Galaxy S10 vs. Pixel 3: how do you choose? By The Verge

- So, I did it. I bought a Galaxy S10. I bought the regular sized S10, which obviously sits in between the Galaxy S10+ and the Galaxy S10E, and I low-key love it. It's been growing on me since the day that I got it, but I don't know if I'm fully ready to have it replace my Pixel 3 yet. Each phone has its advantages and disadvantages. I think it's worth getting into what those differences are.

How do you decide between these two phones? (funky techno music) Let's just start with the hardware. The S10 is just a little nicer. It's bigger than the standard size Pixel 3, but I mostly noticed the width. It's funny how even the tiniest difference in width makes it feel way different in your hand. But for that difference, you get better battery life, it's faster by a noticeable amount, and headphone jack, I appreciate you.

Overall, the fit and finish is just a huge step up over the Pixel 3. This screen. (sighs contentedly) It's so good. It's big and it's bright and it's edge-to-edge and it's just beautiful, and you know what? I don't mind the hole punch. It's better than the relatively small bezels that you get on the Pixel 3.

You just get this nice big edge-to-edge screen and I don't miss having two front-facing speakers, which the Pixel 3 has. It's fine to have this one on the bottom. I'm also having fun with the wallpapers just like everybody else, but the truth is, I just don't notice the hole punch most of the time now. I know, there's a huge debate about whether the hole punch off to the side is better or the notch in the middle is better. All of these cutouts just look weird until you stop seeing them.

So, until we can get cameras that can see through screens, we're just going to have to deal. Anyway, bottom line, compared to the Pixel 3, the point goes to the S10 on hardware. Except, well... Let's talk about the fingerprint sensor for a minute. I know that there has been a lot of worry from a lot of different places about this thing not reading fingerprints well enough.

And I will just tell you that I, personally, haven't had a huge problem with it. It has been pretty accurate for me, but I do believe the problem is very real for a lot of people and I am betting that using a screen protector also makes it worse. I took the crappy screen protector that comes with this thing off and so it has been fast and accurate for me. Right now, I think there are two downsides to this ultrasonic fingerprint sensor. The first is that even after a week or so of using this thing, I still miss the spot that you're supposed to tap to unlock it.

I think, over time, I'm going to figure out where my thumb should go and I'll just learn it, but it's taking me longer to do that than I expected. I wish the tap area was just bigger. The second problem is yes, I have to admit that the ultrasonic fingerprint sensor is just a little bit slower than the capacitive fingerprint sensor. So you notice the second it takes to unlock it. I think that a capacitive fingerprint sensor is faster and I think that Face ID, although it's about the same speed as this, is a little bit more convenient because you're already doing something with the screen as it unlocks.

One thing I do like is having the sensor on the front of the phone instead of on the back, like you have on the Pixel 3. It means you don't have to pick the phone up off of a wireless charger to unlock it. I do miss the fact that you can't swipe down on the sensor to bring down the notification shade, but that's not that big a deal because on the home screen, you can just swipe down and bring down the notification shade there, so the trade-off really isn't that bad. Overall, I'm calling unlocking a point for the Pixel 3, but just by a little. Let's talk about cameras.

The regular S10 here has three cameras on the back and one on the front, and the Pixel 3 here has one camera on the back and two on the front. So, four cameras, three cameras. But you know and I know that it's not about counting the number of cameras any more than it's about counting megapixels. And so, look, for me, the Pixel 3 just takes better photos. Maybe it's because I'm kind of a bad photographer and this camera's more forgiving.

It's also way better in low light. Now, both of these phones have got a gimmicky camera. So the Pixel 3 has a wide-angle selfie on the front and the S10 has a wide-angle and a telephoto on the back. And I don't think any of those cameras are really that good, but I do have more fun with the selfie camera on the Pixel 3 than I do with the wide-angle on the S10. Where the S10 wins is video.

It's way better at video. For whatever reason, it seems like Google just can't seem to get video as good as it should on the Pixel 3, on all the Pixels actually. But for me, overall, on the camera, the Pixel 3 is the clear winner here. Now, I should be clear that the camera on the S10 is really good and it can be great in some cases, it just, you know, can't beat the king. Last up is software and this one was a weird one for me.

I've already made a video about how I kind of dig Samsung's One UI, you should go look at that, and I still really do dig Samsung One UI. I actually prefer it in a lot of ways to Google's version of Android on the Pixel. Partly because One UI is just so damn customizable. You can get rid of the navigation buttons and replace them with swipes. You can apply themes just right out of the box, it's built in.

You can change how the lock screen looks. It just lets you do all this weird stuff. Yeah, it's probably too much to figure out for most people. The Pixel software is a lot easier to understand right out of the box, but whatever, I love how much you can change here. You know what else I love? Edge panels.

I didn't expect that. Having your calendar available with a swipe from any app is way more convenient than a home screen widget. And there's also a clipboard history built in here. That's really cool. But you know what I don't love? (phone chimes) It's Bixby.

Ah, Bixby... you. There's a whole button dedicated to it, but you can remap it now and if you're willing to install some third-party software — I'm using something called BixAssist — you can remap it to the Google Assistant, which is nice. Look, even though I'm a little bit more into Samsung's version of Android than I am Google's, more than I expected to be, at least, there's still one super important thing to consider, and that is software updates. The Pixel 3 gets them right away and the S10, it doesn't.

(laughs) And so, while I want to give the point to Samsung today 'cause I love how customizable this thing is, I will just tell you that come October, November, December, I'm going to be super annoyed that this thing doesn't have Android Q and the Pixel 3 does. Actually, I'm a little bit annoyed right now because the Android Q beta is already out for the Pixel 3 and I've been playing around with it and it's pretty dope. The point is, I want to give the point to Samsung today. But then I'm going to have to take it away later? Which is weird. Look, I'm just calling software a draw between these two phones.

To me, the choice between these two phones comes down to this: Camera and software updates for the Pixel. Nicer, faster hardware and software tweaks on the Galaxy S10. You just have to decide which is most important to you. For me, taking all of that into account, I'm leaning towards the Galaxy S10. But, you know, ask me again after Android Q's official.

Hey everybody, thank you so much for watching. Are you trying to decide between these two phones? What's making your decision for you? Let me know in the comments and also don't miss our actual reviews of these phones. Dan did a great review of the S10+ and Natt did a great review of the S10E.

Source : The Verge