Hole-y moly: Screen protector is awful on this leaked Galaxy S10 Plus

Update March 4 – The phone has been officially announced, and Galaxy S10 screen protectors are also available, without that bad display cutout.

Original Story – We are now only a week away from the official unveiling of the Samsung Galaxy S10. In seven days, we’ll finally know everything there is to know about the upcoming superphone. Until then, we’re stuck with checking out the onslaught of leaks.

One new leak has us a little concerned: a YouTube video showing a person holding what appears to be a Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus in their hand. While a hands-on video would normally be something to be excited about, the video actually leaves us a bit worried.

Related: Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus (12GB RAM model) looks mighty fine in Luxurious Ceramic White

You can see the video below, but the basic gist is this: the screen protector covering the front of the device has two cutouts. The first one surrounds the dual-lens selfie camera (which is to be expected), but a big one at the bottom surrounds the in-display fingerprint sensor and is just horrendous.

Check it out:

The first thing that popped into our heads when viewing the video is the awkwardness of using swipe navigation gestures with that cutout there. Your finger will run smoothly along the display until it hits that hole, which would be an awkward experience, to say the least.

Then we started thinking about the dust, skin flakes, dirt, and general grime that will get stuck in the ridges of the protector around that hole. That made us gag a bit.

The Samsung Galaxy S10 will allegedly feature an ultrasonic in-display fingerprint sensor, which uses sound waves instead of light waves to read your fingerprint. This technology is supposedly much faster and more efficient than the optics-based scanners found in current smartphones like the OnePlus 6T. We’re not certain, but it could be that this new tech doesn’t work with certain screen protectors.

We can only hope that the screen protector on this device is something special for the event going on in the video. Perhaps Samsung put extremely thick protectors on all the devices to give them the best protection from drops? Or maybe the protector is there so no attendees could get a clear, “naked” shot of what the phone actually looks like? Whatever the case, we can only hope that this doesn’t mean screen protectors for the device will need to have a cutout like this to function properly.

For the record, we previously learned that an accessory maker wouldn’t be making a protective case for the Galaxy S10 due to this very problem. Gulp?

NEXT: Full specs sheet leaks for Samsung Galaxy S10 lineup