An Ode To My 5-Year-Old Samsung Galaxy S10e

I wanted to write a bit about one of my favourite devices, a rare example of a thing that just works, and has done so without any hiccups for the last five years. I'm talking about my phone of the last five years, Samsung Galaxy S10e.

This phone was released in 2019 as a smaller, lightweight variant of a then-flagship Galaxy S10. That entire generation was very well-received at the time, and is retrospectively considered one of the highlights of the entire Galaxy series, and as such, of the smartphone pantheon in general.

From that generation, the smallest S10e received the least of attention, but I bought it because I was looking for something with that form factor. It seemed like a very good deal - mostly the same specs as the regular S10 but packed in a smaller housing. It was that bygone era when manufacturers still offered something like that.

So I bought it, but I didn't fall in love with it immediately. It was just a phone that I got out of necessity because my older Xiaomi was showing signs of age. But today, I hold an opinion that this might be one of the best phones ever built.

We've been through the thick and thin together, and through several backglass replacements, it went through four different incarnations.

It started with the original pearl white which, while sturdy, started chipping after a few years. Then I replaced it with this cool transparent one, which broke quickly because it was a cheap plastic-y knockoff.

Then there was this bandaid solution with electrical tape that didn't even look that bad. It lasted longer than it should have, somehow even improving in grip over time, until the day it just started unraveling. At the time of writing this paragraph, the phone is rocking a green knockoff backglass from Aliexpress - while looking good, it can't be compared in sturdiness with the original, as it cracked on the first fall.

Battery & Performance

Why do I like this phone so much? Well first of all, we're still living in The Era of Planned Obsolescence, and this is a phone which has lasted me for five years. And it's five years without a significant performance decrease or battery degradation.

Firstly, the performance. All the Android phones I've ever seen became sluggish over time. It was not an if, but a when, and I expected it to happen here as well, roughly estimating it around three-year mark.

But it never came. The phone is (almost) as responsive as it was on day one. This is not me being ignorant of obvious glaring issues that happen all the time in modern software - I'm really claiming that its software works smoothly and without any bugs even today.

I'm comparing it to my Windows computer, a few years old upper-midrange build, that still surprises me with a random crash here and there. My midrange Android smart TV, while just a few years old, now takes around 10 seconds just to open the Spotify app. But those things are normal and we don't even notice them as something out of the ordinary. I'm only noticing it in contrast, because they just don't happen on this five-year-old phone.

And you know what's the kicker here? I've been using it in battery-saving mode 24/7 for the last year, so it's actually downclocked and background services are rate-limited to some degree. Still working perfectly.

(Side note: I tried turning battery saving off and it seemed to perform worse. Maybe the Samsung spyware woke up and had an entire year of telemetrics to phone home. Now I've just turned it back on and it works fine again).

Moving on to the topic of battery. I would argue battery life is practically the same as it was on day one. I'm saying practically because it still lasts one day - previously, that might have meant 30 hours and now it might mean 15 - but it's still the same state of having to charge overnight, every night.

I don't know if "Battery saving" for the last year saved the battery, but I'm pretty certain some other habits did. Excess heat is the main enemy of a battery, and it turns out my habits accidentally work in its favour. So for starters, I'm not a heavy phone user. I don't game on it, I don't watch (too much) video, or do anything else that stresses the phone, thus heating its battery too much.

I also don't use wireless charging, which does produce some extra heat. Somewhat controversially, I'm not using a case for the phone because I'm generally not dropping it too much (despite the three backglass replacements mentioned above). It turns out this is also a battery win, because the heat can dissipate from the phone more easily. Also, I'm not using Bluetooth because I have a 3.5mm jack which is incomparably more reliable than wireless.

All of that, while nothing done on purpose of saving the battery, actually turns out to be a mindful usage of it, giving me some explanation on why the phone is still functional after five years.

Reliability - Samsung's One UI variant of Android has been perfect from day one. I don't remember seeing a glitch in it - zero issues, crashes or reboots that I can recall. Compare it with a regular Windows laptop of nowadays, or read about my woes with Raspberry Pi, and let me know how it compares.

Camera - still pretty good for my purposes, although both the front and back lens cover has gotten a few scratches, so it's probably worse than it was in the factory state. There are also three faint smudges that are actually inside the housing, on the lens itself, caused by backglass replacement being done by unathorized technician (myself).

Should I Upgrade?

My appreciation for this phone, at least on this level, is a relatively fresh thing. For a while, I just kept it because it was good. As a curiosity, I wanted to see for how long I can keep it running. But it turns out, it might even last for more than I wanted? We don't want that, we want something new, every year, to feel that sweet sweet progress!

Besides, it's been out of updates for 2 years now, so it may become a security risk, and the battery life is slowly approaching numbers I'm not comfortable with. Feeling like I've milked it for long enough, I started considering an upgrade.

I didn't pay much attention to the smartphone market in the last few years. I had the impression that there was not much happening there. And after looking for a new phone, boy was I right.

In the end I narrowed the choice to two options - either the latest base iPhone (15) or the latest base Samsung (S24). I simply wasn't sold on anything else. It all seemed to have just one flaw, but one flaw nevertheless. Either it's camera, size, or performance, something would tip me off.

Few examples. Google Pixel has an optical fingerprint scanner that's known to be slower than an ultrasonic one - which is in my opinion unacceptable for something that you use hundreds of times daily. Xiaomi phones are still full of bloatware. Nothing Phone is something different and interesing, but the camera and performance, for that money, are just not there. Fairphone has a really interesting story, but it performs even worse in both segments. The idea of "Linux Phone" is well, just like "Linux on Desktop", on paper just around the corner, while in practice somehow still completely unusable.

I'd ideally want a smaller phone, but looks like this trend has been dead for a while. It turns out, no one was buying those. And people who did probably keep them for 5 years. So we're not an ideal audience anyway.

This means we're back to this choice - either the iPhone or the Samsung. I don't see that much of a difference between the two anymore, and the culturological chasm between Android and iOS seems maybe even completely gone. But in the end I'm much more partial to Android. Simply, I'm used to it, I know its ins and outs, and being an ex-Android developer, I can make an app for it if I needed. Switching to an iPhone would be more hassle than I think is worth it.

So that settles it - it should get the latest Galaxy S24. But let's see what do I get with it.

Firstly, the 120 Hz screen is an upgrade. The refresh rate is not a big thing for me personally, but it's an undeniable upgrade. Camera - yes, it's better and there's more of them.

Battery - numbers are definitely going up, as the capacity has been bumped from 3000 to 4000 mAh. But in practical terms, this is still not enough to last much more than a single day. It seems like all the new features like bigger and brighter screen, AI stuff, OS features... just do enough to negate any battery size increase.

When you search for "phones with best battery life", I couldn't help but laugh at the tagline on this article:

Get ready to leave your charger at home for a long day unplugged.

Wow, one whole long day, unplugged. We truly live in the future. And keep in mind this is coming not from an article about the phones with average battery life, but the best.

There are phones that optimize battery life, but do so at the expense of performance or size, so maybe today it's just impossible to have all three at the same time.

Next on, let's compare cameras. It's obvious the new AI-powered camera will be better, but let's see by much. Here is a video comparing the camera of S10e and the latest S24. Go skim it and let me know if you see the difference.

I myself don't. Even more so, when I see photos from the latest iPhone, they sometimes seem to have a bit too much artificial processing going on. Sometimes people look like stickers on top of a green-screened background. Due to the lack of too much magic, the pictures from my 5-year-old phone look a bit more natural and thus subjectively nicer.

Phone cameras don't seem like they have achieved a leap in the last five years. The images still look flat as they don't have that depth-of-field effect like real full-frame cameras do. The other day I took some photos with my Canon EOS and was again surprised by how "real" the images look there, even on this beginner-range camera, even without any AI processing.

The reason it's still not there is because you need a bigger optical sensor that can possibly fit in a phone. Samsung S24 has a 1/1.56" sensor with a surface area of 10.26 mm², while my beginner-range camera has 1.06" with a surface of 332 mm². That's 30 times bigger than what's in your 1000€ smartphone. It's not even a contest.

The way manufacturers compensate for this is by adding that fake blur when you use your camera in "Portrait" mode. But it is a fake blur, and visibly so - that's not how the real depth-of-field blur looks. Real lenses (like your eye) work differently - the further out of focus something is, the more blurry it will be. Current AI models don't understand 3D space well enough to be able to pull it off. This fake blur hack on some photos even looks a bit uncanny, like the world around the subject isn't real.

All this is to say - I think we've hit a limit on how good photo cameras can be, at least for a while, and that we've hit it some time ago. Maybe not exactly in 2019 when I got this phone, but probably not a lot later.

Ok, so if the camera isn't the reason to buy a new phone, what is? Maybe the latest version of Android OS? Haha, good one - these things didn't change much in the last 5 years. A good thing if you ask me.

Related to that, there are some new AI features like "circle to search" and smart photo editing. The real innovation here is the processor capable of doing it, which may be worth more once local AI gets better, but currently it doesn't seem groundbreaking enough. I would rather buy a phone that didn't have the extra chip, and as such had a better battery life. And there are also rumours that company manufacturers, like many of today's AI startups, are actually losing money on those features, and the real plan is to paywall them later when more people get hooked on it. It sounds plausible to me.

Let's talk about the screen. The latest S24 has a brighter and faster (120 Hz) screen. But its resolution is mostly the same as on mine - merely 60 pixels taller, with the width remaining the same. And as the screen on S24 is a bit bigger, it turns out its screen density is actually lower than on my S10e - 416 vs 438 ppi. Granted, those values are well above what you're able to see anyway (renowned Retina screen on Macbook Pros are "only" 227 ppi). Long gone are the days when you could discern single pixels on the screen, so these numbers are not a big deal. But they do paint a picture and prove a point - maybe the screens have also peaked in 2019?

Lastly, let's look at the most subjective category of them all - the looks. I don't think the iPhone 15 or the Samsung S24 look particularly good. In fact, they both seem bulkier than they should be, a regression from the last fifty years of miniaturization in hardware. I could bet my top dollar that this is not a conscious design choice, but rather a side effect of cramming too much stuff in them, then realizing you also need a big battery pack to power it.

The S10e that I have just looks good. And it's not just me - I literally keep getting compliments from people on how slim and suave it is. In the age of oversized chonkers that modern phones are, this one seems like a rare breed. This form factor is seemingly an artifact from earlier, simpler times, but simultaneously also a futuristic gadget that, now in 2024, apparently seems impossible to build anymore.

So with all this, you tell me, would getting a S24 even be an upgrade?

So What To Do

I was never a huge phone geek, but I have to admit how fascinating it is that we even have those things. It wouldn't be a long shot to call them a marvel of modern engineering, a testament to human ingenuity and creativity, and a proof that we can collaborate and build impossible things. Ten thousand years from now, when aliens look at the ruins of our civilization, they will probably say: "Yeah, pyramids were cool, but what about smartphones?"

So with that, as a technology lover, I'm finding it a bit sad that phones have converged to a common form, with not much innovation. It makes you appreciate the tremendous progress that happened in the last 15 years. Just take a look at the best-selling phone of 2006, Nokia 6070. It looks as you would expect of a Nokia in 2006, completely unaware of the seismic shift that was just about to start with the release of the first iPhone.

Feeling like we're over the peak, I plan to stick to this phone for as long as it can hold. When that stops, I too will make a 1000$ compromise and get the latest one, feeling only a big mugged because of paying so much for something that may as well be a downgrade.

But I do have my hopes up. I contacted my phone repair guy and he gave me a quote to replace the battery and the backglass for 45€. It was a very quick yes from my side, and few days later, in my hands I was holding the fifth incarnation of this beautiful bastard.

The battery life is better, although sadly on the account of software being heavier than in 2019, it's not able to last for two full days anymore. But still - this fella's still got some life in it.

Next week, stay tuned through the usual channels for another elegy, this time about the 10-year-old Thinkpad that I'm writing this from.