Samsung is back with its flagship smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy S10+ and it’s betting big on this one to take on the likes of the iPhone XS Max and other Android flagships in the market like the Huawei Mate 20 Pro and even the Google Pixel 3XL.
Many are touting the new Samsung Galaxy S10+ to be a year ahead than the existing flagships in terms of technological innovation.
Since the phone will bide its time to reach Indian shores, here’s a quick dive into how the phone stacks up in terms of specifications and features against competitors, specifically the iPhone XS Max.
Design & Display
Samsung is a pioneer in smartphone display technology and it doesn’t shy away from boasting about its beautiful displays, just like in the case of the Samsung S10+.
The phones comes with a QHD+ 6.4-inch Dynamic AMOLED screen which is pumping a whopping 526 ppi and is now HDR 10 compliant. The colour reproduction and contrast are touted to be so good that everything on the screen is visibly crisp and clear even under directly sunlight.
The overall real estate of the device screams premium with the Gorilla Glass 6 protected display curved at the edges with more screen area than its predecessor.
The iPhone XS Max is packing in a 6.5-inch display which sports lesser resolution despite having a slightly bigger screen that the S10+. No doubt it is one of the best display’s out there, and with the Max you’re getting a screen in a body that’s neither a giant, not heavy to hold.
Deep blacks, high brightness levels and richer colors are what we have come to expect from a quality OLED panel, but the iPhone bumps up the dynamic range to make HDR 10 and Dolby Vision content that much more impressive.
Apple’s secret sauce – the improved True Tone tech – calibrates the display’s white balance to ambient light conditions and really makes a difference, particularly when you’re using the phone in the dark.
Tough to pick a clear winner here. The only advantage with the S10+ display is that it pushes out more pixels and has a smaller notch to worry about.
Performance & Hardware
The iPhone XS Max comes with the latest A12 Bionic processor which is a 7 nanometer process chip able to cram a lot more transistors on their chip, which delivers not only a significant performance boost but also increased power efficiency.
It comes with 4GB of RAM and offers limited storage capacity of up to 512GB without letting you expand it further.
The latest Galaxy S10+ that will be headed to the Indian shores will be paired with the latest Exynos 9820 octa-core which is an 8 nanometer chipset. This is 29 percent faster than its predecessor.
Get this, there is a 12GB RAM variant of the S10+ that comes with 1TB of on board storage! Clearly, Samsung has been generous here.
Samsung is also offering features like an ultrasonic in-display fingerprint sensor that doesn’t need an external source of light to read the fingerprint. The Bixby button now can be remapped to support other apps and that’s a relief. Oh, and the headphone jack remains alive on the S10+.
With the iPhone XS Max, you’re getting iOS 12 which has a lot of fans and that’s for all the right reasons. There’s not a lot to complain about iOS on the XS Max as it keeps things going smooth.
Since we haven’t yet got around using the S10+ we can’t really talk a lot about the UI and the performance but finally you can talk about a Samsung device running on Android Pie.
It gets a customised Android interface over One UI which has already been rolled out on the Galaxy S9 series and the Galaxy Note 9, it’s safe to say that the user experience is much better and intuitive now.
Camera & Battery
The South Korean smartphone maker has added three rear cameras on the S10+ which is a very bold move considering the excess rear camera move has received mixed responses from the consumers.
The Samsung Galaxy S10+ comes with a 12(f/1.5-2.4) + 12(f/2.4) + 16(f/2.2) -megapixel triple camera setup with wide, telephoto and an ultra-wide lens setup respectively.
On the front there is a dual 10+8-megapixel camera which surprisingly doesn’t have a wide-angle lens setup. The company says it has improved on the stabilisation with triple OIS (optical image stabilisation). We’ll definitely give you a better look at the camera quality when the phone is launched in India.
The iPhone XS Max comes with a 12+12-megapixel rear camera with a wide and telephoto lens and a single lens 7-megapixel shooter in the front. The camera quality isn’t the best in the market but undoubtedly very good indeed.
While shooting videos, the iPhone here is a stiff challenger, particularly in its space-guzzling 4K/60fps shooting which remains a benchmark for other flagships to aspire to.
Samsung is offering a 4,100mAh battery on the S10+ which supports wireless reverse fast charging! Something we have already seen on the Huawei P20 Pro.
The iPhone XS Max offers a 3,174mAh which is mostly enough to see you through the day on average usage. Nothing extra here.
Initial Verdict
The Samsung S10+ offers that extra bit in terms of specifications and features against the iPhone XS Max. The fact that Samsung has priced the top 1TB variant of the S10+ at Rs 1,17,900 which is lesser than even the 128GB variant of the iPhone XS Max is a hammer blow for Apple considering the top variant of the iPhone XS Max is almost 1.4 lakh, something that’ll get you the futuristic Galaxy Fold from the South Korean giant.
Samsung has played smart by pricing the base variant of the S10+ at Rs 73,900 which touts the iPhone price by a huge margin and is dangerously close to the Google Pixel 3 XL. Seems Cupertino tech giant is in for some serious competition in the coming days! To make things worse, the iPhone XS Max hasn’t performed that well in India.
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