To use the power-sharing feature, you hit a button in the phone’s settings and place another device that supports wireless charging onto the back of the Samsung. I stacked my iPhone and the Galaxy S10 Plus back to back, and it took the Samsung about 15 minutes to replenish 5 percent of the iPhone’s battery. That’s a slow charge rate, though Samsung said the feature was primarily intended for charging accessories like wireless earbuds or smart watches.
An improved fingerprint sensor, but weaker biometrics than the iPhone
I found that the fingerprint reader on Samsung’s Galaxy S10 Plus was an improvement over past models. But the device’s biometrics over all were still weaker than the features on Apple’s iPhone, Samsung’s biggest rival.
In previous Samsung phones, the sensor was a physical button on the back of the phone near the camera, which often led people to accidentally bump the camera lenses when attempting to unlock their phones.
Now the sensor is on the front and embedded in the screen. Its ultrasonic technology uses sound waves that read the ridges and valleys of a finger. This means you can now unlock the phone while it is flat on a table, and the ultrasonic technology will be able to scan your print through water or grease. In addition, because the captured image is so detailed, the print becomes much more difficult to spoof than with past fingerprint sensors.
In my tests, I was able to unlock the phone while my hand was damp.
On the downside, Samsung is behind Apple in face recognition. While Apple uses infrared scanning to create a precise 3-D map of a person’s face, Samsung’s face scanner uses the camera to take your photo and then compares it with an image stored on the device. So a thief could fool the system by holding a photo of your face in front of the camera.
Because a person’s head shape is unique, the likelihood of bypassing infrared-based facial recognition with an incorrect face is one in a million, according to Qualcomm. In contrast, the false-acceptance rate of older face-scanning techniques like Samsung’s is one in 100, and the false-acceptance rate of fingerprint scanning (including the new ultrasonic technology) is one in 50,000.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/27/technology/personaltech/samsung-galaxy-s10-review.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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