The latest and greatest Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus has been release to huge fanfare. Some are already calling it the best phone of 2019. We decide to see if the hype is real.
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00:00Samsung says it's their best phone ever.
00:02Now, we're going to try and cut through some of that marketing hype and actually see if it's as good as they say it is.
00:17Samsung have introduced this year a new sort of pearlescent back to the phone, which has sort of divided opinions.
00:24Some people like it, some people don't.
00:27So, let's go ahead and we'll take the lid off now.
00:32So, immediately we've got the S10 Plus here with the protective plastic cover, which I'm going to just go ahead and remove right away.
00:43So, I'm going to take the plastic off the back.
00:46Let's see, how do we get this off?
00:48Okay, there we go.
00:50Take the plastic off the front.
00:52Inside here, the top of the box, we've got a little tag to pull out as well.
00:58So, there's another component.
01:02So, as you can see, immediately the phone, bezel-less, full screen, springs to life right away.
01:09Also in the box, immediately you can see we have the USB cord, USB to Samsung port charger, which is like the universal charger that most phones are using these days.
01:20Even Apple is still holding out on the lightning bolt, but Samsung obviously is going for the slightly thicker charging port.
01:27Obviously, you're a power adapter.
01:29You've got this converter, which is a USB to phone converter.
01:35And then you have the AKG, which is the Harman Kardon audio brand, manufactured by Harman Kardon for Samsung.
01:44They're a little bit uncomfortable wearing them in ear, unlike Apple earphones, which obviously just sit in the ear.
01:51So, they are white cord with the kind of like ropey cord, which I like, which prevents too much knotting.
01:59And one more little converter widget there, which is one of the old school kind of Android chargers.
02:05I don't know if you can see that.
02:07And that's something that Apple doesn't do particularly well, is provide that accessibility when upgrading so that people can use older equipment.
02:14They sort of just say, do it yourself, basically, at vast expense.
02:18Completely bezel-less screen.
02:20It's very, very crisp.
02:22The first thing I noticed is the notch.
02:24I don't know if you can see that without the screen being on, but it's smaller, but it's also sort of floating in the middle.
02:30So, that will look a bit weird when you are watching a video.
02:33But no phone company out there has managed to solve that.
02:37Obviously, on the side, you've got the power button.
02:39On the other side, you have the dedicated Bixby button.
02:42Samsung is still pushing that Bixby voice assistant really, really hard.
02:46And then, obviously, the volume buttons.
02:48In terms of the actual interface, the user interface, for me, it's probably the cleanest.
02:53Obviously, you've got a very fast Qualcomm chip in here for processing power.
02:58In terms of the layout, it's iOS-esque in the sense that it's pretty clean.
03:04I still find that some of the emoticons that you see here on the screen are a bit gimmicky, perhaps.
03:11They look a bit more rounded at the edges and a bit more playful, again, comparing it to iOS.
03:18The quality of the camera is really, really top-notch.
03:22As you can see on the back here, you have three cameras, a flash.
03:28The camera uses a lot of what Samsung calls artificial intelligence to help the user take a better photo.
03:35That's a bit iffy. I'm not sure how much truth there is to that.
03:38It's equivalent to just sort of straightening the photo.
03:40Along the bottom, anyway, moving on, we have the different formats.
03:44Pro would give you kind of a bit more of a depth of field, give you that DSLR, kind of Canon, Nikon, Fujifilm look.
03:51Just that sort of professional image.
03:54Again, it's comparable on the iPhone to their studio shots, what they would call studio shots.
04:00You get that kind of much shallower depth of focus where you would take a picture of someone and the background would be a bit more blurry.
04:06They have a food option down here, which is, I mean, obviously catering.
04:10No pun intended to the sort of Instagram generation of people who like to take photos of their meals.
04:16I'm sure that will appeal to some.
04:20You have panorama, you have live focus, which is a bit more of an active shot.
04:24Photo, video, super slow-mo, slow-mo, hyperlapse.
04:29So you've got the sort of full suite of different options there.
04:33So would this be enough to make me as an iPhone XR use a switch over?
04:38I'm not sure if it would, honestly.
04:41Again, going back to the user interface, I know underneath the skin, the nuts and bolts are impressive.
04:48For me, the skin and the user interface is just a little bit gimmicky.
04:54I'm not a huge fan of that, and I feel like it would take some time to get used to.
05:00I probably would get used to it in the end, but I really value the simplicity and the cleanness of iOS.
05:08And given that it's in the same price point or the same ballpark as the top-of-the-range Apple models,
05:14like the XR, like the XS, I don't know if I could justify spending that much on a phone that I'm not quite as keen on.
05:24It's early on in the year. We still have Google release coming.
05:27We still have the Apple release coming later on in the year.
05:30And really, whilst this has sort of set the benchmark for those,
05:33it'll be very interesting to see if those two companies can eclipse what Samsung have achieved here.
05:39But yeah, it hasn't blown me away, this phone, the Samsung S10+, and it hasn't convinced me to switch over just yet.
05:48Thanks very much for watching our unboxing.
05:50We'll be back soon with more unboxings of gadgets and other consumer electronic items that you might be interested in.
05:57Thanks very much, and always check out golfnews.com for the latest news. Thanks a lot.