The Upgrade

Review: Samsung’s Galaxy S10+ Is a Nearly Perfect Android

A great choice as long as you’re not super concerned about security

“Anniversary” devices are fraught with risk. A company like Samsung, now rolling out its 10th suite of Galaxy S phones, wants to celebrate an important brand without alienating customers who have grown accustomed to certain signatures. An incremental update won’t do, but radical changes could risk alienating the base—and result in a sales flop.

With the Android 9-based Samsung Galaxy S10+ ($999) Samsung has, a decade after delivering the first Galaxy handset, effectively threaded that needle, delivering a thin, light, and powerful handset that’s clearly a part of the Galaxy bloodline, while also taking the brand to places it’s never been before.

When I raced through key updates on three of Samsung’s new Galaxy S10 models during my brief hands-on a few weeks ago, I was impressed. A fingerprint reader was hidden away under the virtually edge-to-edge screen. The phones could share battery power wirelessly with other Qi-enabled devices, and there were more camera lens options than ever before. On that day, I walked away understanding the essence of the new Galaxy S10 line, if not the individual phones themselves.

Now, after spending nearly a week with the 6.4-inch Samsung Galaxy S10+, I appreciate the phone, its gorgeous screen, all those camera lenses—as well as the limits of new biometrics technology. The major question is whether other consumers will.

The Galaxy S10+ (as well as the rest of the S10 line) enters a smartphone market struggling to excite consumers who are starting to realize they can get many of the most cutting-edge features—giant displays, multiple cameras, powerful CPUs—for hundreds of dollars less. Samsung and Apple remain highly relevant, but they can’t just spend the next few years saying, “Here’s your new smartphone. Now please hand over $1,000.” That may have informed the announcement of the Galaxy Fold, a nearly $2,000 device with folding screens that launches shortly after the S10 line.

Broadly speaking, though, the Galaxy S10+ is a smartphone I thoroughly enjoyed carrying and using. Though it’s fundamentally a gleaming…