Picking just the right high-end phone among all high-end phones is never easy, but the good thing is you can't really go wrong. Take the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, for example. Like the S10+, it too comes with a triple camera and its tele has even more reach than the one on the Galaxy, plus its ultra wide angle cam has autofocus, which the S10+'s doesn't. On the flipside, the Mate takes dismal selfies, while we're really loving the ones out of the Galaxy. The S10+ packs a more powerful chip (the Exynos version, at least), while the Mate's battery lasts longer, plus it charges faster.
Huawei Mate 20 Pro • Apple iPhone XS Max • Sony Xperia 1 • LG V50 ThinQ 5G
The iPhone XS Max doesn't charge faster than anything, but that's hardly a dealbreaker. Another awesome screen, comparable battery life, great camera performance - the iPhone is a top-seller for a reason. The Galaxy, however, has an extra ultra wide camera on the back and a depth sensor on the front - can't beat those with any iOS optimizations.
Seeing how Samsung is usually first to market in the spring, the S10+ beats some key rivals. The Xperia 1 quickly comes to mind with a unique sorta-4K 21:9 display, similar triple-cam setup to the Galaxy's and vanilla Android experience. We're yet to fully test this one though, plus it's a good couple of months away from launch - you could grab an S10+, get tired of it by summer and switch to an Xperia.
Or an LG V50 ThinQ 5G, which should be out sometime in the summer too. It matches the S10+'s rear cameras nearly spec for spec, has LG's custom software running on it instead of One UI (both have their own passionate haters, but hey, get a Pixel, alright?), but it has a notch, and notches are so last year.
Seriously, though, the biggest competitor to the Galaxy S10+ is, in fact, the smaller S10 - at a meaningfully lower price, you're getting virtually identical hardware minus the secondary selfie cam. Just how important could selfie portraits be?
The Galaxy S9+ was an S8+ with an extra camera. The Galaxy S10+ is an S9+ with an extra camera. So that would be 2 more cameras then if you're coming from the S8+, all by itself making it a worthy upgrade. If you're coming from the S9+ it's not as simple, though we would argue that with the S10+ the YoY improvements are more meaningful than what we had in 2018 - the ones we can name, but also the cumulative all-around refinement.
We'd happily recommend the Galaxy S10+ if you want the absolute best Samsung has on offer right now. But realistically, the smaller Galaxy S10 would be our pick - essentially the same phone, only more affordable.
128GB 8GB RAM | $ 259.00 | C$ 504.41 |
512GB 8GB RAM | $ 369.00 | C$ 389.99 |
1TB 12GB RAM | $ 499.00 | |
Show all prices |
Tip us
1.7m 126k
RSS
EV
Merch
Log in I forgot my password Sign up