Intro
When looking for a new smartphone, I always recommend to go for last years top models. Last time, the S7 Edge won over the LG G6 for me. This time it is the LG G8S Thinq vs the Samsung Galaxy S10. I skipped the S8 and S9, because the normal size (not +) models did not any significant advatage over my S7 Edge, which has beed updated to Android 8 in the meantime and still got a new security patch this year. And I skipped the G7, as I always preferred the phones with OLED screens.
I am still very satisfied with my S7 Edge, but I wished for a better camera with wide angle and tele lens. And as the G8S now also has an OLED display, I have two of last years champions to choose from.
Overview
The S10 is last years low risk Galaxy update, like the predecessors have been before. The only significant changes were the move to a in place fingerprint sensor and the triple camera, already in the base modell. LG made more changes compared to the G7. Finally, the display technology changed to OLED, it got a depth sensor at the front and triple camera. But in return, LG removed the excellent QuadDAC and the Boom Box Speakers. So lets see how they compare.
Price
This is the easiest part. If you are short on budget, just get the G8S. Watch out for special offers, I got mine for EUR 310,- while the best offer for the S10 that I found is EUR 510,-. So the G8S is only 60% of the price of the S10. Both phones have their pros and cons, but if you need to watch your budget, the differences aren't so big that these would judge nearly double the price.
The G8S, beeing one of LG's last years flagships behind the V50, is now in the lower midrange price region which makes it a bargain.
Rating - G8S: 9 - S10: 6
Software
I did this test in May and June 2020. The S10 is on Android 10 with June 2020 security patches, which is excellent. The G8S came with Android 9 and the latest security patch I got was from March 2020, which is not a good result for a phone from last year. LG has always been weak with patches and it did not get better with the G8S. LG has annouced to roll out Android 10 to the G8S this fall, but at the time of writing at the end auf August 2020, there is no Android 10 on the LG.
Samsung has already announced to deliver an upgrade to Android 11 for the S10, I won't expect that for the G8S. But for today, I can only rate what is available now.
Android 10 is important for a real dark modes, which makes sense to save battery on an OLED device. The G8S has a high contrast mode, which is ugly IMHO. You can download some dark themes for the G8S, but not everything is skinnable so the result is some mixture of dark and light mode. Overall, LG's skin looks very old fashioned as like they cannot say good bye to Android 4. I like Samsungs One UI, it gives the system a fresh look without doing too much.
Samsung comes with it's own voice assistant Bixby, but you can always use Google assistant on both phones. I don't care for both launchers. Both are OK and will do the Job somehow. But I install Nova Laucher on both after a short period of working with the vendord launchers. Overall, both systems come with some nice extra functionality like extra application launcher side menus, location based services etc. Overall, both are very similar in terms of extra features, but LG's sluggish upgrade strategy is a big minus.
Rating - G8S: 7 - S10: 10
Body, build and battery
As in my last comparison between the LG G6 and the S7 Edge, Samsung created a slimmer body by using its Edge Screen, a rounded screen left and right, and no bezels on the side. The G8S ha
s a more traditional design with small bezels on both sides. The G8S also has a military spec durability certification, and I expect the G8s to be more durable because the glass on both sides is more exposed to damage. I haven't tried it, but for the S10 I use the thickest Spigen Ultra Armor bumper case. For the G8S, I am comfortable with any slim silicon bumper from eBay.
But though I am no friend of Edge displays, in the end it works. Even with the Ultra Armor bumper, the S10 is comfortable in my Hand. The G8S is only a little thicker, but just so much that I personally consider it as too bulky for daily usage. It is also a little longer and does not fit in many of my pockets. But your mileage may vary.
The G8S comes with a new infrared bar at the top, which gives you hand- and face-ID unlock as well as hand gestures. I am with many of other reviewers: these are gimicky and of no practical use. Especially the hand features take forever to operate and often stop because you are doing it not exactly the way it wants you to do it. Overall, the face unlock feature works, but you need to have your face very close to the camera. In the end, I disabled them because they also drain the batter faster. What cannot be disabled, is the gigantic notch from the IR array. The G8S has a larger screen, but much is wasted by the notch. The battery indicator on the top right even does not have enough space to display the percentage. The S10 only has a little punchhole for the camera which I personally find less intrusive.
Speaking of battery, the S10 is a monster. Even with heavy usage, I have over 20% left at midnight. And with my average usage profile, I nearly get it through 2 days. So I am confident, that even after two years, when the battery may have lost 30% of its capacity, it will get me through the day. The G8S is a different thing. Though it gets me through the day most of the times, sometimes it suffers from extensive battery drain. One day with moderate usage and half an hour playing a puzzle game (nothing 3D), it has been down to 12% before lunch. I sent it back and ordered a new one, because I thought it was a defect. But the other one was the same. Don't get me wrong, the heavy battery drain only happened maybe every one or two weeks, and I only had the 12% before lunch. Overall, I won't rely on the G8S to bring me through every day, whereas the S10 is a strong performer.
An area where the G8S shines is the excellent fingerprint sensor on the back. It is super fast,100% reliable and sliding down on the sensor pulls down the notification area. This is class leading, I never had a phone with a better fingerprint reader. The S8 and S9 had similar (but less perfect) readers on the back. For the S10, Samsung decided to use an in-display fingerprint reader, that is about as unrealiable as the in-button reader on the S7 Edge and it is definitely the weakest part of the S10. At least, it unlocks faster then the S7 Edge, because the S10 is overall a faster phone.
Overall, if the S10 had the fingerprint reader from the G8S, it would be perfect for me. The G8S is too bulky and heavy for my taste and the useless IR array eats too much of the large screen. But it is still smaller than many large phone and maybe it might just have the right size for you. But it looses points for its sometimes unreliable battery
Rating - G8S: 7 - S10: 9
Displays
Both phones have similar wide displays. But while Samsung sticks with their rounded Edge Display, the G8S has a classic flat display with a bezel. Though I am not a fan of rounded Egde Displays, I must admit that this seems to be the perfect compromise between dispay space and body bulk. As I wrote in the body section, I consider the S10 as handy, the G8S already as bulky.
Many are willing to cary a bulky device in exchange for significant more screen estate. But this is the point: the G8S does not offer significant more screen estate.
Comparing screen estate
The G8S' gigantic notch eats up much of the larger display, whereas I find the S10's punchhole camera less intrusive. Especially when zooming YouTube content to 16:9, the difference is noticable.
Comparing the quality, the LG display is some years behind the Samsung AmOLED. The G8S' display is very good and I could easily live with it. But Samsung is the expert for smartphone OLED display and that shows. Images and movies have more depth and brilliance on the Samsung. Think of it like the difference between glare and anti-reflective laptop screens. The difference is about the same, just that both reflect about the same.
Rating - G8S: 8 - S10 Edge: 10
Punchhole vs. mega-notch
Comparing the quality, the LG display is some years behind the Samsung AmOLED. The G8S' display is very good and I could easily live with it. But Samsung is the expert for smartphone OLED display and that shows. Images and movies have more depth and brilliance on the Samsung. Think of it like the difference between glare and anti-reflective laptop screens. The difference is about the same, just that both reflect about the same.
Audio
The audio section was, where the LG G-series (as well as the V-series) has been dominant over all other smartphones. So I was disappointed, that with the G8S, which should be a ramp up model from the G8, LG changed things to the worse.
First, this is the first LG G-Series model, that does not have the excellent Quad Audio DAC for the headphone jack. That does not mean, that headphone audio is bad on the G8S, but it is also good on the S10. I could not hear any significant difference on my Sony WH-1000XM3 headphones. At least, both phones still do have an audio jack.
On Bluetooth they both support the same codecs, so no difference here.
Leaving it to the speaker, and here the G8S is weaker than expected. After the G7 had that innovative Boom Box sound, though the G8S has a larger body, it sounds tinny compared to the S10. I tried all EQ settings and the Dolby mode on the LG. They all sounded different, but all sounded tinny.
So after LG easily winning the audio section for years, with a draw in headphone and Bluetooth audio and a win in speaker sound, for the first time the Samsung wins the audio section. Hey LG: the boom sound speakers and the Quad DAC already have been engineered by you. Putting both into the G8S would have made it a clear winner again. But with the G8S beeing weaker in both headphone jack and speaker performance then it's own predecessor, this was an easy win for Samsung.
Rating - G8S: 6 - S10: 8
First, this is the first LG G-Series model, that does not have the excellent Quad Audio DAC for the headphone jack. That does not mean, that headphone audio is bad on the G8S, but it is also good on the S10. I could not hear any significant difference on my Sony WH-1000XM3 headphones. At least, both phones still do have an audio jack.
On Bluetooth they both support the same codecs, so no difference here.
Leaving it to the speaker, and here the G8S is weaker than expected. After the G7 had that innovative Boom Box sound, though the G8S has a larger body, it sounds tinny compared to the S10. I tried all EQ settings and the Dolby mode on the LG. They all sounded different, but all sounded tinny.
So after LG easily winning the audio section for years, with a draw in headphone and Bluetooth audio and a win in speaker sound, for the first time the Samsung wins the audio section. Hey LG: the boom sound speakers and the Quad DAC already have been engineered by you. Putting both into the G8S would have made it a clear winner again. But with the G8S beeing weaker in both headphone jack and speaker performance then it's own predecessor, this was an easy win for Samsung.
Rating - G8S: 6 - S10: 8
Camera(s)
This was a close one. Both companies use differect color science. Samsung is more on the warm side, LG is a bit cooler. It is a little like Fuji vs. Canon. I personally prefer the cooler Fujifilm look, but this is a matter of taste. Overall, there is no clear winner here. I took hundreds of shot with both phones, you can find some of them in this album. Often, I took the same shot in all three modes. Sometimes I tried to fix a shot in post, eg. by lowering saturation. You can identify these by an underscore and a counter at the end.
Often, one shot went completely bad on one phone whereas the other gave a good picture. And just the next shot, is has been vice versa. For the most times, forget about the intelligent auto modes. They do too much on both phones, giving the shots a complete unrealistic look. But shooting in manual is often also a bad idea.
You cannot trick physics and the small sensors in both cameras have very limited dynamic range. Like cheap cameras 20 yrs before. So get a somewhat realistic image, they need to do at least some HDR. Unfortunately, that is what they don't offer. You can only choose between no HDR (manual mode) or HDR with many picture 'optimizations'. So in many cases, my old S7 Edge delivered me the best shot, just because it made more subtle 'optimizations'.
The warmer Samsung and colder LG color science lead to more yellow'ish greens on the S10 and blue'ish greens on the G8S. The natural look would often be somewhere in the middle. The G8S sometimes also mixes some red into the sky, giving it a slightly pink'ish look. Especially the latter is harder to fix in post.
Often, one shot went completely bad on one phone whereas the other gave a good picture. And just the next shot, is has been vice versa. For the most times, forget about the intelligent auto modes. They do too much on both phones, giving the shots a complete unrealistic look. But shooting in manual is often also a bad idea.
You cannot trick physics and the small sensors in both cameras have very limited dynamic range. Like cheap cameras 20 yrs before. So get a somewhat realistic image, they need to do at least some HDR. Unfortunately, that is what they don't offer. You can only choose between no HDR (manual mode) or HDR with many picture 'optimizations'. So in many cases, my old S7 Edge delivered me the best shot, just because it made more subtle 'optimizations'.
The warmer Samsung and colder LG color science lead to more yellow'ish greens on the S10 and blue'ish greens on the G8S. The natural look would often be somewhere in the middle. The G8S sometimes also mixes some red into the sky, giving it a slightly pink'ish look. Especially the latter is harder to fix in post.
Same picture, different color science: G8S (left) vs S10 (rigth)
The one big advantage the S10 has is it's variable aperture on the main camera. While the G8S has a fixed aperture of f/1.8, the S10 can change between f/1.5 and f/2.4. So in good lightning, the S10 can step down the aperture and trade the amount of light for a larger depth of field. This results in overall better sharpness of the S10 when pixel peeping. The G8S images are overall a bit soft, sometimes also visible in full image viewing.
Also this helps with sunlight from the side, where the G8S camera sometimes produced heavy reflections, whereas the S10 steps down and delivers a clear image. System camera shooters know, why they carry a lens hood. It helps a bit, when you try to use your hand to give a bit of shadow to your lens. But it makes shooting a bit fiddly and sometimes I got my fingers into the pictures.
Also this helps with sunlight from the side, where the G8S camera sometimes produced heavy reflections, whereas the S10 steps down and delivers a clear image. System camera shooters know, why they carry a lens hood. It helps a bit, when you try to use your hand to give a bit of shadow to your lens. But it makes shooting a bit fiddly and sometimes I got my fingers into the pictures.
Short distance: sometime focus problems on the G8S, but better color
The S10 also has a multi exposure night mode, the G8S' night mode is more a traditional one. If it does not get too dark, the G8S often delivers more realistic images. But when it gets darker, the S10 takes the lead here.
Night modes: subtle and realistic vs. night vision
LG has often been blamed for it's mediocre selfie shooters. I personally prefer the results from the G8S, as they are less 'optimized'. But both are better than my old S7 Edge, where everyone had a wax skin on photo. But in low light, the S10 is by far the better selfie shooter.
When shooting manual, the S10 often exposed to the right (ETTR), which is a good starting point for a manual mode. The G8S tends to more often blow out the highlights. But as this is a manual mode , you are to set your exposure manual anyways.
After all, I went through all photos I shot with both phones and rated, which I did like best. Overall, I preferred the G8S' photos slightly more often, than the ones from the S10, but that was close. Mostly, I liked that the G8S' photos often looked a bit more natural then the ones from the S10. And I also prefer the cooler look, but as I said, I am more a Fujifilm than a Canon guy.
I cannot say much about video, as did not shoot many videos during this test. Both results looked very similar to me, the S10 has a better working stabilization.
And to give you a long term review: after this test, I took the S10 on a holiday and found that it has been a very reliable shooter. Overall, it was much better, than I expected. Beaches with blue skies, dramatic sundowns, city trips in bad weather: the S10 handled most situations well so I could often leave my larger camera at home.
Overall the S10 has better sharpness, a better night mode and a more reliable auto focus. The G8S has a color science that I personally prefer and sometimes the images look more natural. Overall I could get happy with both and declare a draw.
Rating - G6: 8 - S7 Edge: 8
Summary
This time, it is a clearer win by points for Samsung. And the points reflect, what my overall experience with both phones has been. I used both for nearly three weeks as my daily driver. Using a phone every day brings out so much more than just running a test suite. And overall the S10 is a more balanced phone than the G8S. The S10 is a bit like a higher end Volkswagen: not the world best in every aspect, but very good in most and bad in none (well ... except for some Diesel models, but that is a different story). The G8S is very good in some aspects like the camera and the price. But the battery runtime was a bit unpredictable and for me it was a bit too bulky without delivering value for that bulk. Tinny speakers, weaker battery, only minimal more screen estate: these are no good reasons for carrying a bulkier an heavier phone. All the features from the IR-Array are gimicky and mostly useless. LG went the wrong way here. They should have saved the money for the development and the extra components. Instead they should have just build in, what they already had developed: the Quad-DAC and the Boom Sound speakers. And the time they had spend to deliver the software for that IR features could better have been spent for Android software upgrades. And the gigantic notch could have be a very small one with just the front facing camera.
If LG would have taken the easy way as I described, it would had a draw on software, a smaller gap in the display section, a win in the audio section. That would have been 8 points more for the LG, what would mean a win by the points. But LG decided to invest in the wrong area.
That does not mean, that the G8S is a bad phone. Especially in it's actual price range, it is well positioned against it's competition. But it could have been so much more and it is a shame that the always innovative G-Series ends with a model, that is less competitive compared to it's predecessors.
Talking about the winner: the S10 is now my daily driver for two months and I really like it. It is my best phone so far. If I had three wishes on the S10, I would wish for the return of the fingerprint scanner on the back, a better fingerprint scanner on the front (like many Chinese phones already have) and a more muted and realistic color science for the camera. But as the S20 is already out, I know that at least my dreams for the fingerprint scanner won't come true in that generation.
But the S10 is an overall very strong performer with a very good camera, superb battery life, a handy form factor, an excellent display and very good software support.
Overall Rating - G8S: 45 - S10: 51
If LG would have taken the easy way as I described, it would had a draw on software, a smaller gap in the display section, a win in the audio section. That would have been 8 points more for the LG, what would mean a win by the points. But LG decided to invest in the wrong area.
That does not mean, that the G8S is a bad phone. Especially in it's actual price range, it is well positioned against it's competition. But it could have been so much more and it is a shame that the always innovative G-Series ends with a model, that is less competitive compared to it's predecessors.
Talking about the winner: the S10 is now my daily driver for two months and I really like it. It is my best phone so far. If I had three wishes on the S10, I would wish for the return of the fingerprint scanner on the back, a better fingerprint scanner on the front (like many Chinese phones already have) and a more muted and realistic color science for the camera. But as the S20 is already out, I know that at least my dreams for the fingerprint scanner won't come true in that generation.
But the S10 is an overall very strong performer with a very good camera, superb battery life, a handy form factor, an excellent display and very good software support.
Overall Rating - G8S: 45 - S10: 51
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