3 weeks with the Galaxy S10: pros and cons
So it's time to change the phone and my choice fell on the Samsung Galaxy S10.
For those who are looking at the flagship from Samsung, welcome to kat, I’ll tell you what’s wrong with him and what’s wrong with him.
The first thing everyone says when they pick up my phone is: “Oh, but the camera doesn’t interfere at all!” I almost never see a cutout, only on the main screen or several applications such as Chrome and Instagram, otherwise the black camera on a black background is not visible from the word at all.
The second point that people make when they pick up this device is that the unlock key is too high. In reality, I almost do not need it, except to lock the phone. The key is high, and once again I will not press it, as for me this is a plus. Another double-click lock button is used to launch the camera from anywhere (including even if the phone is locked), which I rarely use, because there is a button for the Bixby assistant that launches the camera. In addition, why I don’t use the lock button so actively, it’s a grip sensor - the phone understands when I pick it up, and it switches from Always On Display to the lock screen, I consider it extremely user friendly.
Then everything is on topics.
The display is good, many highly praise it, and say that it is the best on the market. After S7, for me, a picture is like a picture, I have no complaints about it, but there is no delight either. By default, the display is on FHD +, and you no longer need it. If you unscrew it at the highest resolution, then you will use up the battery in vain for the sake of a ghostly greater definition. The only excuse for such a resolution is to take screenshots with super quality. I note that on the last phone I complained that it has an insufficient pixel density (576 PPI), and when viewing VR content I see pixels. But now I have to forget about VR on the S10, more on that later.
The Samsung brand store has wallpapers that beat the cutout on the screen. I use a black theme from the same store, and the status bar is displayed in white font. Imagine how white looks on white, for this reason most of these very wallpapers from the company store do not suit me, they are too bright from above.
The display is rounded on the sides, and therefore you will not find a single position in the sun, so that it does not glare, you have to live with it. In the reading application, I had to increase the indentation on the left and on the right, so that the text would not fall under the curves. In general, I do not see a single scenario where rounding can help you in real life. The scenario when the phone glows beautifully, with the display down when making calls, I consider it extremely far-fetched.
The most important thing about this display is that it is long. Really long! Much would fit on it, but you have to indent from the sides to view the content, space is eaten up no matter what. Watching Instagram on it is not very pleasant, the pictures are wrapped around the edges, especially unpleasant in the stories.
A nice bonus is the factory film pasted out of the box, so you can forget about the films for six months, although I wore my S7 without any film for 3 years, which is why I earned 3 minor scratches on it. I think the S10 is more scratch resistant. But you should not drop it.
I also noticed that random touches of the screen became less despite the fact that the S7 has a flat display, but the S10 does not.
Slippery like ice. Dropping a phone while holding it in your hand is very easy. However, this was a problem on the S7 as well; covers and vinyl films on the backdrop help out. I don’t like covers: you buy a beautiful thin phone and hide it in a terrible huge case - just a spit in the face of designers. But the vinyls from Dbrand correct the situation very much, I have been using them since the days of S7, because of the same problems with the slippery rear window.
In any case, there are no more complaints to the case, after sticking the film, the phone lies very well in the hand.
The phone has very loud speakers. Whoever had a push-button Nokia type 6230i or Sony Ericsson Walkman series will not be disappointed in the volume. The sound is very good, does not knock anything out, does not hiss and does not wheeze. The only thing is that in stereo mode the speaker, which is integrated with the conversational one, is a little louder than the speaker on the lower edge, because it is aimed directly at you, so the stereo feel is a little lame.
It could have been faster and more accurate, but I heard that Samsung fixed it with a software update, which is already available in Poland and Germany, so I wait for it to be believed in the best until it reaches me.
The battery here is at 3400 mAh, but it lasts longer than S7 batteries on better days. I can’t say anything how it rests on two SIM cards, because I use only one, but I have enough for a day. Before going to bed, usually there is a 27-37% charge, with my average usage scenario: to surf the Internet with Wi-Fi or 4G, which I never turn off; talk on the phone for 30 minutes a day; read a book; and endless messaging and social networks.
The camera is the main reason why I did not buy the S10e - there is no camera on the latter. In fact, it turned out that I use a wide-angle lens many times more often than a telephoto lens, but quiet summer evenings are ahead, so it's too early to judge. In any case: a wide-angle lens is a fairy tale if you want to photograph a crowd of people from a short distance. The rest: the camera is the best on the market and this is my personal opinion. The camera interface is thought out and convenient, everything lies in its place.
Among the shortcomings: the voice control is still lame as on the S7, although my S7 responds better to the phrase “Take Off”. Samsung’s logic is a little incomprehensible: the most megapixels you get are 4x3 photos, while 16x9 photos have a larger capture angle, although the pixels have the same length (4032 px), but 16x9 has a smaller width (2268 versus 3024px). I didn’t catch the logic.
Photosphere mode for panoramas in Google Camera works better than the camera’s built-in camera application, so I had to get my apk from the Internet, because you can’t install Google Camera on S10 from Google Play. And you also need to wait for a normal port for Exynos processors, so while I'm sitting on the application for Android 4.4, it works flawlessly, but there is no night mode.
Separately, I want to note how the phone shoots 4K 60 fps video: very smoothly and without jerking with sudden movements. Slow motion mode is also good: FHD 240 fps. I do not use super slow motion, because there is nowhere to shoot how bullets fly out when fired.
The selfie was also amused by the camera: by default, it is not wide-angle, so that there is no distortion at the edges, but then not all fit on the selfie - you need to switch to group selfie mode, and everything will be fine.
Native AKGs are very good, but I use wireless JBLs, so I don’t care about the 3.5 mm jack. Although, I admit, a useful bonus for those cases when the car has only AUX or in the case of non-Bluetooth speakers.
In Ukraine, only the 128 GB version is officially sold, you can’t buy more from authorized distributors, but it's a pity there aren’t many of them. There is a slot for memory cards, so this situation can be corrected. There can be no complaints about the speed of the internal memory, it is faster than all your tasks. Everything about RAM also fits here - and if something is unloaded, I did not notice.
The performance of all flagship smartphones in 2019 is enough with the head, no complaints.
One UI is fast. It is almost thought out: from the main screen, you can lower the upper curtain from the middle of the screen; in the settings menu, the settings themselves start from the middle of the screen. But here are some illogical points: in the menu of open applications, the icons of these very applications and the search bar are at the very top. Remember that the display is very long, so reaching up with your thumb once again is not the most convenient activity with such a length.
Pleased with Edge Apps, it’s really convenient to open Shazam from anywhere. Who did not have time to prank, he will understand. True, there is not a single reason, besides marketing, why this thing cannot be put on “flat” phones.
But then everything is bad.
By default, they try to flip your Flipboard, 99% of my acquaintances with Samsung phones have never used it, and they don’t know that it can be easily turned off in the settings of the main screen with a checkmark at the top.
The native sms application on S7 skillfully filters messages by spam phrases, on S10 only a black list by numbers. At the same time, numbers like “US Polo” or “Cacharel” cannot be added there. Paradise for spammers with taxis and discounts. I had to put Pulse SMS.
Bixby - to say that it is not needed, to say nothing. It is harmful if you do not speak Korean. And in our area “Ok Google” and forth. A separate button was allocated for it, but I reassigned Bixby to double-click, which reduces the likelihood of my communication with this voice assistant.
On S7, switching the application to the pop-up mode was possible with one gesture, on S10 only from the application manager, where you need to click on the icon and select this mode. I really “love” to reach out with my thumb.
The S7 had a wonderful unofficial Samsung ClockFace app made by Samsung itself. It can still be put on S10, but in the menu for selecting the style of the watch, the clock from ClockFace is not displayed. This greatly reduces the number of hours for Always On Display: the built-in ones are devoid of an aesthetic component, and those that can be bought in the store are trash.
There is no notification LED on S10, Always On Display and third-party applications that emulate the behavior of this LED (Always On Edge - Edge Lighting) help out.
The Cardboard application crashes, and when it does not crash, it does not respond to the magnetic button of my Google Cardboard. In short, you really can’t use VR, which is a pity, because I love him. And the first generation of my GearVR is not suitable because the S10 has a USB Type C connector.
I opened the Samsung Dex once - it’s beautiful and fun, but I didn’t come up with a single case, except to launch presentations from the mobile phone itself. And this is a far-fetched reason, because there is also a Smart View, although maybe someone likes to run video from the phone over the wire.
Synchronization with a computer: 2019, and better than ActiveSync for Windows Mobile devices, no one came up with anything. Connecting a wire to a computer and using MTP is a pain: you need to plug the cable and wait until all the files and folders with photos are pulled up. Throwing over Wi-Fi is also a pain: if you have a lot of photos like mine, then sorting by date, in ascending order, causes wild bewilderment, and while you finish to the end you can die 300 times from boredom. I don’t basically synchronize with the clouds - the video from the phone really weighs a lot (1 minute - 500 mb), and buying a cloud for terabytes is expensive (although I have 1TB on One Drive, but I still don’t use it, throw it off the wire several times faster than upload data to the cloud, and then download it to the computer). Nevertheless, back in 2007 ActiveSync was able to normally catalog my photos and videos both by wire and via Bluetooth, scattering everything by daddy according to the day of synchronization, which was very convenient, unlike merging all content into one folder as they like to do these are clouds. For example, on S7 I did all this manually and in 3 years I created a little more than a hundred folders according to the date of “synchronization”. Finding the right photograph among more than 5,000 files does not seem difficult if you approximately remember the place or time at which you took it. on S7 I did all this manually and in 3 years I created a little more than a hundred folders according to the date of “synchronization”. Finding the right photograph among more than 5,000 files does not seem difficult if you approximately remember the place or time at which you took it. on S7 I did all this manually and in 3 years I created a little more than a hundred folders according to the date of “synchronization”. Finding the right photograph among more than 5,000 files does not seem difficult if you approximately remember the place or time at which you took it.
All sorts of Facebook, Linkedin and other bloatware go out of the box on the phone. Okay, I admit, I use part of these programs, but the fact that I can’t take it all off the phone saddens me personally. With all this, the Music application (from Samsung) I need to install separately from Google Play. Where I didn’t catch the logic, although I’m lying, I know the specific reasons for these actions. But on the phone for more than $ 1000, it looks somehow redneck. Again, if you care so much about users, then all my old applications are automatically picked up after activating the device.
Almost all applications were picked up after activation, however, there were about a dozen, which are already officially uninstalled from Google Play, but to which I stuck with my soul. For example TypoClock. It's okay, almost all of them are available from the Google Play library of your account, even if they are no longer available by search (small life hack from me). However, the same TypoClock is eating a little more battery than my energy manager is ready to endure, so a notification about it constantly pops up. You will have to write this widget yourself.
By the way, about the energy manager: with this paranoid I am also familiar with S7. Its presence greatly simplifies life, and you can put to sleep those applications that have nothing to do in the background, and they sit and eat a battery. Previously, you had to install root and Greenify for this.
Anti-virus also comes out of the box, and after a separate activation it is very difficult to turn off, but it’s quite possible to do it. Why turn it off? Because the processor and the battery are eating, and if you do not install left-handed programs from obscure places, then you do not need it. Better than Google Play, he still won’t check.
Another separate pain with controls on top for different applications that you need to reach for with your thumb, which is extremely inconvenient. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Opera and the like - I hope to come to their senses, they will allow them to be placed below for long displays.
In general, I am satisfied with the new phone, it takes pictures and charges unambiguously better than the last. However, for such a price you expect a revolution in your hands, and apart from an ultrasonic fingerprint sensor that is far from ideal, no revolution smells like it.
For those who are looking at the flagship from Samsung, welcome to kat, I’ll tell you what’s wrong with him and what’s wrong with him.
Let's start with the main
The first thing everyone says when they pick up my phone is: “Oh, but the camera doesn’t interfere at all!” I almost never see a cutout, only on the main screen or several applications such as Chrome and Instagram, otherwise the black camera on a black background is not visible from the word at all.
The second point that people make when they pick up this device is that the unlock key is too high. In reality, I almost do not need it, except to lock the phone. The key is high, and once again I will not press it, as for me this is a plus. Another double-click lock button is used to launch the camera from anywhere (including even if the phone is locked), which I rarely use, because there is a button for the Bixby assistant that launches the camera. In addition, why I don’t use the lock button so actively, it’s a grip sensor - the phone understands when I pick it up, and it switches from Always On Display to the lock screen, I consider it extremely user friendly.
Then everything is on topics.
Display
The display is good, many highly praise it, and say that it is the best on the market. After S7, for me, a picture is like a picture, I have no complaints about it, but there is no delight either. By default, the display is on FHD +, and you no longer need it. If you unscrew it at the highest resolution, then you will use up the battery in vain for the sake of a ghostly greater definition. The only excuse for such a resolution is to take screenshots with super quality. I note that on the last phone I complained that it has an insufficient pixel density (576 PPI), and when viewing VR content I see pixels. But now I have to forget about VR on the S10, more on that later.
The Samsung brand store has wallpapers that beat the cutout on the screen. I use a black theme from the same store, and the status bar is displayed in white font. Imagine how white looks on white, for this reason most of these very wallpapers from the company store do not suit me, they are too bright from above.
Wallpaper from the market
The display is rounded on the sides, and therefore you will not find a single position in the sun, so that it does not glare, you have to live with it. In the reading application, I had to increase the indentation on the left and on the right, so that the text would not fall under the curves. In general, I do not see a single scenario where rounding can help you in real life. The scenario when the phone glows beautifully, with the display down when making calls, I consider it extremely far-fetched.
The most important thing about this display is that it is long. Really long! Much would fit on it, but you have to indent from the sides to view the content, space is eaten up no matter what. Watching Instagram on it is not very pleasant, the pictures are wrapped around the edges, especially unpleasant in the stories.
A bunch of empty space from above that would not reach far
A nice bonus is the factory film pasted out of the box, so you can forget about the films for six months, although I wore my S7 without any film for 3 years, which is why I earned 3 minor scratches on it. I think the S10 is more scratch resistant. But you should not drop it.
I also noticed that random touches of the screen became less despite the fact that the S7 has a flat display, but the S10 does not.
Housing
Slippery like ice. Dropping a phone while holding it in your hand is very easy. However, this was a problem on the S7 as well; covers and vinyl films on the backdrop help out. I don’t like covers: you buy a beautiful thin phone and hide it in a terrible huge case - just a spit in the face of designers. But the vinyls from Dbrand correct the situation very much, I have been using them since the days of S7, because of the same problems with the slippery rear window.
In any case, there are no more complaints to the case, after sticking the film, the phone lies very well in the hand.
Speakers
The phone has very loud speakers. Whoever had a push-button Nokia type 6230i or Sony Ericsson Walkman series will not be disappointed in the volume. The sound is very good, does not knock anything out, does not hiss and does not wheeze. The only thing is that in stereo mode the speaker, which is integrated with the conversational one, is a little louder than the speaker on the lower edge, because it is aimed directly at you, so the stereo feel is a little lame.
Fingerprint scanner
It could have been faster and more accurate, but I heard that Samsung fixed it with a software update, which is already available in Poland and Germany, so I wait for it to be believed in the best until it reaches me.
Battery
The battery here is at 3400 mAh, but it lasts longer than S7 batteries on better days. I can’t say anything how it rests on two SIM cards, because I use only one, but I have enough for a day. Before going to bed, usually there is a 27-37% charge, with my average usage scenario: to surf the Internet with Wi-Fi or 4G, which I never turn off; talk on the phone for 30 minutes a day; read a book; and endless messaging and social networks.
Camera
The camera is the main reason why I did not buy the S10e - there is no camera on the latter. In fact, it turned out that I use a wide-angle lens many times more often than a telephoto lens, but quiet summer evenings are ahead, so it's too early to judge. In any case: a wide-angle lens is a fairy tale if you want to photograph a crowd of people from a short distance. The rest: the camera is the best on the market and this is my personal opinion. The camera interface is thought out and convenient, everything lies in its place.
Among the shortcomings: the voice control is still lame as on the S7, although my S7 responds better to the phrase “Take Off”. Samsung’s logic is a little incomprehensible: the most megapixels you get are 4x3 photos, while 16x9 photos have a larger capture angle, although the pixels have the same length (4032 px), but 16x9 has a smaller width (2268 versus 3024px). I didn’t catch the logic.
Comparison of 4x3 and 16x9
Photosphere mode for panoramas in Google Camera works better than the camera’s built-in camera application, so I had to get my apk from the Internet, because you can’t install Google Camera on S10 from Google Play. And you also need to wait for a normal port for Exynos processors, so while I'm sitting on the application for Android 4.4, it works flawlessly, but there is no night mode.
Separately, I want to note how the phone shoots 4K 60 fps video: very smoothly and without jerking with sudden movements. Slow motion mode is also good: FHD 240 fps. I do not use super slow motion, because there is nowhere to shoot how bullets fly out when fired.
The selfie was also amused by the camera: by default, it is not wide-angle, so that there is no distortion at the edges, but then not all fit on the selfie - you need to switch to group selfie mode, and everything will be fine.
Headphones
Native AKGs are very good, but I use wireless JBLs, so I don’t care about the 3.5 mm jack. Although, I admit, a useful bonus for those cases when the car has only AUX or in the case of non-Bluetooth speakers.
Memory
In Ukraine, only the 128 GB version is officially sold, you can’t buy more from authorized distributors, but it's a pity there aren’t many of them. There is a slot for memory cards, so this situation can be corrected. There can be no complaints about the speed of the internal memory, it is faster than all your tasks. Everything about RAM also fits here - and if something is unloaded, I did not notice.
Performance
The performance of all flagship smartphones in 2019 is enough with the head, no complaints.
Now let's talk about software pain
One UI is fast. It is almost thought out: from the main screen, you can lower the upper curtain from the middle of the screen; in the settings menu, the settings themselves start from the middle of the screen. But here are some illogical points: in the menu of open applications, the icons of these very applications and the search bar are at the very top. Remember that the display is very long, so reaching up with your thumb once again is not the most convenient activity with such a length.
Settings look logical
Pleased with Edge Apps, it’s really convenient to open Shazam from anywhere. Who did not have time to prank, he will understand. True, there is not a single reason, besides marketing, why this thing cannot be put on “flat” phones.
But then everything is bad.
By default, they try to flip your Flipboard, 99% of my acquaintances with Samsung phones have never used it, and they don’t know that it can be easily turned off in the settings of the main screen with a checkmark at the top.
The native sms application on S7 skillfully filters messages by spam phrases, on S10 only a black list by numbers. At the same time, numbers like “US Polo” or “Cacharel” cannot be added there. Paradise for spammers with taxis and discounts. I had to put Pulse SMS.
Bixby - to say that it is not needed, to say nothing. It is harmful if you do not speak Korean. And in our area “Ok Google” and forth. A separate button was allocated for it, but I reassigned Bixby to double-click, which reduces the likelihood of my communication with this voice assistant.
On S7, switching the application to the pop-up mode was possible with one gesture, on S10 only from the application manager, where you need to click on the icon and select this mode. I really “love” to reach out with my thumb.
Where did the pop-up mode hide and why is this mode needed
The S7 had a wonderful unofficial Samsung ClockFace app made by Samsung itself. It can still be put on S10, but in the menu for selecting the style of the watch, the clock from ClockFace is not displayed. This greatly reduces the number of hours for Always On Display: the built-in ones are devoid of an aesthetic component, and those that can be bought in the store are trash.
A bit of nostalgia for AOD from ClockFace,
There is no notification LED on S10, Always On Display and third-party applications that emulate the behavior of this LED (Always On Edge - Edge Lighting) help out.
The Cardboard application crashes, and when it does not crash, it does not respond to the magnetic button of my Google Cardboard. In short, you really can’t use VR, which is a pity, because I love him. And the first generation of my GearVR is not suitable because the S10 has a USB Type C connector.
I opened the Samsung Dex once - it’s beautiful and fun, but I didn’t come up with a single case, except to launch presentations from the mobile phone itself. And this is a far-fetched reason, because there is also a Smart View, although maybe someone likes to run video from the phone over the wire.
Synchronization with a computer: 2019, and better than ActiveSync for Windows Mobile devices, no one came up with anything. Connecting a wire to a computer and using MTP is a pain: you need to plug the cable and wait until all the files and folders with photos are pulled up. Throwing over Wi-Fi is also a pain: if you have a lot of photos like mine, then sorting by date, in ascending order, causes wild bewilderment, and while you finish to the end you can die 300 times from boredom. I don’t basically synchronize with the clouds - the video from the phone really weighs a lot (1 minute - 500 mb), and buying a cloud for terabytes is expensive (although I have 1TB on One Drive, but I still don’t use it, throw it off the wire several times faster than upload data to the cloud, and then download it to the computer). Nevertheless, back in 2007 ActiveSync was able to normally catalog my photos and videos both by wire and via Bluetooth, scattering everything by daddy according to the day of synchronization, which was very convenient, unlike merging all content into one folder as they like to do these are clouds. For example, on S7 I did all this manually and in 3 years I created a little more than a hundred folders according to the date of “synchronization”. Finding the right photograph among more than 5,000 files does not seem difficult if you approximately remember the place or time at which you took it. on S7 I did all this manually and in 3 years I created a little more than a hundred folders according to the date of “synchronization”. Finding the right photograph among more than 5,000 files does not seem difficult if you approximately remember the place or time at which you took it. on S7 I did all this manually and in 3 years I created a little more than a hundred folders according to the date of “synchronization”. Finding the right photograph among more than 5,000 files does not seem difficult if you approximately remember the place or time at which you took it.
All sorts of Facebook, Linkedin and other bloatware go out of the box on the phone. Okay, I admit, I use part of these programs, but the fact that I can’t take it all off the phone saddens me personally. With all this, the Music application (from Samsung) I need to install separately from Google Play. Where I didn’t catch the logic, although I’m lying, I know the specific reasons for these actions. But on the phone for more than $ 1000, it looks somehow redneck. Again, if you care so much about users, then all my old applications are automatically picked up after activating the device.
Almost all applications were picked up after activation, however, there were about a dozen, which are already officially uninstalled from Google Play, but to which I stuck with my soul. For example TypoClock. It's okay, almost all of them are available from the Google Play library of your account, even if they are no longer available by search (small life hack from me). However, the same TypoClock is eating a little more battery than my energy manager is ready to endure, so a notification about it constantly pops up. You will have to write this widget yourself.
By the way, about the energy manager: with this paranoid I am also familiar with S7. Its presence greatly simplifies life, and you can put to sleep those applications that have nothing to do in the background, and they sit and eat a battery. Previously, you had to install root and Greenify for this.
Anti-virus also comes out of the box, and after a separate activation it is very difficult to turn off, but it’s quite possible to do it. Why turn it off? Because the processor and the battery are eating, and if you do not install left-handed programs from obscure places, then you do not need it. Better than Google Play, he still won’t check.
Another separate pain with controls on top for different applications that you need to reach for with your thumb, which is extremely inconvenient. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Opera and the like - I hope to come to their senses, they will allow them to be placed below for long displays.
Instead of a conclusion
In general, I am satisfied with the new phone, it takes pictures and charges unambiguously better than the last. However, for such a price you expect a revolution in your hands, and apart from an ultrasonic fingerprint sensor that is far from ideal, no revolution smells like it.