Samsung Galaxy S10+ review: great display and a versatile camera but the in-screen fingerprint scanner is unreliable and hole-punch design is worse than a notch
The 10th Galaxy S phone feels familiar, but is still excellent — Every year for the past decade, Samsung has released a steady beat of new Galaxy S phones.
Context & Ripple Effects
The S10+ closes a three-year loop in The Verge's Galaxy S coverage. The S8/S8+ put the fingerprint scanner in an awkward rear spot, the S9 fixed the placement, and now the S10 moves the sensor under the display — trading a solved problem for an unreliable one.
The telling comparison inside Samsung's own lineup: days later, the cheaper S10e shipped with a conventional sensor The Verge judged better than the flagships'. After a decade of steady annual releases, the premium model is the one carrying the riskiest new hardware.
First-order effects
- Flagship buyers face a real trade-off at purchase time: the S10+'s display and camera lead its class, but the in-screen scanner fails often enough to be a daily friction point, pushing some toward the S10e or last year's S9.
- Samsung's own tiering undercuts the flagship pitch — the budget-adjacent S10e wins on the exact feature (fingerprint reliability) meant to justify the S10+'s higher price.
Second-order effects
- Rival Android makers shipping their first in-display sensors inherit a skeptical review bar: after the S10+, 'under-screen' reads as unproven rather than premium, so competitors must beat reliability benchmarks, not just match the spec sheet.
- Component suppliers of ultrasonic and optical in-display readers now have their technology publicly benchmarked against mature capacitive sensors, raising the cost of shipping the tech before it matures.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, biometric reliability becomes a durable differentiator between price tiers rather than a checkbox spec — with mid-range models keeping proven capacitive hardware while flagships absorb the maturation curve for full-screen designs.
- Samsung's decade-long cadence shows the structural cost of annual flagship cycles: each generation must adopt a new form factor (edge screens, hole-punch) on the industry's schedule, not the hardware's readiness schedule.
The trend: Flagship phone design is moving faster than the biometric hardware it requires, leaving premium models to beta-test under-display sensors while cheaper siblings keep proven ones.