The Upgrade
Samsung Galaxy S10 Hands-on: Giving the iPhone a Run for Its Money
With power sharing, novel fingerprint readers, more storage for less, and the promise of 5G, Samsung draws a mobile line in the sand
There’s always been a lot in common between the iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy devices. With the Galaxy S10 line, announced by the company in San Francisco today, that connection is cemented in an oddly intimate fashion.
At a recent briefing about Samsung’s new phones, I slid the glossy back of my iPhone XS against the Galaxy S10+; it began sucking power from this new Android device. I realized we’d entered mostly uncharted territory here, where rival phones could share something fundamental: the actual energy surging through their batteries.
In the near-decade since the first Samsung Galaxy S line first appeared, Samsung and Apple have traded shots in a constant game of one-upmanship. When Samsung offered an “Infinity Display” with the Galaxy S8, Apple responded with a nearly edge-to-edge, notched OLED screen on the iPhone X. This back-and-forth has resulted in a convergence, with each company delivering gleaming glass and metal slabs that threaten to become indistinguishable from one another.
