Things picked up a bit in the smartphone market in 2018 and we finally started to see some exciting new designs emerge after a horribly boring year in 2017. This year, however, things are getting turbocharged. We’re going to see new smartphones launch with all sorts of creative designs, from phones with screens that fold on one or even two hinges, to all-screen designs that find creative new ways to remove the selfie camera from the phone’s top bezel. Smaller Chinese smartphone makers are really getting creative with their designs, and we’ll continue to monitor the different ways they manage to inch closer to the true all-screen phone of our dreams. But the solution of choice in 2019 among bigger companies with phones that will be widely distributed is the hole-punch design that involves cutting holes through the displays themselves for selfie cameras.
It’s a novel approach that is definitely going to turn some heads in 2019. Is it really any better than a notch? No, no it’s not. But it’s nifty and new, and it’s the design we’ll see most often this year. There have already been a phone new phones that show off the new hole-punch design, but Samsung’s Galaxy S10 series will be the most popular phone series to feature this design in the first half of 2019. And now, a new leak gives us our best look yet at how the two main Galaxy S10 phones — the Galaxy S10 and Galaxy S10+ — will compare.
For the past few years, Samsung has released two versions of its main flagship phone. Like Apple’s iPhone models, we’ve been getting a main version and a Plus model each year. In 2019, Samsung is expected to add a third variant just like Apple did in 2018, and it’ll likely do it for the same reason as Apple. Flagship phones have gotten so expensive lately that a big percentage of consumers is unwilling to cough up the cash. As a result, we saw Apple introduce the iPhone XR last year, and this year Samsung will debut its Galaxy S10e. Of course the other two Galaxy S10 models will be a bit more exciting than the entry-level phone, and it’s those two models that are the focus of this latest leak.
Slashleaks is mainly just an aggregator where users post links to sites that host actual leaks. But there are also a couple of users who sometimes source their own leaks, or they find them on Chinese forums and repost them without crediting the source. It’s unclear which is the case in this instance, but either way a Slashleaks user who goes by “Dimitri12” posted three photos to the site that are definitely worth checking out.
The devices seen in these new photos are not actually the Galaxy S10 and Galaxy S10+. Instead, they are to-scale mockups of the phones. We often see dummy models like this that are based on actual phone schematics leaked from the factories where the handsets are manufactured.
This time around, the dummies give us a great opportunity to see exactly how the Galaxy S10 compares to the Galaxy S10+ in terms of size. Presuming these mockups are accurate — and we believe they are — it’s pretty clear that the Plus model really isn’t that much larger than the regular Galaxy S10. That could be interesting this year, since the only meaningful differences between the two might be the dual front-facing cameras on the Galaxy S10+, a slightly bigger battery, and of course the slightly larger 6.4-inch display compared to the 6.1-inch screen on the Galaxy S10. Is that enough to warrant spending at least an extra $100 to upgrade from the S10 to the S10+? We’re not so sure.
Samsung will unveil the Galaxy S10, Galaxy S10+, and entry-level Galaxy S10e during a press conference in San Francisco on February 20th. The phones are expected to be made available for preorder the following day, and they’ll likely be released a week or two later on either March 1st or March 8th.
