Galaxy Note 10 and Galaxy Note 10+ test test

Samsung hit hard this summer by unveiling the Galaxy Note 10 and Galaxy Note 10+, two phablets with a lot of appeal. After meeting them in Amsterdam, the manufacturer entrusted them to me for a week and a half so that I could see what they had in store. You also had the right to a first grip shortly before the IFA.

Yes, and the time has come to go a little further… and present their test to you.

I prefer to warn you right away, this test may be a bit long. I will try to be as comprehensive as possible.

After reviewing the design and ergonomics of the Galaxy Note 10, we will focus on their screen, their processor and their modem. We will also have to mention their photo module, but also their platform. And we will also see that there are a lot of new things compared to the previous generation.

Design & Ergonomics

The Galaxy Note 10 are very beautiful objects, it is undeniable. We find the finishes of the Galaxy S10, but Samsung did not just copy/paste their design.

In reality, we still find the angular side of the range with a case whose lines have been cut with a billhook.

No unpleasant surprises in terms of finishes. Samsung has once again opted for very beautiful materials and the manufacturer has even taken the greatest care of the back plate with a rather crazy glossy finish on the gray model.

Crazy, because the hue will change depending on the ambient light and your environment, with nuances tending towards red, orange, blue or green and an iridescent appearance by unpleasant.

If this finish is very convincing, it is unfortunately not without flaws. In this color, the Galaxy Note 10 and Galaxy Note 10+ will indeed have the annoying tendency to collect fingerprints. It will always be possible to solve the problem by slipping the phone into a protective case, but we will suddenly lose the iridescent appearance.

And if you thought you were safe with the black model, then unfortunately you will have to revise your judgment. It will be enough to play with it for a few minutes to see a constellation of fingerprints appear on the back.

So I'm not going to spend hours talking about fingerprints, but I still find it crazy that in 2019 we haven't yet found a technique to make the cases of our smartphones resistant to all these traces . For the moment, the only solution seems to be to opt for frosted glass like on the Pixel 3 or the recent Motorola One Zoom.

As a result, we end up with super beautiful devices that we have to hide with shells and cases. Which is actually quite ridiculous.

Nothing to say about the screen. Once again, Samsung has opted for a borderless panel, while going much further than on the Galaxy S10. You really have to put the phones side by side to see the difference, but the bands surrounding the panel of the brand's new phablets are thinner than those of its latest flagships. It's very little, it's true, but it's amazing to see that Samsung has still managed to push its limits.

The punch will probably not be unanimous. By centering it, Samsung has effectively made it more visible. Now, as far as I'm concerned, he didn't really bother me.

Well, that's not entirely true. In fact, the problem is that the finger tends to pass over the hole when trying to access the notification center.

At first, the Galaxy Note 10 always asked me to clean the front camera when I wanted to take a selfie.

So I had to force myself to perform the same gesture from the area to the left or right of the punch.

Now, after a while, you get used to it.

So ergonomics is something else. Samsung has indeed changed its habits a bit. If the volume controls are always placed in the same place, this is not the case for the power button.

The latter indeed switches to the left edge, instead of the old button dedicated to Bixby and again it took me a little time to get used to it. And the same will no doubt go for those who share their daily life with a Galaxy S10 or a Galaxy Note 9.

The fingerprint reader is placed under the screen and it works well as long as you aim at the right place. Again, it's a shot to take, but I still found it quite long on the trigger. To see, however, if it comes from the part itself or from a lack of software optimization.

The connection is entirely based on the USB Type-C connector. Samsung has indeed chosen to get rid of the headphone jack. Again, this will probably not please everyone, but it is difficult to be surprised given the current trend. The jack is indeed well on its way to disappearing completely. Is this a good thing? Not everyone will necessarily have the same opinion. In my case, it has been several years since I switched to wireless, but this is not the case for everyone.

The stylus is identical to the previous model. On the other hand, it is enriched with several functions that we will detail in the part devoted to the overlay.

Finally, it is impossible not to mention the photo module. A module far from unanimous. Many criticize Samsung for being a little too inspired by what some competitors offer. Especially Huawei. So it's true that there is a resemblance, but that does not prevent the Galaxy Note 10 from having their own identity.

There is another point of contention to raise. Only the Galaxy Note 10+ is equipped with a micro SD slot. The normal model does indeed ignore it and that, on the other hand, is really regrettable. Even more for those who plan to use the phone as a portable video studio.

Screen, Processor & Autonomy

The screen is one of the many differences between the Galaxy Note 10 and the Galaxy Note 10+. If the two devices have a Dynamic AMOLED panel, the latter is limited to a diagonal of 6.3 inches on the first model and 6.8 inches on the second.

This is not the only point that diverges. The two slabs do not offer the same definition either. The Galaxy Note 10 is limited to FHD+ and the Galaxy Note 10+ goes up to QHD+.

And let me reassure you right away, in fact, it's not really disturbing. On a diagonal of 6.3 inches, Full HD is more than enough and the only interest in having a QHD panel, ultimately, relates to virtual reality. A higher definition makes it possible to reduce the frame effect present on the images displayed.

By now, you probably know this, but none of the Galaxy Note 10s are compatible with the Gear VR.

And if you want the bottom of my thought, you will in any case have an interest in limiting yourself to FHD on the Galaxy Note 10+ to gain autonomy. But that, we will talk about later.

These two tiles are in any case of very good quality. The images displayed are well contrasted, with a beautiful colorimetry. It will also be possible to change the screen mode and switch, as desired, to a natural mode or a vivid mode.

No unpleasant surprises in direct sunlight. The screen remains readable in all circumstances. The only visible defect ultimately comes from the glass protecting the screen. It is indeed quite sensitive to reflections. Even more with its curved side.

Now, despite this slight defect, the Galaxy Note 10 are particularly suitable for multimedia use and you just have to start playing a film or a series on it to realize it. Watching an episode of your favorite series is a real treat on a screen of this quality, and even more so thanks to its borderless character.

So afterwards, for the punch, it inevitably attracts the eye more than on the Galaxy S10. And it makes sense since it is placed in the middle of the slab.

Now, is that really disturbing? I do not think so. As far as I'm concerned, this hole didn't annoy me in the least. And anyway, when you're used to watching videos on an iPhone screen, it's not a small hole that's going to bother you.

Samsung didn't skimp on power. The Galaxy Note 10 are indeed powered by an Exynos 9825 engraved in 7 nm. The architecture does not change compared to the 9820. There are therefore eight cores divided into three clusters: two M4 cores, two A75 cores and four A55 cores. All with a maximum frequency of 2.7 GHz for the fastest hearts.

The rest depends on the chosen model. In my case, Samsung sent me a Galaxy Note 10 equipped with 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage and a Galaxy Note 10+ equipped with 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage.

Of course, I ran AnTuTu on both phones, and they got roughly the same score, namely 349,432 points for the Note 10 and 348,150 points for the Note 10+.

And of course, they don't row a bit. In fact, it's quite the opposite, they are extremely fast and they will overcome all the applications and all the games available on the Play Store.

So, it's true, we can wonder if we really need 12 GB of RAM on a phone. Now, the advantage here is that we will have enough to face the future with serenity.

And if you're the type to keep your phone for three, four, or even five years, then that's pretty good.

One thing is certain in any case, if you are a mobile gamer at heart, then you will be able to have a lot of fun. The Note 10s will be able to spin the biggest headlines without batting an eyelid and with all the details maxed out.

But the time has come to address a slightly more delicate question, namely… autonomy.

The Galaxy S10 and the Galaxy S10+ did not particularly shine in this field and you should be warned right away, the same goes for the Note 10.

If they manage to last the day with a relatively reasonable mixed use – and therefore without too many videos or too many games – they will have a hard time making it to the day and a half. Even more so if you have the annoying tendency to always have your nose glued to your smartphone.

So of course, it's all a question of usage and the way I use my smartphone is probably not the same as yours.

So I also ran PC Mark on both phones to get a slightly more general score, and to allow you to compare the performance of the Galaxy Note 10 with that of your own smartphone.

In both, we were on a basic configuration. The terminals were installed from scratch, so I didn't bring up a backup. And they were both equipped with a SIM and connected to 4G.

And there, frankly, I got some very weird results. In my first test, the Galaxy Note 10 managed to last more than 10 hours, compared to only 9:25 for the Note 10+. There, I told myself that the problem came from the fact that only the second was equipped with an active SIM.

I redid the test by putting my Sosh SIM in the Note 10. The terminal reached 10:34, still with the same test.

I can assure you that I fell out of my chair when I saw this result. To me, it made no sense. So I did what I never do, I copied all the Note 10+ apps to the Note 10 via Smart Switch. I wanted to know if the problem came from the installed applications.

So I ran the test again overnight and the Galaxy Note 10 lasted 9 hours, compared to 10 hours for the plus version.

Good point, however, the fast charge is really very fast and it will be enough to leave the phone plugged in for an hour to regain the full capacity of the battery. And the craziest thing is that Samsung does not even provide a 45W charger in the box, but a 25W charger.

And of course the same goes for wireless charging. While it won't go as fast as wired charging, it will still charge phones in an hour and a half.

The regulars know the song. Now that we've gotten the technical part right, all we have to do is look at the Galaxy Note 10 modem. A modem tested with Nperf and a Sosh SIM, from the Paris region, at different times of the day .

The results obtained are therefore averages and I prefer to insist on this point.

The Galaxy Note 10, to start, reached 108 mbps download and 9 mbps upload with a latency of 28 ms. On the score side, we are at 94% in video and 84% in web, with a total score of 76,000 points.

The Galaxy Note 10+, for its part, reached 150 mbps in reception and 28 ms in transmission with a latency of 27 ms. We are at 87% on the web and 95% on video, with a total score of 115,000 points.

Photo, Video & Sound

The Galaxy Note 10 and the Galaxy Note 10+ are technically very close to each other. Their dorsal photo module therefore includes three sensors with a 16 mpx sensor accompanied by an ultra wide angle offering a field of vision of 123° and an aperture of f/2.2, a 12 mpx sensor with a stabilized wide angle offering a field of vision of 77° and a variable aperture between f/1.5 and f/2.4 and a sensor of 12 million pixels accompanied by a stabilized telephoto lens offering a field of vision of 45° and with an aperture of f/2.1.

The Galaxy Note 10+ also includes a ToF sensor that will focus mainly on depth of field and 3D-related functions.

On paper, we find the flexibility of the Galaxy S10. Samsung is not the first to have opted for an architecture of this type since many manufacturers have done the same, starting with the essential Huawei.

Theory is good, but practice is better.

In the middle of the day, it's a full house. The Galaxy Note 10 and Galaxy Note 10+ will be able to generate images with very impressive dynamics, especially in highlights where they are particularly effective. The sharpness, or if you prefer the feeling of sharpness, is of course present and we therefore end up with photos displaying a very high level of detail.

Nothing special to say about the colorimetry. Admittedly, the AI ​​tends to oversaturate the colors a bit, but the result is quite nice.

The only downside comes from the development. I don't know why, but the Note 10 is a little less comfortable in this area than its big brother.

I initially thought the issue was the lack of a ToF sensor on the base model, but a Samsung product manager confirmed to me that the Note 10+'s fourth sensor doesn't work. was not used in traditional photo modes.

Due to the small size of their sensor, smartphones are often less comfortable when the ambient light begins to drop. They tend to compensate for the absence of light by increasing the ISO, which results in the appearance of artifacts.

The Galaxy Note 10 are no exception to the rule, but they still do quite well as long as you stay on the wide angle. The on-board optics are indeed capable of increasing its aperture and switching it to f/1.5 when there is a lack of light, which avoids going too high in the ISO.

We can therefore obtain photos of decent quality, with a good level of sharpness. The white balance falls rather right for its part.

On the other hand, as soon as you change the focal length, the results are much less flattering and you very quickly end up with noisy photos that tend towards yellow.

The night mode is not ineffective, but it still leaves a lot to be desired and it is therefore much less efficient than that of the Pixel 3. And this even though the latter will soon blow out their first candle.

Switching from one focal length to another is completely seamless. All you have to do is press the buttons above the shutter button. Be careful though, because the optical zoom does not exceed 2X and if you zoom in more, then you will switch to digital zoom.

There will of course be a loss of quality.

No unpleasant surprises regarding the colorimetry. It remains the same, regardless of the focal length used.

Of course, we will lose a little dive on the telephoto lens, but the wide angle and the ultra wide angle are generally equal in this field. We can only blame the ultra wide angle for distorting the angles a little, but it is difficult to be surprised given the focal length used.

In video, we find everything that applies to photography. The dynamics are there, as is the sharpness. As a bonus, we have a very pleasant colorimetry and we can always change focal length. Which is undeniably a good thing. This system keeps the flexibility of the photo mode for the video and therefore offers a little more flexibility in terms of compositions.

But what's really amazing is the stabilization. If it is not perfect, it remains very effective and it will be quite possible to film freehand without having to suffer too much tremor. Afterwards, of course, the gimbal is an essential step if you intend to obtain a cinematic result or if you move around your subject.

Normally, I also present the photo application, but this will not be the case here. I intend to detail a lot of functions specific to Note 10 in the last part of this test and I therefore prefer to leave this part aside to avoid ending up with a one-hour video.

What I can tell you, however, is that I was quite blown away by the number of modes available. There really is something for everyone. Same thing for the portrait effects which are also very numerous and which will ultimately give you a lot of flexibility. Besides, there is also a portrait video mode, if you want to know everything.

On the other hand, the ToF sensor of the Galaxy Note 10+ does not seem essential to me. There is indeed a Bixby application that uses this component and allows you to model an object by turning around, but the results are really disappointing. And even frankly unusable.

We'll finish with the sound. Speaker level, there are two: the first is located between the top of the slab and the upper edge of the phone and the second is on the lower edge.

The sound is of course of good quality, but we find the same orientation problem as on the Galaxy S10. Personally, I would have preferred to have the two speakers on the front. After that, I think it's mostly an engineering problem. The Galaxy Note 10 have a large cooling chamber and a large battery, it was necessary to find an optimal layout.

Nothing special to say about the headphone jack, and for good reason since it does not exist. Everything will therefore happen via Bluetooth.

Functions & Platform

Now is the time to turn away from all the hardware to focus on the onboard software of the Galaxy Note 10 and Galaxy Note 10+.

And here, I want to warn you from the outset, this part will not be fully exhaustive. Samsung offers a lot of notable new features, especially in terms of photo and video editing, so I made the arbitrary and not very fair choice to focus on certain very specific functions.

And we start with the stylus. The S-Pen of course answers the call and if it looks exactly like that of the Galaxy Note 9, it is enriched with several very practical functions, starting with motion recognition.

Not everyone will probably need it, but it is indeed possible to control the Galaxy Note 10 remotely by drawing shapes in the air with the stylus. Several use cases have been implemented, especially for photography. It will indeed be possible to zoom in, zoom out or even change mode with simple gestures.

Of course, said like that, it sounds a bit gimmicky, but you should know that these air gestures work with a lot of applications, and in particular with PowerPoint. This may be of interest to trainers, for example.

This feature has been around for a while, but Galaxy Note 10s can also be used as notebooks by pulling out the stylus and starting to write on the screen, even when the screen is asleep. It is therefore not necessary to manually open the application dedicated to the notes to do so and it is practical.

The notes application, since we are talking about it, is also enriched with a new very practical function, a function allowing you to directly export a note in Word format.

We still find the contextual menu which, with a simple press, will allow us to access the creation of a new note, the display of existing notes or all the capture tools.

As a bonus, there is a new application called AR Doodle which allows you to draw virtual objects on the photo application, to create videos in augmented reality. It's pretty fun and it works really well.

The other new feature that I thought was important to come back to is Samsung DeX.

Introduced with the Galaxy S8, this function allowed the base to transform the brand's phones into a thin client by connecting them to a screen and a keyboard/mouse set.

Subsequently, the brand developed the tool to make it more practical to use.

And precisely, the Galaxy Note 10 bring a big novelty concerning it.

DeX Mode is no longer limited to screens. It is indeed possible to activate it when connecting a Galaxy Note 10 to a PC running Windows or Mac OS. Be careful though, because this can only work if the user installs a client on his machine.

Once it's done, there's nothing special to configure and all you have to do is connect the phone to your Mac to activate DeX. The latter will then appear in the form of a flying window giving access to the system and all the installed applications.

Technically, it's rather fun, but everything is not perfect and the big flaw of this function, ultimately, is that it is incompatible with Android File Transfer. It will therefore be impossible to use both tools at the same time.

Afterwards, in terms of functions, you can do a lot of things, such as launching smartphone applications from the Mac, for example, or even browsing your gallery and files.

The interface, for its part, is rather simple and you can find what you are looking for very quickly.

Then there is the question of using it. While it is obviously very pleasant to be able to explore the content of your phone and its applications from your Mac, DeX is still very far from equaling the interactions between a Mac and an iPhone, for example.

Not to mention that having to go through an application is not necessarily very comfortable. Even less when the latter has the annoying tendency to bug, which has been the case several times on my MacBook Pro.

So I can't show it to you because I no longer have a Windows PC at home, but the Galaxy Note 10 also offers a tool that allows you to connect the phone to Windows 10, a tool that can be activated by the through the quick shortcuts present in the notification center. The idea is of course to offer a solution equivalent to that implemented on the iPhone and Macs.

On the other hand, be careful, because you will have to go through a Microsoft account for it to work. If you preferred to create a local account on your Windows 10, then you will not be able to take advantage of this function.

In Conclusion

This test is now coming to an end. I'm definitely forgetting a lot of things. Unfortunately, choices had to be made. Samsung couldn't lend me the phones for very long, so I didn't have enough time to test the Galaxy Note 10s thoroughly.

I hope you enjoy this video.

But before I leave you, I think it's important to also confront these two phones. When I took the Galaxy Note 10+ out of its box, it felt downright huge. Too much to be able to impose itself durably in my daily life.

However, over the days, his size has become less and less shocking to me. Which leads me to say that its large diagonal is not at all a handicap, quite the contrary.

If you hesitate between the two, I think it is essential to start by drawing up all the uses you expect of it. If you're not into multimedia or games, then the Galaxy Note 10 will probably suffice. On the other hand, if you intend to chain videos on YouTube and series on Netflix, then the Note 10+ seems much more suitable to me.

And it's the same thing if you plan to use it as a notebook or sketchbook. The 6.3 inches diagonal of the Note 10 may indeed limit you very quickly in terms of work surface.