The iPhone XS costs more, the Pixel 3 has fewer cameras, and the Xiaomi Mi 9 undercuts everyone on price. On paper, the Galaxy S10 should have been the smart middle ground. In practice, Samsung’s 10th-anniversary flagship feels like a device that had all the ingredients to dominate, then pulled its punches at the last second.
We’re years removed from the S10’s launch, but it’s still a useful snapshot of Samsung at a crossroads: brilliant hardware, cautious iteration, and a handful of decisions that aged badly.
Design: Infinity-O Is Bold, Power Button Is Dumb
The headline design move is obvious: the punch-hole selfie camera, or Samsung’s so-called Infinity-O display. Compared to the notches from the same era, it’s less intrusive once you actually use the phone. But it does divide opinion, and Samsung’s own software workaround is clumsy.
If you hate the hole, you can hide it via a “Hide camera” toggle. That slaps a thick black bar across the top and refuses to use the area for icons or notifications. You’re paying for a 6.1-inch screen and throwing away a chunk of it just to avoid looking at a circle. Either live with the hole or live with wasted pixels—those are your options.
The rest of the hardware is classic Samsung refinement. At 149.9 x 70.4 x 7.8mm, it’s a genuinely compact flagship by modern standards, noticeably lighter than an iPhone XS and still offering more screen than Apple or Google managed in similarly sized bodies. IP68, aluminum frame, Gorilla Glass 6 on the front, Gorilla Glass 5 on the back, Prism colors, and a flush horizontal camera bar give it a clean, grown-up look.
Then Samsung ruins the ergonomics with a power button placed absurdly high on the right side. On a smaller phone, this should be easy to reach. Instead, it’s an awkward stretch whether you’re right- or left-handed. You also get the usual Bixby key on the left, now only partially remappable—better than before, still not what users asked for.
Display and Audio: Dynamic AMOLED Shines, HDR10+ Is Mostly Theory
Samsung’s first-gen Dynamic AMOLED panel is still the S10’s strongest argument. You get a 6.1-inch 1440 x 3040 display at 550ppi, with support for HDR10+. In manual mode, brightness tops out around 396 nits, but auto brightness under harsh light pushes it to about 820 nits, putting it near the top of the class at the time. It still can’t quite match the iPhone XS in sunlight, but it’s very close.
Samsung’s marketing quotes up to 1200 nits, and that’s technically achievable only with tiny bright areas (low APL) and likely in specific HDR scenarios. In real-world, mostly-white content, you don’t see that number. The lab tests back that up, and that’s exactly the kind of spec-sheet exaggeration this phone doesn’t need.
Color modes are simplified to just Natural and Vivid. Natural targets sRGB with an average DeltaE of 1.7 and max of 3.4—better than the S10+. Whites stay within DeltaE 2, which is excellent. Vivid is the usual amped-up Samsung look, not really tracking a standard gamut. The old granular modes (Basic, AMOLED Photo, AMOLED Cinema) are gone, so power users lose some control in exchange for a cleaner menu.
HDR10+ support is technically impressive—dynamic metadata like Dolby Vision without the license. In practice, content is thin: realistically you’re looking at Amazon Prime Video and a short list of TVs and phones that support it. Most users never actually see the feature do anything.
Audio is more straightforward. The S10’s stereo speakers (bottom-firing + earpiece) measure louder than the S10+ and earn an “Excellent” loudness rating. Wired output is clean, with high clarity into an external amp and only minor stereo crosstalk increase on headphones. It’s a tiny step behind the S10+ for high-impedance audiophile cans, but for 99% of people it’s the same experience.
Performance, Battery, and Charging: Fast Chip, Hot Body, 2014 Charger
Inside, you get either Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 or Exynos 9820 depending on your region. The review unit runs Exynos: an 8nm 2+2+4 CPU layout (2x Mongoose M4 at 2.7GHz, 2x Cortex-A75 at 2.4GHz, 4x Cortex-A55 at 1.9GHz) with a Mali-G76 MP12 GPU and 8GB of RAM.
Single-core performance from the M4 cores leads the Android pack at the time, just behind Apple’s Vortex cores in the iPhone XS. Multi-core is less dominant, with Snapdragon 855 (Mi 9) edging ahead. In Antutu, the S10 sits around 10% above Snapdragon 845-era flagships and slightly below the Mi 9.
Graphics performance in offscreen GFXBench tests is strong—roughly equal to Snapdragon 855 devices and around 20–30% ahead of last-gen Snapdragon 845 and Kirin 980 phones. Onscreen numbers drop because of the higher QHD+ resolution versus 1080p rivals.
The problem is sustained performance and heat. After a handful of Antutu runs, scores drop by about 10% and then stabilize, while the whole phone gets noticeably warm. That means the thermal design is at least spreading heat well, but you’re still dealing with throttling under sustained load.
Battery life is good, not great. The 3,400mAh pack is significantly smaller than the S10+’s 4,100mAh and it shows. You get a bit over 10 hours of Wi‑Fi web browsing and just under 13 hours of video playback—roughly two hours behind the Plus in each case. Talk time hits about 21 hours vs. 24 hours on the S10+.
Compared to rivals, though, the S10 does fine: similar browsing life to iPhone XS and Pixel 3, with a 15–20% advantage in video playback. The endurance rating lands at 79 hours (vs. 91h on S10+).
Charging is where Samsung phones of this era really look lazy. You still get the same 15W Adaptive Fast Charge brick from Galaxy S5 days (9V/1.67A or 5V/2A). A dead S10 hits 48% in 30 minutes and a full charge in 1:31h. That beats the Pixel 3’s 18W combo (45% / 1:42h) and absolutely embarrasses the iPhone XS with its basic 5W pack (22% in 30 minutes).
So yes, Samsung charges faster than Apple and Google did then, but freezing at 15W while shouting about “innovation” is weak. Wireless charging is Qi-based Fast Wireless Charging 2.0 (previous 9W pads deliver ~20% in 30 minutes, ~3 hours full), and you also get Wireless PowerShare reverse charging. It’s neat for topping off accessories or a second phone overnight, but 15W wired in 2019 already looked behind the curve, and it hasn’t aged well.
Cameras: Versatile Triple Setup With Some Questionable Choices
The rear array is where Samsung actually delivered meaningful upgrades over the S9. You get:
- 12MP main camera, 1.4µm pixels, dual pixel PDAF, OIS, dual aperture f/1.5–2.4, 26mm equiv.
- 12MP telephoto, 1.0µm pixels, PDAF, OIS, f/2.4, 52mm equiv.
- 16MP ultra wide, 123° FOV, f/2.2, fixed focus, 12mm equiv.
In daylight, the main camera produces detailed, clean shots with aggressive but effective noise suppression, punchy but not cartoonish colors, and excellent dynamic range. Telephoto images in good light basically match the main camera’s quality with slightly better contrast than S9+.
The ultra wide is legitimately ultra: 12mm equivalent, wider than most competitors of the time. You do get clear barrel distortion, but there’s a software correction toggle that fixes most of it—if you bother to dig through settings to find it. That’s the theme with Samsung’s camera app: power options buried where normal users won’t look.
Pixel-level detail from the ultra wide is solid as long as you don’t obsess over the corners or shoot too close, because there’s no autofocus. That hurts one of the most fun use cases—dramatic close-ups with exaggerated perspective. Xiaomi and Huawei managed AF on their ultra wides; Samsung didn’t.
Low-light main camera shots are very strong: defined detail, limited noise, and good handling of very bright highlights that rivals often clip. The telephoto behaves like every small-sensor zoom in low light—often falling back to a crop from the main sensor, and when it does use the tele module, the results are just okay. Ultra-wide low-light images are similarly just fine if you accept them as “capture the whole scene” shots rather than pixel-peeping material.
Samsung’s so-called Bright Night mode is half-baked. It’s buried under Scene Optimizer, only kicks in under very dark conditions, gives vague “hold steady” prompts, and doesn’t show how long it’ll take. In testing across S10 and S10+, it barely triggered and the improvements weren’t dramatic. On the S10 specifically, Scene Optimizer also produced absurd fake starburst effects on every light source—pure gimmick.
Portraits (Live focus) quietly change behavior this generation. The S10 now uses the main camera to capture the photo and the telephoto just for depth data. That means better sensor quality and low-light performance, but also a wider focal length that’s less flattering for tight face shots. The tradeoff mostly works; subject separation is excellent on both people and objects.
Front-facing, you get a single 10MP selfie camera on the S10 instead of the S10+’s 10MP+8MP depth combo. In good light, selfies look great. In low light, they soften quickly. Portraits rely entirely on software, and while the S10+ does slightly better with complex edges (hair, accessories) and smoother bokeh, the gap isn’t big enough to force you into a larger phone.
The camera app itself is powerful but messy. Pro mode is legitimately pro-grade: ISO 50–800, shutter 1/24000s to 10s, dual aperture control, manual focus with peaking, WB by temperature, metering controls, and picture controls. But there’s still no live histogram, and basic toggles like selfie mirroring and ultra-wide distortion correction are hidden under “Save options”.
Video and One UI: Great Footage, Middling UX Decisions
Video is one of the S10’s strongest areas. You get:
- 4K at 30/60fps
- 1080p at 30/60fps
- HDR10+ video in H.265 at ~54Mbps
- 960fps slow motion at 720p (0.4s at 720p, or 0.8s at 480p upscaled)
4K from the main camera is detailed and contrasty at both 30 and 60fps, with nearly identical detail levels—a real plus. Bitrates in H.264 are 72Mbps (4K60), 48Mbps (4K30), 28Mbps (1080p60), and 14Mbps (1080p30). Audio is stereo at 256Kbps.
Standard electronic stabilization works in all modes except 4K60. Super Steady mode uses the ultra wide for GoPro-lite stabilization at 1080p, sacrificing autofocus and resolution headroom for genuinely impressive smoothness. It’s one of the few “extra” features that actually helps in real use, even if it’s limited.
The telephoto produces solid 4K30, but quality drops noticeably at 4K60 and in 1080p60, where you also get extra cropping. The ultra wide is locked to 30fps modes—but those look good as long as your subject isn’t too close for the fixed-focus lens.
The selfie camera can shoot 4K video with sharp detail and reliable dual pixel AF, though dynamic range is narrower and the field of view is tight enough that you’ll want a selfie stick if you care about framing more than just your face.
On the software side, One UI is Samsung’s latest skin, focused on one-handed use with rounded UI elements and a colorful icon set. Some ideas land, others feel like change for its own sake. The notification shade pulls toggles lower on second swipe, which actually helps reachability. Always-on display can now appear on double-tap instead of permanently, giving you more control over idle drain.
But then Samsung breaks things that used to work well. The recents menu follows Google’s awkward Android 9 design, and multi-window now hides behind app-icon taps with fewer options than before—no quick app pairs, no snap window, no straightforward popup view once you’re in split screen.
Gesture navigation exists, but it’s bolted on rather than rethought. Swipes from the bottom replace the nav bar actions and you can hide the hints to reclaim space, but the interaction isn’t faster or more natural than tapping classic buttons. It frees pixels; it doesn’t improve usability.
Bixby is still forced on via the dedicated key, just with partial escape routes. You can map single- or double-press to other apps or routines, but you can’t kill Bixby entirely. Edge panels, Edge lighting, Secure Folder, Game Launcher, and Samsung’s Gallery all return largely intact. Meanwhile, the notification LED disappears, and folders still open full-screen instead of as compact windows near the icons.
Even biometrics tell the same story: lots of effort, mixed execution. The ultrasonic in-display fingerprint reader sounds great on paper—3D mapping, better security—but in use it’s “good, not great,” with reliability that depends on very precise finger placement. Face unlock works, but iris scanning is gone due to lack of hardware, and Samsung even had to promise software updates to shore up fingerprint performance post-launch.
Verdict: The ‘Best Galaxy Ever’ That Played It Too Safe
Lined up against its contemporaries, the Galaxy S10 looks like the sane, well-balanced choice: brighter screen, more cameras than iPhone XS or Pixel 3, better battery life than both, faster charging than Apple and Google’s stock bricks, plus wireless and reverse wireless charging.
Compared to the S10+, you give up some battery life, front-facing depth hardware, and screen size. For many people, the tradeoff is worth it; the core camera system, performance, and features are essentially identical in a more pocketable body.
The problem is less what the S10 is and more what it could have been. Samsung nailed the hardware fundamentals—display, cameras, performance—then shipped it with an outdated 15W charger, inconsistent biometrics, half-committed software gestures, and a night mode that barely shows up. You can feel a company that knows exactly what users want, then decides to hold some of it back.
The Galaxy S10 is easy to recommend as a product of its time and still stands as a well-rounded compact flagship. But as a 10th-anniversary statement, it’s also a reminder of how often Samsung chose caution over ambition.
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