Samsung launches its Galaxy S10 family of flagship smartphones in India

Unveiled last month at the company’s Unpacked event, Samsung has announced the launch of its flotilla of new smartphones making up the company’s flagship series for 2019 – Galaxy S10, Galaxy S10 Plus, Galaxy S10e – in India.

The Samsung Galaxy S10 family includes a core set of shared features, such as multiple cameras, with only minimal tweaks differentiating the various models. The new phones sport an aluminum frame with Corning Gorilla Glass 6 panels front and back.

What’s new

Samsung has shared that it focused on three main tentpoles developing the S10 family: display, camera, and performance.

Samsung’s new Dynamic AMOLED displays for the Galaxy S10 series are brighter, have higher contrast, and are still power efficient. Each phone’s screen features a punch-hole selfie camera, but the rest of the sensors are behind the glass. Samsung calls this the Infinity-O display.

The Galaxy S10e has a 5.8-inch screen with Full HD+ resolution, the Galaxy S10 has a 6.1-inch display with Quad HD+ resolution, while the Galaxy S10 Plus has a 6.4-inch Quad HD+ display. All three have a 19:9 screen aspect ratio, making for 93.1 percent screen-to-body ratio. The displays also have improved blue light control Samsung claims reduces eye strain by 42 percent, and Gorilla Glass 6 for protection.

The phones feature ultrasonic in-display fingerprint readers, which read a 3D image of your thumb through the glass.

Then there’s the camera. While the S10e has two rear cameras, the S10 and S10 Plus have three rear cameras. On the Samsung Galaxy S10 and S10 Plus you’ll find an ultra-wide 16MP camera with a 123-degree field of view, a wide-angle 12MP camera with a 77-degree field of view, and a telephoto 12MP camera with a 45-degree field of view. All are capable of capturing 4K video in HDR10+. There are, of course, AI smarts to recognize objects and scenes, and make suggestions on the fly.

On the front, all the phones have a dual-pixel 10MP camera that can record 4K video. The S10 Plus adds an 8MP depth camera for selfie portraits.

For performance, the Galaxy S10 line runs on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 processor in other markets but in India, Samsung packs in the 8nm octa-core Exynos 9820 processor with RAM ranging between 6GB and 12GB, and storage ranging between 128GB and 1TB.

The usual suspects

The Galaxy S10 series carries over many of the features that have made Samsung phones popular around the world.

The phones include expandable storage via microSD card, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and USB-C. Keeping with tradition, the Galaxy S10 line is rated IP68 for protection against the elements.

Samsung says the Galaxy S10 family will be among the first to ship with Wi-Fi 6 on board. Wi-Fi 6 is faster and more compatible with other Wi-Fi gear when compared to Wi-Fi 5 and older. Bluetooth 5.0 is on board, as is GPS/GLONASS for worldwide location services.

Samsung Galaxy S10 portfolio runs Android 9 Pie with the company’s new One UI layer on top. One UI is rolling out to older Galaxy S9 and Note 9 phones, and will come preinstalled on the S10 family.

Pricing and Availability

The Samsung Galaxy S10 range is a pricey lot and even the entry-level Galaxy 10e starts at $749 globally. In India, the Samsung Galaxy S10 devices will be available at Samsung’s online store, Flipkart, Amazon, Paytm, Tata Cliq and other retail outlets starting March 8.

The Samsung Galaxy S10e will be available for 55,900 rupees (~$780). India gets only the Prism Black and Prism White variants with 128GB of storage. The Samsung Galaxy S10 is priced at 66,900 rupees (~$930) for the base 128GB variant, and you can step up to the 512GB version for 84,900 rupees (~$1190). Color options include black, white, and blue.

The top of the line Galaxy S10 Plus is priced at 73,900 rupees (~$1033) for the base 128GB variant. The 512GB and 1TB storage variants are priced at 91,900 rupees (~$1285) and 1,17,900 rupees (~$1650) respectively. The 128GB variant will ship in black, white and blue colors. The higher storage variants will be available in ceramic white and black.

As expected, there was no word on the Galaxy Fold or the Galaxy S10 5G for the Indian market.

What are your thoughts on 2019’s first flagship devices and its pricing in India? Would you be looking to pick one up? Let us know in the comments.