REVIEW : SAMSUNG GALAXY NOTE 10+

[BOSSGOGG]

This is my first review, please be gentle.

Also it has been said I am a bit of a nerd, so you might need some popcorn ready.

I have owned all the UK released Notes. ( As well as most of the S's.) 

Buying them annually from the 8 to this one ( after the 18 month hiatus due to the Note 7 Fireball Edition ) is mostly incremental upgrades. But, and it's a big but, the note is always more than the sum of its parts. It's a tool. A Swiss army knife.

And this one is the best yet .

Model- Note 10+ 5G SM-N976B 256GB in Aura Glow from Samsung UK running Android 9.0 with Samsung OneUI 1.5 skin. 

Price- £1099 😭

Quick Specs -

6.8" Quad HD Dynamic AMOLED Screen

Exynos 9825 7nm Octa Core Processor

12GB RAM

UFS 3.0 Storage

IP68 Dust and Water Resistant 

Quad rear cameras

4300mAh Battery

What does all this equate to - Top of the food chain. 

UNBOXING

In the box is the Phone with pre applied screen protector, 25W fast charger, USB-C AKG braided headphones with extra buds, extra SPen Tips and remover and some books to flick into the bin.

Samsung simply does not do presentation.  For their current flagship the out the box wow is missing. Same box as the Note 8 and 9. At least with the 9 you got some nice Samsung goodies and a large thank you card. Some markets get a case included, not us. 

ERGONOMICS

The 10+ is lighter and thinner than its Note 9 predecessor.  And it feels it.  It just feels good in the hand, giggity  

I'm a big fan of the notes boxier design with more squared off edges and less prominent screen curve. 

It's comfortable. That said, I have large gorilla hands. 

It's managed to increase the screen size and battery size in a footprint almost exactly as the Note 9. This is largely due to ditching the old school 3.5mm headphone jack.  More on that later. 

Contact info blurred.

The ultrasonic fingerprint sensor works great. I have had zero issues with it. Its far better placed than previous notes. 

That said, I use it to unlock for payments only. 

Lift to wake with face recognition is now so lightening quick I very rarely use the Fps. Lift the phone and its unlocked before you can think about it. 

Colour, oh the colour. Any pictures can not to do the Aura Glow justice. Finally an exciting colour available in the UK. Mostly silver most of the time. The rest of the time it is every other colour all the time.

Only other colour available for this model at release is Aura Black. Both look amazing in person.

Sound - Fantastic dual speakers ( I'm looking at you single speaker Huawei P30 Pro). The bottom speaker sounds better than most other device's main one. Great for watching videos. 

BATTERY

The 10+ comes with a 4300mAh battery with up to 45W fast wired and 15W wireless charging. That's quick. Very.

My own experience of the battery is great . Definitely an all day one. Although very very subjective, my usage case is as follows. - 

Off charger at 7am. Home at 6pm. 3-4hrs screen time. 3hrs+ talk time on Bluetooth. Screen at quad HD with adaptive brightness. 3hrs or so of music streaming. 

Home with 50pc battery. 

Unfortunately Samsung have pulled an Apple and not included the 45W brick in the box. Only the 25W.

The 45W is not even available to buy yet ( at c£50).

That said those that have their hands on both the 25W and 45W have indicated that there is not much difference in them.

My own experience here is the 25W is more than enough. 2pc battery charge per minute in the mid range ( fast charger tails off at the upper end). 15minutes blast gets you 30pc. Whole battery 0-100 timed by me at 1hr 8mins.

CAMERA

I won't post any examples here other than to show the field of view difference between the 3 lenses . You can see other examples in our excellent community photo thread. Photo thread link

I'm just happy if they don't turn out blurry 😂. 

Quad camera setup on rear . Zoom, main, wide and Time of Flight. Nothing short of astounding. Even coming from a S10+ or Note9 the difference is immediately noticeable. The processing and machine learning has came a long way.

Night sight is freaky good at taking pictures in the dark, and I mean very dark. 

I'm not a big video taker, but the new stability feature is black magic. I tried it running and it's like using a gimbal. 

The directional sound recording where you zoom in on a part of your video and the sound follows seems to work too. 

The Time of Flight sensor enables distance measurement to produce depth effects. 

It also allows various effects like 3D scanning and Augmented Reality. Gimmick? Maybe. But the whole point of the note is that it can do things you hadn't even thought of.

The front camera is a 10MP single shooter. It has a software produced wide angle mode. I'm not a big selfier, but it appears better than the note 9 or S10. I do use it a lot for video calling .

Rear wide angle

Rear Main lens

Rear 2x zoom

ELEPHANT

So, what's missing? What are the elephants in the room? 

Price. TGH - Too Godttam High. When your phone costs the same as 2 nights at Centre Parcs in the school holidays you know its time to reign it in. 

Headphone jack. - The 3.5mm is gone. Allegedly to give an extra 200mAh of battery. Not an issue for me, but it's an omission in the tool box that will effect others. 

Screen - The screen is exemplary. The best there is. Brighter and clearer than anything I have seen. BUT, they didn't include the 90Hz refresh rate that the Samsung made screen on the OnePlus7Pro has. Once you try it, it's hard to go back. It makes that much of a difference to the smoothness.

No iris scanner or IR blaster. These were on previous notes and now missing on the 10.

I personally never used them

Conclusions

The Note 10+ is a beast. The top of the tree. Apex. 

It's incredibly fast with the new UFS3.0 storage and completely new file system.

Every single action is instant. 

Anyone with a PC, think the first time you used a SSD drive. The difference even over my Note 9 is very noticeable. 

The new 6.8" screen is the best out there. 

The infinity O  punch hole design is a great solution. I don't mind it at all. My eyes don't notice the punch when using it now. 

The cameras are amazing. Full stop. 

I have not even scratched the surface. 

It has an all day battery and super fast charging. 

It's beautiful to behold with a top tier premium construction. Probably one of the best made phones ever . It really is a thing of beauty.

The SPen has lots of new tricks up its sleeve. Gestures and swipes. One you use a Spen, you can't go back. 

It's eye watering expensive. You have to pay to play. But this is ridiculous. 

That said, no other device available can do what this one can. None. 

At this price point it is a personal choice. I could have chosen any device. 

I chose this one. I'm not disappointed. 

Some points - 

This was my own personal view after a whole week with the phone. 

O2 WiFi calling and VoLTE work out of the box. 

This is the 5G version. The 4G version is exactly the same except £100 cheaper. 

Only time will tell if using 5G has any detrimental effect on battery. 

Thanks for reading, Boss/