This is the Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus, one of the best phones released from Samsung 5 years ago. So how does it fare 5 years later? Well, I’ll tell you what’s good and what’s not good about this 5-year-old phone to help you in your purchase decision, as requested in our YouTube Community tab.
Build Quality
So, as for the phone’s build quality, as mentioned in my 3-year revisited video of the POCO F3, this is yet another great time where slim smartphones were the real deal.Â
While this meant getting a smaller 4100mAh battery – more on my battery usage later – once again, I appreciated the form factor a lot more compared to the thicker smartphone options released these days.Â
Another huge appreciation is towards the camera bump because when the phone is laid down flat on a table, you can type away to your heart’s content without worrying about the phone wobbling at all, something that, once again, is quite unheard of in the year 2024.Â
Then, the phone’s camera design is a landscape-style camera bump instead of the vertical ones on the previous S9 Plus and the future S20, which is another thumbs up for me.Â
Then, the silver trim also gave it a nice premium look. It also finishes off with a ceramic back panel that tints a spectrum of colors when light is reflected on it, and it was one of the best smartphone finishes 5 years ago and is probably still one of the best right now.
In terms of using the phone daily, not only did it feel great in my hands because of its slim form factor, but also the fact that it doesn’t attract any fingerprints was also a huge plus, even though the side frames have a silver finish.Â
So, what is the frame made of? Well, some say that it is aluminum, and some say it is high-quality steel. Either way, I would give full points for the phone having great build quality overall.Â
So yes, overall, I would say that this phone has a very good overall design and build quality. But in terms of things that I could not get used to, was the placement of the power button where it is on the top right of the phone, and even for someone who has medium-sized hands, I could not get used to the higher power button.
This is one of the smartphones that I never had a phone case. Thankfully, I did not drop the phone, but there was a little scratch at the front of the screen. Don’t know how it got there, but other than that, the phone is in very good condition.Â
Now, if you’re wondering what does the other button over here does, well, remember Bixby? Yeap, that is the dedicated Bixby button. But the good news is that you can remap it to open any app or run a quick Bixby command, and you can choose whether or not to remap it as a single press or a double press. Either way, one has to be a Bixby button.Â
And what’s interesting is that the Bixby button has been here since the S8 Plus, so 7 years ago, Samsung already thought about a dedicated button which you can remap, compared to the iPhone which only introduced the latest action button on the iPhone 15 Pro Series.
Then, finally, let’s have a moment of silence to appreciate how this was the last S Series smartphone from Samsung to have a headphones jack….Â
Then another thing that was very well appreciated, especially since it is pretty non-existent these days, is the dedicated micro SD card slot.

Display
As for the phone’s display, the good news is that the phone screen still looks great, whether or not it was used during the day or even at night. Using the phone outdoors under bright sunlight like even here in the studio was still very visible too.Â
The touch sensitivity was also really responsive and great, and the ultrasonic fingerprint sensor was quick too, even if your hands are wet.Â
Watching videos on the phone still was a great treat. It has Widevine L1 certification on Netflix and HDR 10 capabilities.
The resolution can also be set to WQHD+ if you want to, but I wouldn’t recommend that since it does take a chunk of the phone’s battery. But don’t worry, I will dive in deeper into my overall battery test using this phone. So for now, I would say just stick to the FHD+ because the Dynamic AMOLED screen is still top-notch.
Speaking of notches, another thing that came and went with this phone is the front double camera system, which brings us to our next topic, which is cameras!Â
Cameras
So let’s immediately talk about these front cameras and find out why exactly Samsung got rid of it because nowadays the wide-angle view and also the shallow depth of field can be done in software. So is there a real need for them?Â
Well, based on these sample photos, I would say that nope, it is not needed because while the quality of the images was really nice with great dynamic range and background blur, but the edge detection was not the best compared to something which uses a software in these year smartphones.Â
And when changing from the regular selfie to the Live Focus selfie, which was Samsung’s version of Portrait Mode a long time ago, there was a difference in the overall color of the image where the image was desaturated but while maintaining the dynamic range.Â
As for selfies at night, the images were just decent but there’s also an option to use the Night Mode for the front camera, which does look a bit brighter. So I would recommend using the night mode for the front camera selfies but overall the quality was nowhere as good as the daytime shots, especially for the edge detection for the night selfie on the Live Focus or the portrait mode.
One small gripe and something for you to take note of is while taking selfie photos is the placement of the volume rockers, they are higher than usual, so I had to use the shutter button in the app instead of using the volume rockers.Â
And since the camera lenses are at the side, it did take me a while for me to get used to the fact that it is not in the middle, so keep that in mind.Â
Video-wise, the front video camera shoots up to 4K and the image stabilization was very good, and so was the overall video quality for the front camera and the night selfie video was quite decent too.
[Sample video footages are available in my YouTube video]
Then, where the phone’s camera really shines is for the rear lenses but make sure, for nighttime photos, to wipe the rear lenses clean because it does get smudges pretty easily.Â
So, the ultra-wide photos look really great during the day and night, with no barrel distortion or softness at the edges.Â
The main lenses also turned out really good with a very well-balanced photo, handling the overall contrast well during the day and the overall highlights at night too.
Since there is a dedicated Telephoto Lens, so the 2x zoom also looked amazing. Beyond that, it is all zoomed in digitally, but the 5x zoom was nice in a brighter environment, even at this maximum zoom of 10x as well.Â
And while the Portrait Mode, aka. Live Focus mode, pictures turn out really great, but the idea of making sure that you’re in the right distance, you know, within the camera app to tell you whether or not it is ready to take a shot, it is quite a pain, which does make me feel like I missed the portrait mode which is easily available in smartphones these days, especially for the newer Samsung phones.Â
But once you locked in, the results did look very good, both for human and objects as well, especially on the edge detections.
And then, as for the rear camera’s video, similar to the images, the video quality was really great for the ultrawide and the main lens, and the image stabilization for the ultrawide was better than the main and the 2x zoom lenses, but still quite decent for the main lens. It does perform a bit worse on the stabilization at night, but the video quality was great.
Live Focus, or the Portrait video, for the front was really good too, but the stabilization was a bit affected over here for the front camera, and you can’t use this for objects or a non-person as the app will tell you that it’s trying to detect a face, and it won’t go into that mode. And I even tested a Live Focus mode at night when a person is a subject, and it looked amazing too.
[Sample video footages, including a vlogging test, are available in my YouTube video]
Gaming
So, the gaming performance had me having mixed reactions. There was the bad and there was the good.Â
Starting with the bad, it took me ages to load Genshin Impact for the first time, but the good news is that once it’s loaded, the game ran well on Medium settings, 60 fps, with motion blur turned off.Â
Gaming for long periods was really comfortable because of its slim form factor, but it was a little annoying after about 15 minutes of continuous gameplay because the phone did start to become really warm and the battery drain was very noticeable too.Â
Then from then onwards, there were certain parts where the game was a little jittery, and once the phone cooled down, it was smooth sailing all the way.Â
So yeah, I would say that if you just want a quick session of Genshin Impact or play less intensive games like Asphalt 9, then the phone is a great tool.
All right, now let’s talk about two areas which I did not like about the phone, which is the battery and the overall software experience.Â
BatteryÂ
As expected, since the phone only comes at 4100mAh, I would already expect a poor battery performance, especially if you raise the resolution of WQHD+ and was only getting about 3 hours+ of screen-on time when I was at 10% battery with dark mode turned on.Â
However, switching over to the FHD+ resolution, the screen-on time was significantly better at about 5 hours and 20 minutes. So that was the saving grace to get the best screen on time on the phone.
SoftwareÂ
Next, let’s talk about the software. As of this review, it is on Android 9 with One UI version 1.1 and the last security patch was on the 1st of October 2019; since then, there has been nothing, so keep that in mind.Â
So, being “spoiled” by the latest One UI, I found things that I did not really like about the phone’s overall software experience.Â
Firstly, overall, the phone did get warm during continuous use, especially when using it outdoors during the day. Even with simple multitasking, it starts to heat near the camera bump area at the back, especially when taking photos and videos too. This is something surely new because when I used this phone 5 years ago, it did not get warm at all.Â
Then every time you take a photo on the rear cameras, there’s about half a second delay before it appears in the gallery in the camera app.
Then speaking of the camera app, while there is a dedicated Instagram Mode over there, but at this point in time, with all the updates Instagram has been sending out, there’s no difference in the photos uploaded, even though it is in this mode, so you can just upload however you like.Â
Next, while Good Lock is available in the Galaxy App Store, there is nothing really mind-blowing to use under the Make Up and the Life Up tabs, but there are still apps that you can still try and use.Â
Then you won’t find any screen recorder in the notification menu, so you’ll need to download one, or you can get the Nice Shot app from the Samsung Good Lock app.
And for most Android phones or even Samsung phones included, if you swipe towards the left, there is the Google Homepage app, but over here, it defaults to the Bixby Home Screen.
Speaking of swiping to the left, as usual, I opted to use the swipe gestures for navigation, but the swipe to the back or the previous screen did not work over here.Â
And based on me using the phone daily, I did have a lot of mistyping on this built-in keyboard compared to the new stock keyboard that comes in the latest Samsung phones, so you’ll need to probably download another keyboard app for this.Â
Then finally, dark mode does not work with all apps because while it is fine on Instagram, but it’s not streamlined across apps like Telegram and even on Facebook.
So yeah, these things mentioned might not be an issue for simple smartphone users, but knowing the fact that there are better versions of One UI version out right now, that is surely a deciding factor.Â
But who cares what I think, what matters more is what YOU think! So let me know what you think about the Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus. Would you get it in year 2024?