Samsung has today unveiled two versions of its flagship, the Galaxy Note 10 and the huge Note 10 Plus smartphone. The Note 10 Plus as the traditional Note — has the same dimensions as last year’s Note 9 with the big-screen, more super-powered and a stylus-toting smartphone.
The Note 10 starts at UGX 3.5 m before taxes ($949) and comes in just one configuration: 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. The Note 10 Plus starts at UGX 4 m ($1,099) with 12GB RAM / 256GB storage and you can spend $100 more to get 512GB of storage. Both are available for preorder today and will ship on August 23rd.
Samsung is currently has tried to position it as a spec monster — the absolute top of the Android line. That’s a harder case to make in 2019, with current devices like the OnePlus 7 Pro and Huawei P30 Pro already available with very comparable internals. Even Samsung’s own mainstream Galaxy S phones have shared processors and cameras with the Note line for the past couple of years.
Note 10 and Note 10 Plus specs
- Processor: Snapdragon 855
- S Pen: Bluetooth LE, accelerometer and gyroscope for motion controls
- Screen: Dynamic AMOLED with tone mapping
- Wide-angle camera: 16 megapixels, f/2.2
- Main camera: 12 megapixels, f/1.5 and f/2.4 dual aperture, OIS
- Telephoto camera: 12 megapixels, f/2.1, 45-degree
- Selfie camera: 10 megapixels, f/2.2
- Radios: LTE Cat 2.0, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0
- In-screen fingerprint sensor
Note 10 Plus
- Screen: 6.8-inch, 3040 x 1440 pixels
- RAM: 12GB
- Storage: 256GB or 512GB UFS 3.0, microSD expansion
- Battery: 4,300mAh
- VGA depth-of-field camera
Note 10
- Screen: 6.3-inch, 2280 x 1080
- RAM: 8GB
- Storage: 256GB UFS 3.0, no microSD expansion
- Battery: 3,500mAh
On the down side, there is no headphone jack on the Note 10 Plus — Samsung says it used the extra space for more battery. It was nice when Samsung was the rare holdout keeping the headphone jack there, but apparently all nice things die. Samsung is including USB-C headphones in the box.
Well, here is some good news, the Bixby button we’ve come accustomed to in previous Galaxy flagships is gone — it’s instead integrated as a long-press option on the power button (and no, you can’t replace that with the Google Assistant).
It comes in four colors, Samsung has jumped onto the “aura” bandwagon to connote that everything has a kind of iridescent shimmer to it. The ultra-reflective “halo” is my favorite (and also the closest to a trend Huawei kind of started), while the blue color will only be available at Samsung and Best Buy.
The screens are, predictably, gorgeous HDR10+ certified OLEDs — though I didn’t get a chance to really analyze them. Samsung hasn’t mentioned anything about fancy refresh rates, which means the OnePlus 7 Pro probably will keep the crown for smoothest scroller.
Camera and Battery
Samsung says the Note 10 Plus has a 4,300mAh battery and the smaller Note 10 uses a 3,500mAh battery — but it hasn’t done the testing yet to turn those capacities into battery life estimates. Both sizes are a step up from the 4,100mAh and 3,400mAh found in the S10 Plus and S10, respectively.
Samsung made only trifling changes compared to the cameras on the Galaxy S10. There’s a single selfie camera on the front and three on the back: wide, regular, and telephoto. Samsung has added a time-of-flight camera to the Note 10 Plus, but isn’t using it for much yet. Oh, and AR doodles have made a comeback and can be attached to a face as it moves in frame. Okay.
Samsung put more effort into the video capabilities of the Note 10. It added its background-blurring Live Focus as an optional effect and made the video stabilization feature ping the sensors more often to improve that effect. But I’m most excited to try the new zoom microphone feature.
Now that the Note 10 and Note 10 Plus have been announced, will you be ordering one?
