Tech

Everything About the New Note 10 & Note 10+ That S’poreans Need to Know

Victor Fong

2019-08-08 , 2:00 pm

Oh more info on Note 10? I guess I’ll just check out MKBHD later.

Hold up, don’t click away cause here’s everything you need to know summarised for you.

First, how it looks:

That’s the colours available according to Samsung website.

In case you can’t see:

Galaxy Note 10 – Aura Glow, Aura Black, Aura White, Aura Pink, Aura Red
Galaxy Note 10+ – Aura Glow, Aura Black, Aura White, Aura Blue

But in Singapore, the Galaxy Note10 will only be available in Aura Glow and Aura Black while the Galaxy Note10+ will be available in Aura Glow, Aura Black and Aura White.

Fullscreen display, curved sides, obvious hole

Either you like the design or you don’t.

Galaxy Note 10 is 6.3 inch. Note 10+ is 6.8 inch. Depending on your hand size, Note 10 probably feels better with one hand.

Here’s what people are complaining about: Note 10 is only 1080p, and based on specs, has a worse screen than even the Note 9, which is Super AMOLED with 1440p.

The screen resolution for the Galaxy Note 10+ is 1440p.

Oh yeah, there’s also no SD card slot.

No headphone jack

Included headphones in the box are USB-C. No adapter are given either. Goodbye, jack. Another plus for the Note 9.

Which is ironic considering that Samsung made fun of Apple for the dongle before.

And btw, this is strange also because apparently, they removed the jack to make space for a larger battery. But the battery…

3500 mAh battery for Note 10, 4300 mAh for Note 10+

Battery life isn’t great for Note 10 as well. For comparison, Note 9 is 4000 mAh.

Note 10 is bad…?

Based on the above, people who looked at specs mostly say that there’s no reason to buy the Note 10. If you have the money, you can consider Note 10+. But if you want a Note and don’t have money for Note 10+, you might as well buy Note 9 or S10.

When comparing against the S10 series, the question you want to ask is if you really need the S-Pen. That’s not even talking about other brands yet.

Remember, Note is supposed to be the “give me everything” line, but now there’s no SD card, no headphone jack, worse battery and a worse screen.

But surely, there is good stuff right?

Bixby button and Power button combined

Bixby button, which brought up Samsung’s AI assistant, is now removed because people kept accidentally pressing it.

But… Samsung moved the power button from the right side to the left side. So the Bixby button became the new power button and the old power button is gone. The right side is also now just flat.

You can still activate Bixby by other methods like long-pressing the power button, voice commands or onscreen buttons. The weird thing is now that long-pressing activates Bixby, you need to slide down the top menu to turn off the phone.

Triple Cameras on back: 12MP main, 2x Telephoto, 1 Ultrawide

Additional depth sensors for Note 10+.

Samsung is pushing hard on video features here, with a Live Focus Video for subject focusing, Zoom-In Mic to amplify audio on where you frame, and GoPro like stabilisation Super Steady.

So, cameras are better than previous Notes.

S-Pen and random features

Slightly upgrade to screen off memo: converts memos to text indexed. So the memo looks like your handwriting, but you can search for the memo later.

There are some random features like using the S-Pen to edit videos, AR Doodle and 3D Scanner to scan an object and turn it into a 3D render. The 3D scanner sounds cool, but it uses DepthVision camera that only the Note 10+ has, so that’s one more reason not to buy Note 10.

There’s also a Native Screen Recorder.

Don’t Say Bojio: Pre-order Offer

You can pre-order Galaxy Note10 (256GB) and Galaxy Note10+ (256GB) from 8 Aug 2019 from 3 pm (Plaza Singapura starts 6 pm), and you get the following offer:

Galaxy Note10 (256GB): Galaxy Buds in Black worth $238 and a Samsung Wireless Battery Pack (10,000 mAh) in Silver worth $98.
Galaxy Note10+ (256GB): a free upgrade to the Galaxy Note10+ (512GB¹) worth $300 and a Samsung Wireless Battery Pack (10,000 mAh) in Silver worth $98.

Feels like these offers were made to soften some of the downgraded features of the Note 10, but okay.

If you choose to collect your device at Galaxy Studio @ Plaza Singapura from 3 pm on 23 August 2019, there will be giveaways worth more than S$200,000 including 55” QLED Q60 4K Smart TV (worth $2,999), Galaxy Tab S4 LTE 256GB (worth $1298), 27” Space Monitor (worth $728), Galaxy Watch LTE (worth $548), $300 shopping vouchers and more.

Price info

In the end, it’s all about price right? The Note 10 series will be available in Singapore from 24 August 2019.