 It's truly amazing to me how unnecessary your standard phone review has become these days. Here's a post from user VARCORE over on XDA Developers from two weeks before Samsung unveiled their latest and greatest S series smartphones, the Galaxy S10e, S10, and S10+. The pros over the S9 are much faster processing speeds, bigger battery, and display. In-display fingerprint reader, 5G in the second release, a bevy of specialized cameras, larger internal and external storage, and on the high-end model, 12 gigabytes of RAM. It would seem to have no real competition, but there are two glaring cons as well. The camera cutouts marring the display and its price. Yeah, okay. Sounds about right. So I should probably just hire that guy or gal and save myself some time. But I didn't. Instead, I spent the last few weeks trying really hard to love the S10+, and its little brother over here. So... here are my thoughts. Brought to you by Asus. The ROG Rapture GTAX 11000 is a 10 gigabit Wi-Fi router featuring 2.5 gig gaming ports, a quad-core processor, AI mesh support, and Wi-Fi 6 technology that is supported by the Samsung Galaxy S10. Check it out at the link below. It is no big secret that I am not a fan of odd-shaped displays. I mean, ignoring the admittedly quite hilarious purpose-made wallpapers, there is quite literally zero content that is designed to have a bite taken out of it. Why? Well, I'll tell you why. Because it's a silly backward step in our otherwise fairly consistent journey towards displays that occupy our field of vision as naturally and fully as possible. And it's obviously one that isn't going to last. So why be like the TV shows that failed to embrace widescreen and have all your content look stupid in a year or two? Or like, today for that matter. And yeah, I think that's actually the worst part of all of this. Samsung stayed away for this long, only to finally belly flop face first into this unfortunate industry trend right when their Chinese competitors like Oppo, Vivo, and Nubia have already declared it dead. All three of those have already shipping phones with no notch and nearly full coverage displays thanks to innovations like motorized and sliding selfie cams or, in what is IMO the most futuristic and cool move, the elimination of the selfie cam altogether in favor of using the rear camera for everything. Something that probably would have been a good move for Samsung this time around. I was pretty pleased overall with the rear camera. The app needs to go back to allowing both still and video capture from the same screen. But for video, the only glaring issue that needs to be resolved is the frame skipping when you capture a still during video recording. And as for stills, regardless of DXO mark scores and what have you, I would still take an iPhone XS or a Pixel 3 over the Galaxy S10, but it is a clear step up from my Note 9 when it comes to delivering sharp photos of my wonderful, but always moving, children, and it managed adequate low-light performance for my purposes. Now, the issue with the camera is the front-facing camera or cameras. Are you seriously telling me that this was the best you could do? Both the wide-angle and regular lens deliver at best no improvement over the Note 9 and at worst, some of the most inexplicably poor results that I've seen in a few generations. What the heck is this? There's just no excuse. Now, Honor's latest phone, that has a pinhole display. This on the S10+, this is an exit wound. And you went and put that in my screen for these results? These photos you're looking at here were taken under identical conditions on full auto. Okay, so I got that out of my system. In all seriousness though, I did mostly stop noticing the pinhole after a while. So how about we talk about day-to-day use because there's actually a lot to love here, starting with battery life. A 7 nanometer processor with 4,100 milliamp hours in this form factor? Yes, please. Wicked fast wireless and wired charging? Yeah, I'll take some of that too. Now, some Exynos users have been complaining of higher than normal idle battery drain, but it's yet to be determined if that's a widespread issue or just Samsung phones doing Samsung things, and many other users, particularly of the Snapdragon variety, are reporting screen on time in the range of 6 to even 8 hours or more. And that honestly is more in line with my experience. This thing has been great so far. On the subject of the screen, we're ignoring the shrapnel wound, it's actually been a while since I've been this wowed by a phone display. I mean, it's so vibrant and it manages to feel just like extra responsive, in spite of the fact that it still runs at a mere 60 Hertz. Also, Samsung has really managed to tone down the distortion and the dimness of the curved glass along the edges, even compared to the Note 9 from less than a year ago. If only they had watched my review of that phone, because they actually managed to undo some of the progress that they made last summer when they widened the side bezels. So like the Note 9, the S10 Plus is a gigantic device that makes one-handed operation a little bit challenging. And Samsung obviously knows this because they've made some helpful optimizations to their Android skin to minimize how often it is that you'll actually need to reach all the way up to the top. See this? There's your brightness slider. It's not bad, right? It's just that as cool as one-handed mode is, I don't buy a big phone to use it at 50% size. And by slimming down the side bezels again, they've dramatically increased the frequency with which I accidentally trigger apps or keyboard presses or the back button while I'm reaching across the display. It's a non-issue in my opinion on the S10, but it bothered me on the Plus and I hope they don't do the same thing on the Note 10. Another thing that I'm hoping, surely in vain, not to encounter on the Note 10 is the ultrasonic fingerprint sensor. Now I got the software update that did improve the sub 20% success rate that I was having with this thing. See? I got it there. But it's still not 100% and this is especially true, it seems, when my hands are really dry. Making matters worse, even when it's working properly, it's just straight up not as fast as the optical sensor that's employed by OnePlus in the 6T. Like not even close. Now it's better than picking up my phone and touching the back of it, but it does hurt the otherwise great overall responsiveness of this device. Like it really does feel great in the hand too. I can't actually speak for the ceramic version, both Samsung and... dbrand actually sent over the glass-backed ones, but it's thin and well balanced with pretty much all the things I've come to expect from a Samsung flagship device, except better. The speaker standout is achieving much better stereo separation on supported content, like this is a really loud amplified earpiece speaker in spite of its diminutive size, and on the bottom, oh, a headphone jack. That's a welcome sight. Oh, so it turns out you can get IP68 resistance with it. It's just more work. How about that? The one step backward here is the ergonomics of the lock button. Again, this isn't a big issue on the smaller S10, but on the Plus, it kind of seems like what they've done is moved it up uncomfortably far on the phone in order to fix a problem that doesn't exist anymore, now that they're finally allowing users to remap the Bixby button, so you're not constantly mashing Bixby when you try to lock your phone. On that note, I don't actually hate Bixby. I just don't want her showing up uninvited, so I just changed it to a double-click. That's also a nice new little option they've gotten there, and I haven't had any frustrating issues since then. So how did this take you numpties two years to fix when you had all the user feedback? It's such an obvious solution. Yay! On that subject, here's a few more things for you to ignore for the next 24 months, then spend an hour fixing when someone in senior management finally watches a review or two. Bring back the extra granularity and volume control with the slider, please. I listen to reruns or music while I sleep, and I can't get it quiet enough anymore. Pfft. Also, what is this locate-an-app nonsense when I search in the app drawer? Just let me drag it to the home screen, please. And finally, Samsung, do away with the stupid carrier lock crap when you first install a SIM. If I bought an unlocked phone, that's because that's what I wanted. I know the carriers want you to do this, but grow a pair. Anyway. I really don't want the things Samsung has done wrong to distract from what they've done right here. I still hate the island notch. It's ugly, distracting, and most importantly, completely unnecessary. But the bottom line is that the S10 and S10 Plus are lightning fast with what is, in my opinion, the best Samsung software experience yet and a great feel in the hand. They have problems, but I do tend to find them easier to forgive when I can sit down and write this entire review while listening to music on my Fio FA7 IEMs. Yeah, they may have icky caveman wires attached to them, but you know what? They blow the doors off your AirPods, and you can have them from me when you pry them from my cold dead fingers. Speaking of cold dead fingers, dbrand is gonna kill me when they see this segue. dbrand skins are a great way to not just have your device look better, but also to take care of it because they can help protect from incidental scuffs and scratches. One of the coolest things about dbrand is when you go on their website and select your device, you can preview in real time exactly what it's gonna look like. So you don't just have to go, okay, I want yellow here, or I want, you know, carbon fiber there, or this absolutely sick. Man, I love this honeycomb finish that they sent over on the S10 and S10 Plus. You can mix and match things if you're into that kind of thing and create exactly the look you want. They offer cheap international shipping, and you can check them out at the link in the video description. So thanks, guys, for watching. If you disliked this video, you can hit that button. But if you liked it, hit like, get subscribed, or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link below. Also down there is our merch store, which has cool shirts like this one, and our community forum, which is definitely worth a join.