I'm not mad, just disappointed... - Galaxy S10/S10+ Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
2,004 words · ~10 min read
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it's truly amazing to me how unnecessary
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your standard phone review has become these days here's a post from user var
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core over on xda developers from two weeks before samsung unveiled their
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latest and greatest s series smartphones the galaxy s10e s10 and s10 plus the
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pros over the s9 are much faster processing speeds bigger battery and
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display in-display fingerprint reader 5g
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in the second release a bevy of specialized cameras larger internal and
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external storage and on the high-end model 12 gigabytes of RAM it would seem
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to have no real competition but there are two glaring cons as well the camera
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cutouts marring the display and its price yep okay
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sounds about right so i should probably just hire that guy or gal and save
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myself some time but i didn't instead i
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spent the last few weeks trying really hard to love the s10 plus and its little
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brother over here so here are my thoughts
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brought to you by ASUS the rog rapture gta x 11000 is a 10 gigabit wi-fi router
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featuring two and a half gig gaming ports a quad-core processor ai mesh
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support and wi-fi six technology that is supported by the samsung galaxy s10
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check it out at the link below
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it is no big secret that i
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am not a fan of odd-shaped displays i
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mean ignoring the admittedly quite hilarious purpose-made wallpapers there
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is quite literally zero content that is designed to have a
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bite taken out of it why well i'll tell you why because it's
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a silly backwards step in our otherwise fairly consistent journey towards
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displays that occupy our field of vision as naturally and fully as possible and
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it's obviously one that isn't going to last so why be like the tv shows that
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failed to embrace widescreen and have all your content look stupid in a year
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or two or like today for that matter
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and yeah i think that's actually the worst part of all of this samsung stayed
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away for this long only to finally belly flop face
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first into this unfortunate industry trend right when their chinese
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competitors like oppo vivo and nubia have already declared it dead all three
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of those have already shipping phones
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with no notch and nearly full coverage
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displays thanks to innovations like motorized and sliding selfie cams or in
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what is imo the most futuristic and cool
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move the elimination of the selfie cam all together in favor of using the rear
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camera for everything something that probably would have been a good move for
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samsung this time around i was pretty pleased overall with the rear camera the
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app needs to go back to allowing both still and video capture from the same
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screen but for video the only glaring issue that needs to be resolved is the
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frame skipping when you capture a still during video recording and as for stills
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regardless of dxomark scores and what have you i would still take an iphone
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10s or a pixel 3 over the galaxy s10 but
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it is a clear step up from my note 9 when it comes to delivering sharp photos
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of my wonderful but always moving children and it managed adequate low
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light performance for my purposes now the issue with the camera is the
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front-facing camera or cameras are you
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seriously telling me that this was the
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best you could do both the wide angle and regular lens
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deliver at best no improvement over the note 9 and at worst some of the most
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inexplicably poor results that i've seen in a few generations what the heck is
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this there's just no excuse now honor's
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latest phone that has a pinhole display this on the s10 plus this is an exit
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wound and you went and put that in my screen for these results
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these photos you're looking at here were taken under identical conditions on full
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auto okay so i got that out of my system in all seriousness though i did mostly
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stop noticing the pinhole after a while
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so how about we talk about day-to-day use because there's actually a lot to
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love here starting with battery life a seven nanometer processor with 4 100
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milliamp hours in this form factor yes please
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wicked fast wireless and wired charging yeah i'll take some of that too now some
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exynos users have been complaining of higher than normal idle battery drain
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but it's yet to be determined if that's a widespread issue or just
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samsung phones doing samsung things and many other users particularly of the
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snapdragon variety are reporting screen on time in the range of six to even
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eight hours or more and that honestly is more in line with my experience this
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thing has been great so far on the subject of the screen we're ignoring the
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shrapnel wound it's actually been a while since i've been this
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wowed by a phone display i mean it's so vibrant and it manages to feel just like
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extra responsive in spite of the fact that it still runs at a mere 60 hertz
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also samsung has really managed to tone down the distortion and the dimness of
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the curved glass along the edges even compared to the note 9 from less than a
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year ago if only they had watched my review of that phone because they
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actually managed to undo some of the progress that they made last summer when
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they widened the side bezels so like the note 9 the s10 plus is a
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gigantic device that makes one-handed operation a little bit challenging and
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samsung obviously knows this because they've made some helpful optimizations
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to their Android skin to minimize how often it is that you'll actually need to
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reach all the way up to the top see this there's your brightness slider it's not
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bad right it's just that as cool as one-handed mode is i don't buy a big
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phone to use it at fifty percent size and by slimming down the side bezels
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again they've dramatically increased the frequency with which i accidentally
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trigger apps or keyboard presses or the
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back button while i'm reaching across the display it's a non-issue in my
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opinion on the s10 but it bothered me on the plus and i hope they don't do the
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same thing on the note 10. another thing that i'm hoping surely in vain not to
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encounter on the note 10 is the ultrasonic fingerprint sensor now
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i got the software update that did improve the sub 20 success rate that i
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was having with this thing see i got it there but it's still not a hundred
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percent and this is especially true it seems when my hands are really dry
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making matters worse even when it's working properly it's just straight up
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not as fast as the optical sensor that's employed by oneplus in the 6t like not
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even close now it's better than picking
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up my phone and touching the back of it but it does hurt the otherwise great
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overall responsiveness of this device
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like it really does feel great in the hand too i can't actually speak for the
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ceramic version both samsung and dbrand actually sent over the
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glass-backed ones but it's thin and well-balanced with pretty much all the
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things i've come to expect from a samsung flagship device except better
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the speaker standout is achieving much better stereo separation on supported
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content like this is a really loud amplified earpiece speaker in spite of
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its diminutive size and on the bottom oh a headphone jack that's a welcome sight
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oh so it turns out you can get ip68 resistance with it it's just more work
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how about that the one step backward here is the ergonomics of the lock
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button again this isn't a big issue on the smaller s10 but on the plus it kind
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of seems like what they've done is moved it up uncomfortably far on the phone in
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order to fix a problem that doesn't exist anymore now that they're finally
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allowing users to remap the bixby button so you're not constantly mashing bixby
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when you try to lock your phone on that note i don't actually hate bixby i just
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don't want her showing up uninvited so i just changed it to a double click that's
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also a nice new little option they've gotten there and i haven't had any
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frustrating issues since then so how did this take you numpty's two years to fix
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when you had all the user feedback it's such an obvious solution
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yay on that subject here's a few more things for you to ignore for the next 24
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months then spend an hour fixing when someone in senior management finally
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watches a review or two bring back the extra granularity and volume control
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with the slider please i listen to reruns or music while i sleep and i
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can't get it quiet enough anymore also
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what is this locate and app nonsense when i search in the app drawer
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just let me drag it to the home screen please and finally
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samsung do away with the stupid carrier
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lock crap when you first install a sim
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if i bought an unlocked phone that's because that's what i wanted i know the
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carriers want you to do this but grow a pair
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anyway i really don't want the things samsung
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has done wrong to distract from what they've done right here i still hate the
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island notch it's ugly distracting and most importantly completely unnecessary
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but the bottom line is that the s10 and s10 plus are lightning fast with what is
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in my opinion the best samsung software experience yet and a great feel in the
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hand they have problems but i do tend to find
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them easier to forgive when i can sit down and write this entire review while
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listening to music on my bio fa-7 iems yeah they may have icky caveman wires
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attached to them but you know what they blow the doors off your airpods and you
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can have them from me when you pry them from my cold dead fingers
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speaking of cold dead fingers dbrand is
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gonna kill me when they see this segway dbrand skins are a great way to not just
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have your device look better but also to take care of it because they can help
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protect from incidental scuffs and scratches one of the coolest things
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about dbrand is when you go on their website and select your device you can
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preview in real time exactly what it's going to look like so you don't just
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have to go okay i want yellow here or i
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want you know carbon fiber there or this absolutely sick man i
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love this honeycomb finish that they sent over on the s10 and s10 plus you
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can mix and match things if you're into that kind of thing and create exactly
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the look you want they offer cheap international shipping and you can check
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them out at the link in the video description
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