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
Dan Seifert / The Verge :
Context & Ripple Effects
Dan Seifert's Galaxy S10+ verdict lands at the end of a three-year fingerprint saga: the S8's awkwardly placed rear scanner was the design flaw of 2017, the S9 moved it to a better spot, and the S10+ now swaps the physical sensor entirely for an in-screen ultrasonic reader that the review calls unreliable.
The other headline complaint — that the hole-punch cutout is worse than a notch — matters because display design has been Samsung's consistent strength across every one of these reviews, so this is the first cycle where the screen itself draws criticism alongside praise.
First-order effects
- Buyers choosing between the S10+ and the cheaper S10e face a direct trade-off the review makes explicit: the flagship's in-screen scanner is less reliable than the conventional sensor praised in the follow-up S10e review.
Second-order effects
- The S10e's stronger fingerprint hardware positions the cheapest model as the reviewer-endorsed pick, pulling value-focused demand away from Samsung's own premium tier.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Samsung's annual cadence keeps trading proven components for new display formats, making third-party reviews the de facto quality gate that decides which Galaxy tier wins each cycle.
The trend: Samsung's yearly Galaxy refresh increasingly prioritizes display novelty over biometric reliability, shifting reviewer and buyer enthusiasm toward its mid-tier models.