I haven’t gotten my hands on it, but Samsung has always been more innovative than Apple IMO. It can be debated, but that’s how I see it. I love their phone designs, they change it up more than Apple does and one of the big factors for the S10 being attractive to me is that it has the fingerprint scanner. I hate how the XS doesn’t and unlocking it takes longer when you aren’t able to have it scan your face.
FACEID is far far better than S10’s ultrasonic FPS. I encourage you to read up on it. I will post some reviews below:
More info:
TheVerge REAL S10 review:
Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus review: the anti-iPhone - The Verge
“The
target area for the reader is rather small (though the lockscreen will show you a diagram of where to place your finger) and I had to be very deliberate with my finger placement to get it to work.
Even then, I often had to
try more than once before the S10 would unlock. I’d just rather have a Face ID system that requires less work to use, or at the very least, an old-school fingerprint scanner on the back of the phone. The S10 does have a face unlock feature, but it’s just using the camera to look for your face and compare it to a previous image — there’s no 3D mapping or anything.
I was actually able to unlock the S10 with a video of my face played on another phone.
But here’s
my feedback to Samsung: go copy Apple’s Face ID system. It’s far easier and more reliable to use than the S10’s nifty-looking but ultimately disappointing in-screen fingerprint scanner.”
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Android Police review:
“More substantial an issue is the dreaded in-screen fingerprint reader. I don’t want to say I hate it. I really, really don’t like it, though. After a patch to address its performance was issued to my phone mid-review, it got better, but this is still such a downgrade from even Samsung’s badly-placed capacitive scanners in terms of experience.
Even after over two full weeks with the phone, my thumbs never developed good enough muscle memory to land dead on the scanner more than 50% of the time, and there’s no haptic feedback to let you know the scanner is reading or if an unlock was successful (this boggles my mind). While it’s not Nokia 9 bad - Ryan is all but prepared to call that phone unrecommendable - it’s that terrible - the in-display fingerprint scanner is in all material respects a regression from the capacitive sensors in last year’s phones.
What's worse is that it's gotten even more unreliable the more I've used it, as though the phone is unlearning my fingerprint. It's maddening. This was a bad decision, and it’s the one thing that I think truly mars the Galaxy S10 in my eyes. It’s not a deal-breaker, it’s just… not good.”
In every way, a functional and practical regression from a capacitive scanner.
Go back to the drawing board (read: Face ID), Samsung.
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Another
Android reviewer who are disappointed:
Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus review: Peak Samsung - Android Authority
“In my testing, the
fingerprint reader on the Samsung Galaxy S10 was extremely inconsistent. Samsung issued a software update a couple of days after we received the device which was meant to help with accuracy, but I didn’t see much improvement after re-registering my thumbs. The optical reader on the OnePlus 6T has been much faster and more reliable so far....”
And this site rarely say anything bad about Android!! Lol
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TheVerge did another review on smaller S10...same conclusion:
“Speaking of the fingerprint scanner, it is the same as the one on the S10 Plus, which means that it’s not very good. It is
slower and less accurate than the capacitive fingerprint scanners on many other phones, including last year’s Galaxy S9, and
it’s nowhere near as convenient as the facial identification system on Apple’s iPhone XS and XR. Removing the preinstalled screen protector did improve my hit rate, but I’m still not a fan of this fingerprint scanner.”
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CNET:
“The ultrasonic fingerprint reader in the other Galaxy S10 phones is supposed to be a huge advantage. It's meant to be faster, more secure and work through water and grease.
But the Galaxy S10 Plus' in-screen fingerprint scanner hasn't lived up to the promise. Fingerprint recognition is hit or miss, and it takes a beat to unlock the phone. There are definitely limitations for wet and greasy fingers, and that's after two software updates.”
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PCMag:
"But that's the thing—
you have to hit the screen at the exact right spot. Hitting it off-center results in rejected touches. There's no visual guideline to do so when the screen is off, and no physical guide (like the ridge of a physical sensor) at all. The
sensor is less accurate with a wet finger, and not usable at all with a dirty or goopy finger.
The fingerprint sensing area is a small spot near the bottom of the phone. There's no physical guide to it, and you do have to press that spot precisely.
An off-center touch won't work, and too quick a tap will result in a message saying, "Keep your finger on the sensor a little longer." A definite press of the pad of your finger is the best bet."
My results with dry fingers depended on the style of touch and which finger I used. With a definite press of my right thumb, I got 100 percent accuracy. With my left thumb, I only got 80 percent, perhaps because of the different angle I was pressing at. With quick, thoughtless touches or swipes of my thumb, recognition went down to 50 to 60 percent, leading me to turn facial recognition on.
"
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Consumer Reports:
“For me and many others, the fingerprint scanner on the back of Samsung’s older Galaxy phones was a routine source of irritation. While reaching for it with my finger, I invariably smudged the rear camera lenses.
The S10 and S10+ eliminate that problem by embedding the scanner in the front display. And that’s great when it works. To unlock the phone, you simply place your finger on the screen. But
the new technology can be buggy. More often than not, I fell back on the option of drawing the phone’s unlock pattern or using the less than perfectly secure 2D facial recognition to unlock my phone.“
Enough said. Notice how many times these reviewers (even ANDROID reviewers) refer to FaceID as basically the GOLD standard.
