[MUSIC]
I'm here in Barcelona testing out the Samsung Galaxy S10+ while also using the phone to cover MWC, the world's largest mobile show.
So I'm throwing everything at this thing, photos, videos, tethering, long days without a single charge.
And you know what?
It's doing great.
[MUSIC]
Okay.
So it doesn't fold up like a taco like the Galaxy Fold but anyway you look at it, this is a pretty damn great phone.
There are few things that really stand out.
First there's that 6.4 inch screen that's pretty much edge to edge
[MUSIC]
Except for the hole cutout for the two selfie cameras, then there are the cameras themselves, five in all.
But more importantly is the camera software, which adds a slew of new tricks and enhancements, especially to portrait mode photos, selfies, and video Being able to wirelessly charge another device using the Galaxy S10 Plus as the power source is useful any day, any time.
Battery life is on fire, and the storage situation is off the charts with a 1 Terabyte version that comes in ceramic white or black.
This phone is packed with so many major and minor upgrades, it's hard to keep track.
But I'm gonna break down the best and the worst of them one at a time.
First, which S10 is this?
Samsung made four Galaxy S10 phones, which can get pretty confusing.
But here's a cheat sheet.
The S10 E is the smallest and most entry level of the bunch with the fewest cameras followed by the regular Galaxy S10 and then this S10 Plus here and finally the Galaxy S10 5G, which is the the largest, costliest, stuffed with most cameras, and the most advanced of all these phones.
The S10+ is the only one of these to offer a version with 1TB of storage.
That's enormous, by the way.
That's like 250 And then if you pop in a 512 GB SD card you can give yourself 1.5 TB total or basically 375 movies.
That is about one movie everyday for a year.
Pricewise, this is firmly a thousand phone.
That's the starting price for the 128 gigabyte model.
The 512 gigabyte ceramic model will cost to $1,250 and the one terabyte version, also ceramic will put you out a cool $1,600 bucks.
Next let's talk about design.
The S10 plus has a six quaint four inch screen with slim bezels and a glossy finish.
There's gorilla glass six on the front and gorilla glass 5 on the back.
It's a nicely polished phone, it feels good in the hand.
But you should accept that fingerprint schmutz will be a way of life if you don't have a cover.
And the phone is pretty slippery.
Its is a Samsung infinity O display, which cuts out a pill shaped opening for the two selfie cameras Most of the time, this doesn't get in the way.
But, when you're looking at the white screen, it i fairly noticeable.
Overall, the screen is bright and fairly easily to read outside.
Seems like [UNKNOWN] definitely knows what it's doing here.
One of the defining [UNKNOWN] 10 features is the new ultrasonic in-screen fingerprint reader, which uses sound waves to unlock your phone.
It's supposed to be faster, more secure, and more quick while [UNKNOWN].
Greasy hands.
But this first version that I've been testing isn't registering my prints as quickly or as accurately as I'd like.
There have been a lot of Mrs.
Samsung says it will have a software fixed by the time that the phone goes on sale.
Surprisingly, Samsung removed its iris scanner from the front facing camera.
So if the fingerprint reader doesn't work for you, you'll need to use a PIN code to get in.
All right, I think it's time we talked about the cameras.
As I said before, they're three on the back and two on the front.
The rear cameras start with a 12 megapixel dual aperture lens.
A 12 megapixel telephoto lens, and a 16 megapixel ultra-angle lens.
Turns out you can do a bunch of cool things here, like take a photo using any of the three lenses.
I really like this flexibility and I found myself using it a lot.
Shooting mostly with the main camera, then switching to the telephoto to capture something far away or to alter wide to get more of a street scene or a larger group.
The telephoto lens also assist with portrait modes and the S10 plus wins points with me by adding three new effects including the spot color option that I found really dramatic.
one of my favorite things about Samsung's take on portrait mode.
Which the company calls life focus, is/ that you adjust the blur in the settings before and after you take the shot.
So, if you change you mind about an effect, you have the freedom to play around.
I really like this and I'd love to see even more effects in the future.
There's also some artificial intelligence in the camera, it can recognize 30 scenes and auto adjust your settings to take a better photo.
You just tap to turn the scene optimizer on.
If you don't like the result, you can tap the screen to turn it off.
There's also a new feature called shot suggestions, which will guide you to line up the shot and focus area.
When you do line it up, the guideline turns yellow and automatically takes the picture so you don't have to take your hands off the phone.
This can be really helpful, but sometimes it took too many pictures of the same thing when I actually wanted more just to control, or it just wasn't ready to take Take the shot.
I also had a lot of fun using the gif maker you might call gif, I call it a gif.
Turn it on in the settings and press and hold the shutter button instead of taking button shots, it will compile that gif.
The playback isn't as smooth Crystal clear as it is, if you make it your form of video.
But, it is a convenient tool and it gets the point across.
Samsung is adding Instagram mode that will come soon to the Galaxy S10 phone.
We got a demo of it on an S10 G5.
If you have an Instagram account, you can access this Instagram mode from the native camera.
And use the same filters, post directly to the Instagram without ever leaving the app.
I think it's a really smart play for [UNKNOWN].
Instagram mobile without the rear and front facing cameras.
Speaking front facing cameras.
Those are ten and eight mega pixels, respectively.
Samsung has done something really clever, and lit up the edge of the display around the lens when you switch into selfie mode so you know where to look when you smile.
As with the rear cameras, you can also switch among the lenses And fit more people or scenery into the viewfinder.
So how's the camera quality overall?
Pretty great actually.
Daytime photos are terrific on auto mode and they get even better ifyou enjoyed tinkering with Pro settings.
Night time in low light shots are good but not always great specially compared to the dedicated night time modes on the Pixel 3 and Huawei Mate 20 phone.
If you're wondering about video quality, that was pretty impressive too.
HTR10 plus video recording in smooth video modes both help bring out the best in your clips and it even automode video taking on the S10+ in a very dark part here in Barcelona.
Perfectly captured that atmosphere with a pretty good amount of life.
The last thing we need to talk about with cameras is AR Emoji.
This is Samsung's take on personalized emojis and it has much improved over the last year's debut.
Customizations are better.
You can do more with them.
They are still a little bit creepy especially when you apply a face As a mask over another person.
Or if you photobomb a shot using a mini me.
It's creepy, but it's still kinda wild.
Moving on from the camera, one of my favorite new features in this entire phone is wireless powershare.
You turn it on, and you'll be able to charge any [UNKNOWN] device on the back of your Galaxy S 10.
Not just Samsungs.
You can charge an iPhone, too.
Wireless charging isn't as fast as wired charging but the feature really works and it means that you can leave more people at home or help out a friend in a pinch.
The phone will automatically stop charging other devices when it hits 30% so you won't run out of battery my experience that's been plenty.
In fact battery life is going to absolutely phenomenal.
The s10 plus have a 4100 Milli amp battery, and a looped video and airplane mode for 21 hours in our tests.
But it's also really great in real life.
It's taken me from early mornings to late late nights.
I've been using navigation tattering my laptop, thos are both thigs that drain battery but I never have to worry that I would ran out of juice.
So that was the battery and now let's switch gears and talk about the Galaxy S10 software and this is something that all four S10 phone share.
You got Android 9 Pi as the base and Samsung's all-new [UNKNOWN] top.
One new feature here is the XP routines You may not be a big fan of the Bixby voice assistant but routines is actually a pretty neat way to automate some of the things that you're going to do anyway.
You can choose from some preset suggestions which you can then customize or you can create your own from scratch.
Another new feature is kids mode, you toggle it on from the quick settings tray.
To create a sandbox environment for young kids.
It's password protected and you can set restrictions.
They're simple, could focus to apps like a camera, photo gallery, and games.
The camera has a lot of fun stickers to play with.
I want to Point out some changes to the edge display.
It is still here but it's far more pruned back which actually is pretty great.
I genuinely like using the apps edge as a way to get to most wanted apps from any screen, but if you have too many it can get bogged down.
So Samsung is starting you off with an option to pick five apps and you can build this out to ten shortcuts.
Can also add in other edges for your top contacts and so on We don't have time to go over everything.
But rest assured that the Galaxy S10 still has lots of custom settings inside the menus, which is a really nice option for power users.
But wait, there's more, the rest of the specs.
The Galaxy S10 Plus runs on Qualcomm's fast powerful Snapdragon 855 processor.
There's a headphone jack, and USBC charging port.
And the phone is rated IP 68 for water resistance.
Globally the 128 gigabyte version comes in flamingo pink, canary yellow, prism blue, prism green, prism white, like mine.
And prism black.
But your country may not stock every color.
The two larger storage configurations give you a choice of ceramic white or ceramic black.
Right now there's just one last question to answer.
Should you buy this, the regular Galaxy S10?
Or maybe the S10e?
Or a different phone entirely?
Sure, this one is more expensive than the S10 and the S10E, but it's also way more mainstream than the Galaxy Fold or the Galaxy S10 5G.
People are actually going to buy this phone.
With only a hundred dollar difference between the S10 and the S10 Plus, your choice really comes down to size preference.
Camera capabilities, and the option to update your storage.
The Galaxy S10 Plus is a really great phone.
I strongly recommend it.
I really like a lot of the extra features on here, especially wireless power share.
And I think that the fingerprint reader on the front is a more convenient location than the older models when it was on the back.
[MUSIC]
I use the three cameras on the back on everyday situations.
They really made sense to me.
Photo quality is really good overall, although I would have liked to seen a dedicated nine time camera [UNKNOWN] like the pixel [UNKNOWN].
I think [UNKNOWN] could do a little bit better there.
This is a phone that I would definitely use everyday, and if you bought it, I think you'd be really happy with your choice.
[MUSIC]
