Hardware-wise it;s super refined. Everything feels buffed and polished to a fine edge, even on this 'lesser' member of the S10 range. That being said, it feels... I dunno. It's miles ahead of my G5 (which, honestly, isn't hard to do), but I don't like the feel in hand as much as my old Z3. Even though the S10e design is much less fussy without the flaps and pointless magnetic connector the Z3 had, that Xperia felt nicer to hold, and much less slippery to boot. It could be down to how the glass panels meet the aluminum frame. The Sony was almost a flat slab with the aluminum wrapping around it, giving you a more defined edge. Both glass panels on the S10e curve more noticeably to meet those rails (though not curved as with the main S10 brethren). I doubt anybody else will notice or care though. Definitely want a skin or case on this one.

Ergonomic-wise, it's pretty decent. I do need to get used to the power/fingerprint button being on the side instead of on the back, but 3 years of muscle memory won't be undone in a day. It reads the fingerprint extremely quickly, so much so that having an in screen reader almost seems like doing something just because you can, not necessarily because it's better. It could stand to be a little lower on the body, but it's not a dealbreaker or as big an issue as reviewers make it. I do hate the placement of the Bixby button and will probably figure out the best program to use to remap it.

Software-wise, I'm still sorting out. There's a crapton of options buried in the settings, which will take some getting used to. Per usual, Samsung has their own version of every program Google already has, which is annoying. Some can be removed, some disabled, others have to exist. I'd hate to see what this phone looks like on Verizon. There's a lot tied either to a Samsung account or a Bixby account, which I don't care for. For instance, I schedule my phone to go to Do Not Disturb while I'm in weekly meetings. It was pretty straightforward in Oreo (I think that's what was running last on that G5), but going to those settings in OneUI, they only have one time you can set for DND. You have to set individual days up with Bixby Actions, which prompted me to sign into that account (which I hadn't set up). This kind of thing was one of my biggest reasons for not really wanting to go the Samsung route. To their credit, it doesn't feel as heavy handed as TouchWiz (yet), and it does look nicer. And yes, if I really wanted something closer to stock, a Pixel or OnePlus would have been better (though I haven't spent time with OxygenOS to know it's quirks). I'm sure I'll get it sorted out and get on with things, and again, this is something most people won't notice or care about.

Overall I'm happy with the purchase and look forward to putting the phone though the paces of daily life. I still need to take some pictures with the phone, and I have to move my SD card over from the G5 (will likely offload the pics to PC, format the card, then move the media back over). It's hard to think of a $750 phone as a 'value' proposition or as a true 'flagship', considering phones priced above and below this one. But somehow, here we are. As I said before, for me this phone seems like it has the fewest compromises for the current gen phone specs. Considering the phone is about a mm either direction of the S7 it's impressive how much is packed into this phone.