Samsung Galaxy Note 10 & Note 10 Plus Launched: Specs, Pricing, & Difference

Samsung, the tech giant has released the most awaited smartphone of the year. Not 1, but 2 of them. The Galaxy Note 10 & the Galaxy Note 10+. Yes, there are 2 notes this year. We have seen Samsung do this in the past with their flagship series and Note series follows the trend.

I can conclude the article right now by saying “The Phones are impressive, but aren’t”. That is the 1st thing that comes to my mind when I think of the Note 10 and Note 10 Plus.

While the phones are impressive because they carry the latest and the greatest, at the same time they aren’t because of some deductions which we really didn’t expect from Samsung. Let’s start off with the specs:

Galaxy Note 10:

This phone is the smaller brother to the Note 10 Plus. There are some major differences between the two which I’ll come to later. Let’s start with the display. It is a 6.3-inch Dynamic AMOLED Infinity-O display with a resolution of 2,280 x 1,080 and 401-PPI. It also supports HDR 10+ so you can enjoy all the HDR content on YouTube and Netflix. 8GB of RAM and 256GB of Storage. There’s also a 12GB RAM variant which will only be available in Korea. The phone has UFS 3.0 storage for faster operations.

The global variant will come with the Samsung Exynos 9825 processor, and the US variant will come with a Snapdragon 855 processor (not the 855+ as we expected). There is a triple camera setup having a 16MP Ultra-wide sensor, 12MP Wide-angle sensor, and a 12MP telephoto sensor of which the wide-angle and the telephoto sensor support OIS. There’s a 10MP front camera with an 80-degree field of view.

The battery capacity is 3,500mAh which supports 25-watt fast charging and 12-watt wireless charging. There is an S-Pen included as it is a Note device and also the device is IP68 certified which means it is splash-proof. The phone runs on Samsung’s latest OneUI based on Android 9 Pie. An under-display fingerprint scanner and facial recognition are also present.

Galaxy Note 10 Plus:

Well, the big brother! The 10 Plus has its own advantages which I’ll explain later. To start, it has a slightly bigger display than Note 10. It has a 6.8-inch Dynamic AMOLED Infinity-O display with a resolution of 3,040 x 1,440 and 498-PPI. Has the same processor configuration as Note 10 which is, the global variant will come with the Samsung Exynos 9825 processor, and the US variant will come with a Snapdragon 855 processor. It comes with 12GB of RAM, 256/512GB of storage, has a Micro-SD card slot.

It has the same triple camera setup with a catch. A 16MP Ultra-wide sensor, 12MP Wide-angle sensor, and a 12MP telephoto sensor and also a Depth Vision camera with ƒ/1.4 aperture and a 72-degree field-of-view for capturing extra depth information. There’s a 10MP front camera with an 80-degree field of view.

There’s a bigger battery here which comes with a capacity of 4,300mAh which supports 45-watt fast charging, and 15-watt wireless charging. A thing to note here that while a fast charger is included in the box, you’ll have to buy the 45-watt fast charger separately if you want your phone to charge even more fastly than it already does. This one too is IP68 certified, has an S-Pen, fingerprint scanner, and facial recognition.

The Difference between the Notes.

While both of them have a lot in common, there are certain differences which might change your opinion about which one of them to buy. Let’s start with the overall build. Note 10 is a tad bit smaller than the 10 Plus. Then the display on Note 10 is 6.3-inch with 1080p resolution, on the 10 Plus, it is 6.8-inch with 1440p resolution. On the Note 10 Plus, we have a time-of-flight sensor while on Note 10 it is not present. Note 10 Plus has up to 512GB of storage while the Note 10 tops up at 256GB. There is a bigger battery on Note 10 Plus which is 4,300mAh and a smaller one on Note 10 which is 3,500mAh. There is a Micro-SD card slot on Note 10 Plus, which is not present on Note 10. The Note 10 Plus has 12GB of RAM, while the Note 10 doesn’t (it has a 12GB variant, but only in Korea). The Note 10 maxes out at 25W fast charging, while the Note 10 Plus supports ultra-fast charging up to 45W. Same goes for Wireless Charging, which is, 12W for Note 10, and 15W for Note 10 Plus. And of course, the price. Note 10 is cheaper than the Note 10 Plus.

The Not Impressive Part.

These deductions are minor, but the effect of those deductions is major. First of all, a power button. You might be wondering how. But yes, both the Notes don’t have a power button and the right side of the phone is completely blank, i.e. there are no buttons on the right. There’s a single button on the left which upon pressing locks the screen and wakes it up. If you hold it, instead of the power options, Samsung’s own virtual assistant ‘Bixby’ will show up. To turn off the phone, you will have to go to the notification shade. Secondly, the headphone jack. The note lineup is supposed to have everything. But Samsung follows the trend and has removed the headphone jack from this year’s lineup. Thirdly, it is odd while the bigger the model has the Micro-SD card slot, the smaller one doesn’t.

Pricing and Availability

The Note 10 series is available in Aura Glow, Aura White, Aura Black, and Aura Blue. The Note 10 starts from $949 (Rs.67,300) and the Note 10 Plus starts from $1,099 (Rs.77,900).

While the Note 10 Plus is obviously better than the Note 10, it also offers a better value at the price at which it is offered. The ones who want the cheaper one, and can accept the things at which the Note 10 lacks, even the Note 10 is a pretty great device.