The Samsung Galaxy Note 10 series,

Introduction

The Samsung Galaxy Note series, it tend to be the office favorites, most especially the least of a couple of non-review units making their way to colleagues' pockets around the past launch time. If We look at them They usually don't last too long, however, getting replaced in recent years by some of the Smartphones, like Pixel or an

iPhone.

The RT will talk about the curves and the punch hole of the it, they will share some thoughts on that pesky ultrasonic fingerprint reader, even though the fingerprint scanner is nice and soft, but we'll obviously say a word or two on using the S Pen. Yea Of course, there will be a bunch of camera samples outside of the usual set. So their for Let's start off with the design and see what will happen.

Design, build, and handling

The Galaxy Note series have also have a traditionally been boxier handsets with sharper corners than their S-series counterparts from the same year, and that's no different with the Note10+. That makes for a more technical look on the Note10 lineup next to the S10 counterparts.

And while the sharp corners do make the Note10+ easily recognizable against S-series units, it's not its most distinct feature - the centered punch hole camera is. We can't say anyone around here was really a fan of the S10 selfie camera cutout, much less the pill-shaped one on the S10+ - it interferes with status icons and takes up space on the screen (even more so if you decide to hide it with a black strip).

Well, the punch hole is in the middle on the Note10+ and that means icons are generally where you'd expect to find them. It's also a tinier cutout, so it takes up less space than the ones on the S-series.

It's still a hole in the display, and even though you do develop punch-hole blindness for the purposes of UI elements, the cutout comes back to prominence if you decide to stretch a YouTube video to fill the screen, for example. In all fairness, that's not entirely Samsung's fault and a better way does exist - Netflix only stretches to the selfie camera's bottom, avoiding holes in your shows.

Back to them nearly non-existent bezels and curved edges that, aside from their fans, have vocal opposition around the office for no less than two reasons. For one, having the display, and consecutively the touch screen, reach all the way to the very extremes means that touch input will be registered when you don't want it to.

Great as Samsung's palm rejection may be, we found ourselves pressing the wrong things with the soft base of the thumb when trying to stretch across to the other side of the display - that's when operating with one hand only. That's a relatively specific set of circumstances and to make it even more so, we experienced it only with a bare Note10+.

The Note10 and Note10+ gathered some early hate for their atypical power button placement - having forever been on the right, a relocation to opposite side was considered a blasphemy. We weren't overly fond of it ourselves in the beginning, but the reality is that we got used to it in virtually no time and it's nowhere near even being a issue. If you're swapping phones on a weekly basis, it may be disconcerting, but since most people aren't phone reviewers, using your own Note10+ for a a few days will have you wondering what all the fuss was about.

Camera

The Samsung Galaxy Note10+ is equipped with a rather standard triple AI camera configuration that doesn't push any boundaries on it, but it doesn't skimp either. It's just have a familiar configuration of a wide main unit, accompanied by an ultra wide one.

Indeed, the other niggle we have with the Note10+' setup is the lack of autofocus on the ultra wide angle module, which too is shared with the iPhones of the day. Where that would come in handy is for nearby subjects - we're talking 10-15cm away from the camera, which now come out blurry, as the focus is fixed at infinity. Picture the classic textbook ultra wide angle shot with a boulder in the foreground - that's not going to look ideal coming out of the Note10+.

Meanwhile, the main camera is the one that's been present in Galaxies in one form or another since the S7. Of course, it's been continually improved for several generations and the one development that we know of (as opposed to what's been done under the hood) is the dual aperture that was introduced on the S9 generation.

The capability to switch apertures gives the Note10+ a couple of advantages - in brightly lit scenes it can produce sharper images thanks to the narrow f/2.4 aperture, while in low light it can open up to f/1.5 to gather as much photons as possible. Competitors typically only have the one bright aperture in the f/1.6 to f/1.8 range and that's that.

Main camera samples

The Galaxy Note10+ takes great looking photos with all three cams in daylight. It delivers some of the most saturated output on the market, to the point of giving reality a strong color boost. You may not be a fan of that approach, but Samsung reckons its users are, and us Note10 users wouldn't argue.

It's also got some of the most advanced HDR processing and you can count on getting excellent development in both tonal extremes. The live HDR preview is also nice to have, though it's not entirely accurate as Samsung's also doing a lot of calculations post shot, which you'll only see once in the gallery. HDR works similarly well on all three cams too, further proving that resulting dynamic range in a photo is almost entirely not a matter of native sensor dynamic range anymore.

Camera samples, telephoto camera

In terms of detail capture, sharpness and contrast, the three cameras do show some differences. The main module and the telephoto are similar in their detail, though the tele has lower contrast making for a slightly fuzzier appearance. The ultra wide is noticeably softer, but it's still decent as far as these go. There's a slightly unpleasant overprocessed look in random fine detail like grass or asphalt, visible if you look up close in the images of all three cams.

Camera samples, ultra wide angle camera

Low light photos out of the Galaxy Note10+ are excellent, whether it's in the regular Photo mode or in Night mode. Having said that, we weren't blown away on any particular occasion. It's a bit as if we know the phone will take good, detailed photos, with wide dynamic range and well preserved colors, but it's not photos that will have us excited to grab a Note10+ next time there's a night-time picture taking opportunity.

Camera samples, low light, Night mode

The 10MP selfie cam on the Galaxy Note10+ defaults to a cropped in 6.5MP mode every. single. time. After 4 months of using Note10s and 9 months or so of S10s, this hasn't stopped bugging us one bit. We sure hope Samsung reverses this decision, or lets you pick the one mode you prefer, or remembers where you left it and goes back to it the next time you open the selfie cam. It just doesn't make sense the way it is.

Selfies are otherwise very good in abundance of light, but nothing special in even moderately dark conditions.