A closer look at Samsung’s premium smartphone Galaxy Note 10

Samsung unveils its much-hyped Galaxy Note 10 yesterday. The company also updated a number of gadgets this week which included a laptop, smartphone, and a sports watch. But the key announcement is off course, is the Galaxy Note 10 and Note 10+. For the first time ever, Samsung took time to release the two variants of Note. Both employ the same processor and operating system versions, but the $949 Note 10 has a 6.3-inch display, while the $1,099 Note 10+ features a bigger 6.8-inch display, which makes it even bigger than the largest iPhone, the XS Max with its 6.5-inch display screen.

The Note 10+ also has support for 5G connectivity, which will start from $1,299 and will work on Verizon’s 5G network if you happen to live in a place where 5G is being supported. There is no current iPhone that supports 5G and Sprint recently announced that it is getting a 5G phone from OnePlus. Samsung also talked about its new affiliation with Microsoft as an announcement. For instance, you can now use the Dex tech to connect their phone to a computer to get a more desktop-like experience. Windows users can now connect the Note 10 to a Windows 10 PC to make interacted tasks like making voice calls, sending text messages, or browsing media.

Both smartphones have a hole-punch selfie camera and an upgraded S-pen that is much lighter and more rounded than its predecessors. The device has an integrated vapor chamber cooling system that Samsung says is the slimmest in the world and helps the Galaxy Note 10 to stay cool when going under heavy usage. It also supports Air gesture controls that allow users to swipe screens from far away. Samsung got rid of the headphone jack in both devices and added four cameras on the rear side of the Note 10. The phone is available in Aura glow, Aura white, and Aura black.

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The camera review for Galaxy Note 10 Plus

The Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Plus is one of the top camera phones in 2019. It instantly stands with the best camera phones. It comes with four camera lenses and the Plus-exclusive depth sensor. The Samsung Note 10 is outfitted with a 12MP regular lens with a variable f/1.5 and f/2.4 aperture. To explain that very briefly: the amount of light it absorbs changes depending on a room’s lighting condition. It’s fairly sophisticated for a smartphone. What stands out more are its 12MP f/2.1 telephoto and 16MP f/2.2 ultra-wide lenses.

They offer photos with different variations. You can capture scenes in new ways up close without distortion via the 2x zoom telephoto lens, and cramming more in frame with the wide-angle lens. With the ultra-wide lens, you can see an obvious fisheye effect going on, and that means the tall buildings do exhibit a bend, but that’s a part of specific Note 10 camera’s charm and makes the cityscape seem intimidating.

With a quick switch to the ultra-wide camera, you can snap an inclusive photo and crop it later. The camera comes with a color point live focus mode. This renders the background and portions of foreground in black and white but keeps the main subject in color to make the person or object really pop up from the scene. It is not always perfect but a couple of adjustment can make it look amazing. It is a really fun way to capture such a picture and Samsung does it better than anyone else. What’s interesting is that Color Point mode (and all Live Focus modes) allow you to switch between the regular lens and the telephoto lens (the latter is always the default).

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Apple and Samsung stand out as the two manufacturers with the highest brand retention.

In its latest smartphone brand loyalty study, electronics buy-back site, BankMyCell, has claimed that Apple and Samsung stand out as the two manufacturers with the highest brand retention among US residents. According to the report, Apple had 74.6 percent iPhone trade-in brand loyalty, while Samsung’s trade-in loyalty was only a tad lower, at 63.9 percent. While 12.8 percent of iPhone users switched over to Samsung, as much as 17 percent of Samsung users picked up an iPhone, the report said.

The data further indicated that while Google only had a 51 percent trade-in loyalty, just 10.1 percent of Pixel users were trading in their devices for iPhones, meaning most of them stayed on with Android, as expected. The study, based on 64,273 unique users between Jan 15 and July 15 this year, also looked at LG, Motorola and HTC, all of whose brand loyalty fell below 41 percent at trade-in. “Only 10.8 percent of HTC respondents stayed loyal, with 32.1 percent heading to Samsung, 17.1 percent to Apple”, said the report.

Chart Courtesy: BankMyCell

Another interesting thing to have come out of the study is that Android users seem to be more loyal to their platform than iOS users. While 25.6 percent iPhone owners moved to Android devices, an overwhelming majority of Android users chose to remain with the platform. According to the report, between 82-90 percent of all Android users surveyed upgraded to another Android device, whether from the same brand or otherwise.

US is the only major market where iPhones outsell Android devices, which is why it is interesting to see so many more Android users seemingly sticking with the platform instead of jumping ship to what is arguably the more popular platform in the country.

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