Samsung couldn’t resist, could it? At this year’s Galaxy Unpacked event, not only has it expanded its Galaxy S10 series to include both a Galaxy S10 Plus and a Galaxy S10e alongside the flagship, Goldilocks Galaxy S10 model, it has also dropped news of a Galaxy S10 5G, which it plans to release in summer 2019. Choices, choices.
In reality, though, while this is the first of many 5G smartphone announcements we expect to see over the next seven days, that won’t speed up the actual rollout that will get 5G into our hands.
Various carriers have named the cities that will be involved in their 5G network rollouts in the UK for 2019, but we don’t have any firm dates yet. It just means that some people who may have jumped straight into pre-ordering a Galaxy S10 may pause and consider the wait.
Design and screen
So what are we working with? The S10 5G is a bigger beast entirely next to the regular Galaxy S10 with a 6.7-inch Quad HD AMOLED screen with curved edges and a body that weighs 198g. It’s still slim, at 7.98mm thick, but it’s obviously taller and wider than the rest of the family with dimensions of 162.6 x 77.1mm.
Meanwhile it sticks with the tall, 19:9 ratio Infinity-O display, very slim bezels and slightly larger, right-hand corner punch-hole combination seen elsewhere on the Galaxy S10 Plus.
The S10 5G unit that we got to play with, which Samsung told us was not a final device, had a metallic finish and 5G logo in place of the Samsung branding on the rear, as per the photos.
Battery
There’s a big 4,500mAh battery that Samsung clearly deems necessary for its first 5G phone, as well as 25W super-fast wired charging, but hopefully the hardware necessary for such charging will be included in the box rather than available as an additional accessory purchase, as is currently the case with Apple.
Samsung’s fast wireless charging 2.0 and the wireless power sharing, which means you can share juice with other Qi-compatible accessories, are also on board.
Camera and hardware
The S10 5G also adds 3D depth-sensing cameras on the front and back for augmented reality applications, while sticking with the same main 12-megapixel wide, 16MP ultra wide and 12MP telephoto camera setup for phone photography.
Elsewhere, it’s much the same story with the Qualcomm ultrasonic, in-display fingerprint scanner, an octa-core 8-nanometer Exynos 9820 processor and 8GB of RAM.
The S10 5G runs on Android 9 Pie, as you’d expect, with Samsung’s refreshed and renamed One UI on top. It will be Wi-Fi 6 ready and also compatible with LTE, as well as 5G.
It does miss out on one thing found on the S10 Plus: the S10 5G will be available in a 256GB model with no expandable storage. As per the specs sheet, it also appears to miss out on the heart-rate sensor found on the S10 and S10 Plus.
Initial verdict
We got some (very) limited hands-on time with a Galaxy S10 5G unit that we were not permitted to unlock, so it’s very much early days. The overwhelming first impression when side by side with the rest of the relatively compact range is the size and weight. Your decision will be between speed and early-adopter edge versus, well, basic pocketability when the time comes.
It's hard to get excited about a device that's so similar to the rest of the Galaxy S10 range, but, nonetheless, this could be a very important phone for Samsung over the next 18 months.
While the rest of the new S10 range is up for pre-order now and available to buy from March 8, Samsung hasn’t given us any firm release date or price for the Galaxy S10 5G yet beyond “summer 2019”, so expect to hear more about this alternate Samsung flagship between now and then.
- Read the WIRED Recommends guides to the best smartphone and the best Android phones to see which models we recommend right now. We'll be updating these guides soon when we review the Galaxy S10
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
