phone but so long as you're not gaming
all day or need to be away from a charger for days at a time this thing should do nicely overall the
samsung galaxy s10 is a pretty remarkable phone it's a flagship phone from 2019 that easily keeps
up today with it outperforming most budget phones in terms of screen resolution and camera quality
even avoiding being crushed by a lot of current flagships it's a great phone that does like some
of those modern gimmicks and if you're looking to buy one in 2021 as long as you keep os support in
mind this could be a pretty nice option alright guys so that's it for today i hope you've enjoyed
this one let me know by the way do you plan on picking up an s10 do you already own one
feel free to let me know in the comments i always enjoy reading those as for now though as always
thank you for watching remember to like the video if you want to see more content like this then
smash that subscribe button i'm done for now and i will see you guys in the next one