Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ Review By Engadget

The Galaxy Note has always been about overkill in a sense, it uh sure din the era of the huge smartphone, and it served as a tested for some Samsung strangest and most ambitious ideas. In other words, any new Galaxy Note has a lot to live up to. If you are a power user, someone who likes using big screens for more than just watching things, then congratulations I'm willing to say that the Galaxy Note n is the biggest green successor this you've been waiting for. But if you never felt much pull towards notes in the first place, nothing here in the note n plus is going to change your mind. It is ultimately just a slightly newer, slightly better Galaxy Note in this case, though, slightly better is all it takes to remain the king of the big smartphone hell. Of course, you're going to have to shell out some considerable cash for it.

This standard, no 10 plus I, have been testing costs $1100, and for that you get a snapdragon 855 chipsets, with 12 gigs of ram and 256 gigs of internal storage, all of which lead to performance. That is basically just as good as any other premium Android phone you've heard about this year. That's really the thing about galaxy notes, though impressive performance is just a given. It's table stakes to get a sense of what really makes this thing interesting. We're going to have to take a look, a little closer.

Just look at this screen, or I guess I should say: try to tear your eyes away from it. This is a six point. Eight inch dynamic, AMOLED screen and true to form for Samsung. It absolutely shines, and I mean that both figuratively and literally because it's brightness maxes out at 1200 nits outdoors, so it's actually really great for framing up photos and reading under harsh sunlight, I also have to say I, don't think I've enjoyed watching videos on a phone as much as I have hunted no ten plus a lot of you were curious about whether the whole Samsung cut out of the screen to accommodate the 10 megapixel front camera would get annoying. The answer is not really it's always there, and even though it's smaller than cutouts and phones like the galaxy s 10, it is pretty noticeable when you're looking at a brightly lit scene.

Most of the time, though, it's just so far off to the side that my eyes kind of naturally glaze over it I do have to say, though, that not all apps know to take up the full screen. So you'll have to do a little extra work to make sure apps, like Netflix, expand to fill the display around that camera hole thanks to Samsung's, clever design work. The no 10 plus gives you more screen without a dramatically bigger body. In fact, I would say it's actually in some ways easier to manage than last year is no 9. I mean yes, it's still a big phone and almost certainly one you're going to need two hands to use, but even then it's lighter than the note 9, so it feels surprisingly manageable, considering the size not every design tweaks Samsung made here is worth celebrating, though the screens touch sensitive edges.

For example, they follow the curve of the glass further down the sides of the phone, then on devices like the s 10 plus, so it's easier to accidentally touch icons and perform actions with the fleshy part of my hand than I'd like, and I know. I'm sorry, it sounds like I'm nitpicking here, and this might just be a knee problem, but this happens all the time, and it's getting pretty old, also, while I'm glad Samsung finally got rid of that big sweet button which so often went ignored and unused I'm, still a little frustrated by Samsung's decision to put all the phones, physical controls on the left side. It runs counter to basically every smartphone I've ever used, and it takes quite a bit of getting used to I'm, also a pretty myth, fit Samsung, gotten rid of the headphone jack here, and I know, but you're, probably thinking Bluetooth headphones are ubiquitous now and removing that meant Samsung could squeeze a marginally bigger battery inside. That's fine, that's true, but I'm just never going to accept the death of the headphone jack. Of course, what really makes a note and note is the s-pen, and this one is slightly different from the one we got last year.

It's a little shorter and a little thicker which actually makes it easier to grip. While writing more important is the accelerometer inside which makes these new air actions possible. Now these are gestures that build on the Bluetooth remote functionality of the note 9 S Pen. Now, instead of just clicking the S Pen button to perform specific actions, you can also swish and flick the S Pen through the air to access more of them right now, though, you're not really going to use these magic wand gestures for a lot, I mean, apart from using them to change tracks in whatever media app you're using at the time. They're mostly meant for manipulating the camera.

We've talked about this before gesturing left and right changes, camera modes up and down switches between the cameras themselves and drying semicircles in the air controls the zoom all of these work well enough after a bit of practice, but they only really seem helpful in certain situations like if your note n is mounted on a tripod or quite a bit away from you. It's fine and arguably helpful in that case, but most people I get the sense aren't going to bother with that. The only non Samsung app I had installed that supports air actions is Google Chrome, which you can set up, so you can flick up and down to scroll through web pages. In the week, I've tested the note, 10, plus none of these air actions ever really felt essential. It kind of feels like Samsung developed them just because they needed the Esper to do something new this year.

With all that said, there is definite potential if developers give us thoughtful nuanced ways to use these gestures and perform more specific actions. I'll gladly change my mind. Thankfully Dino tends s-pen. Handwriting recognition has been pretty great when you're done writing a note, you can tap a button at the top of the screen to convert all of that into plain text which is I, should point out not flawless, but it's smart enough that most of my terrible handwriting was correctly transcribed on the first shot and besides, it's pretty easy to go back and fix those few errors once you're done. The phone also starts interpreting and indexing your handwriting as soon as you've saved the note.

So within a moment you can search and make sure that you added laundry detergent to your shopping list or whatever it's needs more mundane, s-pen improvements, not air actions that make the note 10, plus worth the price of admission for some and that's honestly kind of where I am right now and then throughout of the cameras which honestly haven't changed that much since the days of the Galaxy S ten we're still working with three BRIC cameras: a 16 megapixel ultra-wide, a 12 megapixel wide and a 12 megapixel telephoto aside from some very minor changes. These shoot photos just as well as the s tens did so expect loads of detail, lots of bright, vibrant colors and a little of HDR that always ensures that parts of your landscapes aren't blown out. Actually, speaking of landscapes, I've always thought that Samsung's cameras we're better for lush detailed scenes and buildings and objects than skin tones, and that's still true I also have to point out that the pixel three's computational photography chops, arguably produce nicer photos if only just a bit with less fuss, but the flexibility that these three cameras provide me. The note 10 plus as a camera, simply can't be dismissed. Sadly, the similar camera setup here means the no 10 plus still has the same low-light limitations as the asked hands.

The main 12 megapixel camera is the best of the bunch of the telephoto, isn't bad either thanks to its new wider aperture, but your ultra-wide shots are going to turn out very soft with little detail. A lot of motion blur even the built-in night mode isn't much to write home about it's basically just a long exposure that produces a brighter photo, but not one with any more detail or nuance or verb. It's not particularly good, and when it comes to night shooting companies like Google and Huawei they just they blow Samsung out of the water. The biggest improvements to the camera actually all have to do with video. A new live focus mode lets.

You drown your backgrounds in bouquet or and a neat black and white or glitch effect, which honestly look better than any of the other option, I'm just as surprised as you are, but the standard bouquet and the quote: big circle, bouquet options, look unnatural and honestly pretty unsatisfying, especially when you start to crank up the blur levels. The super steady video mode is far more useful and noticeably better than what we got in the galaxy s, tents you can't zoom in or anything while you're walking around and shooting the super stable footage, but the results are definitely impressive. Meanwhile, there is a new built-in video editor and works well enough for quick social sharing videos, Samsung suggestion that this is good enough for full-on creator. It seems kind of delusional. It's fine for piecing together, simple projects with a little background, music and some transitions, but I would not want to use it for more than that, if you're really serious about trying to create decent.

Looking videos on your Galaxy Note an on the native video editor entirely and use something like Adobe Premiere rush, which has a specific version for Samsung Galaxy devices and if nothing else makes the option of moving your clips around using the s-pen feel that much more pleasant. The camera zoom mic feature is actually a little more interesting. It allows you to zoom in on a subject and the notes directional microphones will cycle in and out of used to make sure you can focus in on the sound from whatever you're shooting it works, but the effect is pretty subtle and after a while, you kind of have to make decisions about audio versus video quality. For example, Samsung says that zooming in 4x should raise the volume of your target by about nine decimals, but 4x zoom video can be pretty grainy under the wrong kind of light and zooming in while you're shooting these videos does not look very smooth at all. Oh, and there's a doodle.

This here is big, augmented reality, gimmick I would sure it wouldn't be much more than a fun little party trick, and it did keep a gaggle of kids at a birthday party entertained for a while, but I did ultimately find some more practical uses for it. I have been slowly putting apart in my apartment, and I've used an are doodle to roughly plot out where I want things to go on my walls. The things you draw on the world don't seem to stick to things easily, so the vague rectangles I drew hung in the air instead on the wall, where I really needed them, but it was enough to get a sense of how my apartment could look. Ultimately, a doodle feels mostly like a toy, and I'll never get tired of using it to draw on people's faces, but this is one of those sleeper features that could come in surprisingly handy when you least expect it. I could say the same about the new included AR measure app, which basically does what the name says.

After a bit of panning around and calibration, you can measure things in front of the camera. These measurements seem accurate enough, and it's nice enough to have I guess but I, don't think I needed that do you, thankfully other gimmicks do come in a little more helpful, like DEX, which you can, as usual, used to turn your note 10-plus into something like a full-blown PC Samsung's DEX feature is far from a new, but this year you don't have to count on just having a separate, monitor lying around to use with it. After you install a companion app on your Mac or PC, you can connect the note to your machine with a USB cable and get the full desk desktop experience right. There, I know what you're thinking the idea of using a desktop interface on top of a desktop interface on your actual computer sounds more than a little silly, and it is, but it is undeniably great for transferring files between your machines and even making calls while you're handling email in a standard web browser. The thing I do have to point out is that I was trying to X on a Mac, which sort of requires that you have Android file, transfer the app installed on your Mac to start with, and because I did, my experience was pretty much painless, but the Android file transfer app on the Mac is notoriously finicky.

So, if you're trying to set this up from scratch, you might not have the easiest time now. Using all of these features will take a toll on the note.10 plus is 4300 million about our battery and I have to admit I expected a little more longevity than I actually got in general I could count on the note m+ to stick around for a little under a day and a half on a single charge, though there have been days like today, where I've blown through the battery entirely before going to bed I, don't think that's going to be the norm for most people, but I have to let you know that this is not the kind of fun you can expect two days of use out of normally. This is where I would wrap things up, but I have to take this moment to tell you that, even though we're just a few days away from the notes official launch, some things were just not ready for us to test as of the day we're shooting this video play galaxy link which lets you stream games from your home, PC to your note that doesn't work that weirdo 3d scanner, that Samsung demoed onstage and unpacked that's not available either we're coming down to the wire here, and hopefully, Samsung will have them up and running in time for you to read about in our full written review, I wouldn't get too hung up on that stuff, though, even without them, the Galaxy Note 10 is probably the best big screen phone money can buy. Even if you don't love the idea of using a stylus regularly but know 10, pluses blend of power and a truly tremendous screen is it's well, it's just kind of intoxicating at times. Yes, there are more than a few things here that require getting used to or don't feel as polished as they should, but the foundation is solid enough.

That those issues don't dramatically detract from the experience of using the note 10 plus. If you just want a big phone, you can get one bets just as fast for less money, and you're, probably going to have a great time with it. But if you want a big phone that does more than just the smartphone basics, if you don't mind dealing with some occasionally annoying quirks, just can't do better than the Galaxy Note n for now, anyway, 2019 is still far from over, and we still have plenty of big phone launches to look forward to.

Source : Engadget