Samsung Galaxy S10

•         Display       6.10-inch
• ProcessorSamsung Exynos 9820
• Front Camera10MP
• Rear Camera12MP + 12MP + 16MP
• RAM8GB
• Storage128GB
• Battery Capacity3400mAh
• OSAndroid 9.0

The Samsung Galaxy S10 is the "middle child" of Samsung's Galaxy S10 trio, which was just released. While the Galaxy S10+ has been hailed as the best the Galaxy S series has to offer, the Galaxy S10e has also managed to garner traction thanks to its powerful hardware and affordable price. The Galaxy S10, on the other hand, finds itself in the middle, offering to provide the best of both worlds. Is it truly capable of doing so, or would you be better off with one of its siblings? To find out, we put it to the test.

The design of the Samsung Galaxy S10

There's no doubting that the Samsung Galaxy S10 is a stylish smartphone. In its construction, Samsung has used high-quality materials. The phone has an aluminum frame with Corning Gorilla Glass 6 on the front and Gorilla Glass 5 on the back. This should also assist the phone to resist scratches from normal use.

The Samsung Galaxy S10 sports a 6.1-inch Super AMOLED display, which is halfway between the Samsung Galaxy S10e's 5.8-inch display and the Samsung Galaxy S106.4-inch +'s display (Review). Because it has a QuadHD+ panel, it has a pixel density of 550ppi, which is more than the Galaxy S10+. You'll be able to watch HDR content on the display because it's HDR10+ certified. The Galaxy S10 has an ultrasonic in-display fingerprint scanner, just like the Galaxy S10+.

The Galaxy S10 sports a slim profile and a contoured aluminum body that makes it comfortable to handle. It has a SIM card slot and a microphone on the top. It contains a USB Type-C port, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a loudspeaker on the bottom, as well as the primary microphone. The Galaxy S10's rear is a fingerprint magnet, so you'll have to wipe it clean frequently or put it in the included transparent plastic case.

Samsung puts a screen protector to the display by default, which you may or may not like, but you won't have to go searching for one that works with the in-display fingerprint reader. On the right, there's still a Bixby button that can be used to activate Samsung's voice assistant. As we mentioned in our Galaxy S10+ review, you may set either a single-press or double-press to launch a separate app as long as the other choice still triggers Bixby.

The single front camera of the Galaxy S10 is hole-punched. Yes, the top-right corner of the screen is missing content, but we didn't find it distracting. You'll quickly become accustomed to the design. If you don't like it, you may hide the camera hole by placing a black band over the top of the screen.

Samsung has used a triple camera arrangement on the back, which is identical to the Samsung Galaxy S10+. The heart rate sensor and a single LED flash are also housed in this module.

Samsung includes a slew of accessories with the Galaxy S10. AKG-branded in-ear headphones, a USB-Type C to Type-A adapter, and a transparent case are included. In India, this phone comes in three colors: Prism White, Prism Black, and Prism Blue, with the higher-end edition with additional capacity available only in Prism White. We were given a Prism Black unit to test.

Samsung Galaxy S10 specifications and software

The Samsung Exynos 9820 SoC is found in all three Galaxy S10 siblings, however, the Galaxy S10 and Galaxy S10+ get 8GB RAM and 128GB of internal storage in their base models, while the Galaxy S10e has a little less RAM. The Galaxy S10 comes with 512GB of storage as well. If you don't want to buy the more expensive Galaxy S10, you can still add up to 512GB of storage using a microSD card in the hybrid dual-SIM slot.

The Samsung Exynos 9820 SoC is found in all three Galaxy S10 siblings, however, the Galaxy S10 and Galaxy S10+ get 8GB RAM and 128GB of internal storage in their base models, while the Galaxy S10e has a little less RAM. The Galaxy S10 comes with 512GB of storage as well. If you don't want to buy the more expensive Galaxy S10, you can still add up to 512GB of storage using a microSD card in the hybrid dual-SIM slot.

The Galaxy S10 has dual 4G LTE, VoLTE, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5, NFC, ANT+, and a USB Type-C port for connectivity. For positioning, this phone has four satellite systems. The Galaxy S10 is capable of wireless charging as well as wireless reverse charging of other devices. This capability comes in helpful while charging smaller devices like Galaxy Buds.

On the software front, Samsung has done an excellent job. You'll get the most recent One UI, which is based on Android 9 Pie. We tested this UI on both the Samsung Galaxy S10+ and the Samsung Galaxy A50 (Review) and found it to be very user-friendly. The Digital Wellbeing feature in Android 9 allows you to manage how much time you spend on different apps.

Samsung has also included a few useful features, such as Smart Stay, which keeps the screen active for as long as you gaze at it. There are numerous motion and gesture shortcuts available. You can now use gesture navigation instead of the usual Android navigation scheme of three buttons.

Although the Galaxy S10 comes with several preinstalled apps, you may remove the majority of them. We discovered that the My Galaxy app sent push alerts that gradually filled up the notification shade over a day. We couldn't turn off messages, so we turned off all notifications in this app.

Samsung Galaxy S10 performance, cameras, and battery life

The Galaxy S10 features a fantastic display that produces sharp images. It'll keep you entertained while you're playing games or viewing videos, and we didn't find the hole punch to be bothersome. If you want, you can modify the effective resolution as well as the colors. We used the default full HD+ resolution and Vivid color profile, but if you don't want the colors to pop as dramatically, you may increase the resolution to native QHD+ and choose Natural output.

The Galaxy S10's speakers are excellent, and Samsung employs a stereo effect by combining the bottom-firing speaker with the earpiece. Dolby Atmos compatibility is available for both headphones and loudspeakers, and it can be turned on with a simple toggle. The speakers are loud enough to hear an incoming call in a noisy environment, as well as to enjoy videos and games on this phone. We could clearly hear the other party during calls because of the loud earpiece.

Because we had already evaluated the Galaxy S10+, we had a good notion of how the Samsung Exynos 9820 would perform. During our testing, we did not notice any lag or stuttering on the Galaxy S10, and we did not experience any lag or stuttering. PUBG Mobile, Asphalt 9: Legends, and F1 Mobile were also among the games we tried. We discovered that PUBG Mobile performed smoothly at High settings, whereas Asphalt 9 Legends and F1 Mobile ran smoothly at the basic settings.

After a time of gaming, we noticed that the phone became warm to the touch, although not to the point of being unpleasant. The battery level declined by 14% after 40 minutes of PUBG Mobile play, which is okay. You can also examine how the Exynos 9820 performs in different games in our Galaxy S10+ gaming review. If you want to watch Netflix or Amazon Prime Video on this phone, you'll be pleased to learn that it supports Widevine L1 DRM, allowing you to see video at the greatest possible resolution. The HDR10+ display allowed us to watch HDR content on the smartphone.

The Galaxy S10 fared admirably in benchmark tests. AnTuTu gave it 326,216 marks, while PCMark Work 2.0 gave it 7,862. The single-core and multi-core tests on Geekbench 4 gave this phone 4,467 and 9,711 points, respectively. It reached 60 frames per second in the GFXBench T-Rex benchmark and 57 frames per second in the Manhattan 3.1 test. These results are comparable to what we saw in our tests with the Galaxy S10+ and Galaxy S10e.

The Galaxy S10 and Galaxy S10+ both sport identical 12-megapixel telephoto, 12-megapixel wide-angle, and 16-megapixel ultra-wide camera configurations on the rear, and both phones produce remarkably similar photographs and videos. The camera app is simple to operate, with a variety of options to pick from.

Switching between the three cameras is done via icons. Daylight and macro images are both clear and detailed. The phone has a scene optimizer that can recognize what the camera is pointing at and adjust the settings accordingly. When we took photos with the scene optimizer turned on, we saw a minor improvement. We noticed that the scene optimizer increased the contrast in macros.

The wide-angle camera was useful for vistas, but it did result in some barrel distortion around the edges. Samsung has considered this and provides shape correcting options within the camera app.

When shooting portraits in Live Focus mode, the phone does a good job of separating the subject from the backdrop and applying a blur effect. It also allows you to adjust the blur strength before taking a picture. We found it intriguing that once the photo was taken, we could modify the effect kind and strength.

Photos taken at night contained a lot of detail and were brilliant. We discovered that the scene optimizer could recognize what we were shooting even in low light, allowing us to achieve clear results. The Galaxy S10, like the Galaxy S10+, manages to keep noise under control.

The 10-megapixel selfie camera produces high-quality images with a lot of detail. Because the Galaxy S10 lacks the depth sensor found on the Galaxy S10+, you'll have to rely on a single front camera for Live Focus. Edge detection is adequate, and we encountered no problems.

The rear camera's video recording is limited to 4K at 60 frames per second, while the selfie camera's video recording is limited to 4K at 30 frames per second. There's a Super Slow-mo video mode that allows you to shoot at 960 frames per second, as well as a Super Steady mode that takes advantage of the wide-angle lens and crops the picture to provide more stabilized footage. The video stabilization on this phone is amazing, and it manages to remove the majority of vibrations from recordings.

Samsung had to reduce the battery size to make this phone sleek and tiny, but the Galaxy S10 still offers a respectable 3400mAh battery. We started the day at 9 a.m., ran a few benchmarks, used Google Maps for navigation for an hour, took numerous camera samples, and played 40 minutes of PUBG Mobile before calling it a day at 11 p.m. with 15 percent of the battery remaining. We used the phone with the screen resolution set at full-HD+ at all times, and your results may vary if you change it. In our HD video loop test, the Galaxy S10 lasted for 14 hours and 23 minutes.

The charger that comes with the phone charges the phone quickly. It went from zero to 50 percent in 27 minutes, and it took an hour and 15 minutes to fully charge. If you want, you can use a suitable rapid wireless charger.

Verdict

The Galaxy S10 clearly offers virtually all of the features and benefits of the Galaxy S10+ in a smaller package and at a lower price. The cutting-edge ultrasonic in-display fingerprint scanner and the powerful Exynos 9820 SoC are both included.

The Galaxy S10 should be ideal for those who don't like big phones and prefer a more compact powerhouse. Yes, it lacks the additional depth sensor found on the Samsung Galaxy S10+ (Review), but that shouldn't be a deal-breaker if you don't take many selfies. If you're looking for a smartphone that can do everything and fits in the palm of your hand, look no further.