As the world’s media gathered, there was a buzz of excitement in the room. Those attending the Samsung launch event were waiting with bated breath to see the long-awaited Galaxy Note 10, the next offering in the flagship series that always benefits from the best of Samsung technology and innovation. 

Gorgeous Design 

As soon as you lift the handset from the box, you are struck by just how well designed this phone is. The gorgeous angular shape that is now a familiar look of the Note series seems somehow even more appealing. There are two sizes of handset in this release, the standard Note 10 which is a nice 6.3-inch size and the larger Note 10 Plus which is a whopping 6.8-inch and looking likely to be the more popular model, but more about that later. The third offering is the 5G handset, which is just the Note Plus with the inclusion of the required 5G modem needed to access the new network. There are some new colourways on offer too, and these are really unusual but stunning shimmering gradient colours.

More From the Plus 

While essentially the handsets carry the same spec, and the same camera arrangement we did bravely say that our money is on the Plus outselling the standard handset, so why did we come to that conclusion? Well, there is just a little bit more on offer with the Note 10 Plus, not only is it a better size screen in our opinion it has a much bigger battery which is better for coping with longer days away from the charge, even though there is a bigger screen to power. The most significant difference though is the storage space. On the standard handset, there is no microSD card slot, so the onboard 256GB is all you get. Now, that is a generous size, but if you want more, the Plus comes with the SD card slot and gives you so much more scope. 

Headphone Port Missing 

One other thing that you will notice is that there is no standard 3.5mm headphone port on either model. This is because the industry as a whole is pushing towards wireless technology, but it can be a bit frustrating if you have that favourite pair of wired cans on the side at home. Press packs were shown to include some buds as this is the way most phone manufacturers are hoping to steer us but, of course, you can get over the head wireless cans if you prefer. 

Gesture the S-Pen 

Every time a new handset is released in the series the S-Pen gets an upgrade too. This is no surprise as the pen is the unique selling point for the range and sets it apart from any other handset they make. It is not really something that other companies bother with now either, so Samsung wants it to shine. This year they have added gestures, so you can actually swipe your screen using a pen gesture rather than having to touch the phone – funky!