February is the month for new smartphones. For years now, we’ve seen new releases this particular month, which is largely due to the Mobile World Congress (MWC), the “world’s largest exhibition for the mobile industry”. So it’s intuitive that Samsung would launch one of its flagship phones in February. Around a week ago, the company announced the new Galaxy S10 series, which has since garnered a lot of attention from the public.

The Samsung Galaxy S10 series is the successor to last year’s Galaxy S9 series, which was one of the most popular flagships of 2018. The Galaxy S10 series is hoping to replicate the same success.

There are four new smartphones in this series, namely, the Galaxy S10E, S10, S10 Plus and S10 5G. These four devices, all targeted towards different consumers, come with a number of new upgrades, as expected.

Camera

When it comes to optics, the Galaxy S10 series comes with a slew of updates. The Galaxy S10 and S10 Plus feature three cameras on the back, with the extra two lenses for zooming and wide-angle purposes. To reduce costs on the Galaxy S10E—Samsung’s answer to the iPhone XR—the company has only included dual cameras on the back, consisting of a normal and a wide-angle lens.

The biggest of the four phones, the Galaxy S10 5G, has a total of six cameras. This device will come with a 3D camera on the rear and the front. These six cameras will work with Augmented Reality (AR) so you will be able to see computerised videos and images on the phone in real-time, with a little help from the camera.

Also, DXOMark, a camera review site, recently gave the Galaxy S10 Plus an overall score of 109, which is also what the Huawei Mate 20 Pro scored. The new Samsung smartphone, however, comes first when selfies are concerned, where it received a score of 96, relegating the Pixel 3 down to second spot.

Display

In previous years, Samsung favoured minimal bezels on the top and bottom of the display. This time, though, the company has introduced the Infinity-O display which has a circular hole on the top-right corner of the screen which includes the selfie camera. This is a plus, as it won’t distract the eyes like most notches on phones.

Fingerprint

In the past, fingerprint sensors inside the display might’ve sounded like a myth. It has now become a reality, as more and more smartphone manufacturers add this technology to their smartphones. Samsung has finally done the same, with a few improvements of its own.

The Galaxy S10 comes with an in-display fingerprint scanner, and it calls the tech ‘ultrasonic’. While the in-display scanners on other phones need a huge amount of light to read the fingerprint from under the screen, Samsung’s new ultrasonic sensor does the job with minimal lighting. Also, while traditional in-display fingerprint scanners require users to wake up the display first, the ultrasonic fingerprint sensor doesn’t.

The cheapest of the four smartphones in the series, the Galaxy S10E, lacks this technology and has a fingerprint sensor on its power button.

Processor

This new Samsung series is powered by the Exynos 9820 chipset in some Asian countries, including Nepal. In other regions, the phone will have a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 under the hood. The Exynos 9820 is a power-efficient chipset that has a dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU) which works to augment the intelligence of the phone itself.

Other features

Other than these four major additions, the Samsung Galaxy S10 series comes with extra features that help the phones stand out. Like Huawei did with its Mate 20 Pro, Samsung has added a reverse wireless charging feature on its devices. This technology lets users charge another wirelessly-enabled device, like the iPhone XS, by placing it on top of the Galaxy S10. Also, this technology will be essential in charging the Galaxy Watch Active and the Galaxy Buds, which Samsung revealed alongside the S10 series.

It’s already been a few months since Samsung released the One UI, an Android skin that Samsung has customised. The new user interface is lighter than what Samsung previously offered, and in this era of tall smartphones, it has tried to make one-handed use easier. It will certainly help in terms of performance and usability. Gone are the days of laggy Samsung devices.

All these features come with the four Galaxy S10 devices. So, let’s discuss the actual phones now.

Samsung Galaxy S10E

Like Apple did with the iPhone XR, Samsung has launched a cheaper flagship, at a time when the prices of high-end smartphones are skyrocketing. Basically, the cheapest phone in the series does away with features like the in-display fingerprint sensor and triple cameras, but still packs flagship-level specifications. This phone is targeted towards people who don’t want to spend a fortune on a top-grade smartphone. The Galaxy S10E is compact in size and has a smaller battery than its

siblings.

Samsung Galaxy S10 and S10 Plus

The Samsung Galaxy S10 is an exciting smartphone, as it packs in a lot of unique features. The Plus variant of the phone has a bigger display than the ‘normal’ Galaxy S10. The S10 Plus and S10 feature a 4,100 mAh and 3,400 mAh battery respectively. Another talking point about the Galaxy S10 Plus is the storage options it has. The phone offers up to a terabyte of internal memory and additional support for a microSD card.

Samsung Galaxy S10 5G

Like its same suggests, the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G is a 5G-enabled smartphone. 5G connectivity is a buzzword right now as it promises a lot of improvements over 4G, one of which is increment in data speed.

Samsung has not really talked much about the pricing and availability of this device, but it certainly won’t be landing in Nepal as 5G connection will take at least a few more years to make its way here. This smartphone features a quad-camera setup on the back with dual selfie cameras up front. It will sport a massive 6.7-inch high-resolution display that will be backed up by a huge 4,500 mAh battery.

Price and availability in Nepal

Samsung has a history of pricing its smartphones competitively, and the Galaxy S10 series will most probably be no different. In the international market, the prices of the base models of the Galaxy S10E, S10 and S10 Plus are $749.99, $899.99 and $999.99, respectively. As far as availability is concerned, we are still unsure about their date of release here. But do make sure to keep an eye out for these devices.