 When I say I love my Galaxy Note 9, it's less of a weird her type of emotional attachment and more just an expression of my appreciation for the engineering that Samsung put into this thing. They went out and crammed the differentiating features of nearly every one of their competitors into a single device. Then they threw in a wirelessly charging stylus pen that you can use as a remote camera shutter. That's just showing off at that point. Nothing on the Note 9 was necessarily the absolute best on the market. I mean, someone somewhere had a better camera, a more responsive Android skin, or even a bigger or more immersive display, but everything on it was pretty close. So yeah, you were ponying up for one of the most expensive phones on the market, but in exchange, you got one of the most feature rich and versatile phones on the market, which is exactly why the Note 10 and the 10 Plus feel like such lame upgrades to me. Honey is a free web browser extension that will find you the best promo codes on most shopping websites like Amazon, eBay, and more. Get it today at joinhoney.com slash LTT. Now, obviously the specs of the new phones are better or Samsung wouldn't have bothered to refresh this device. So at the very least, the Note 10 and its bigger brother, the Note 10 Plus have that going for them, well, mostly. So depending on your region, you'll get Qualcomm or Samsung's own latest seven nanometer processor, eight or 12 gigs of RAM, curved Gorilla Glass 6, an underscreen fingerprint sensor, and a 9.5 inch screen processor. Glass 6, an underscreen fingerprint sensor, and a 91% screen to body ratio, which kind of reminds me, I kind of feel like I should be referring to these guys, not as the Note 10 and its big brother, but rather as the Note 10 Plus and its little brother. Now, when I first read that the screen size of the 10 Plus would be a shocking 6.8 inches, I couldn't help imagining myself with the equivalent of a Nexus 7 tablet mashed against my ear trying to talk on the phone. So I assumed that the Note 10 with its 6.3 inch screen would be more reasonable, but my expectations were completely subverted when the 10 Plus ended up being the more direct upgrade, having nearly the same size, bezel to bezel, as the Note 9, while also being noticeably thinner. At the same time, the non-plus has almost the same screen size as last gen, while being a way smaller device. Pretty impressive. But that isn't to say that I didn't have any handling issues with the 10 family. Now, I praised Samsung last time around for bucking the industry trend toward millimeter thin side bezels, because in cases where you're reaching across the screen one-handed or turning the phone in your hand, say to watch a movie, having a small dead zone along the sides helps avoid accidental touchscreen activations. Well, I'm pleased to say that Samsung took my positive feedback about that and completely discarded it. So sure enough, the first time I watched a movie on the Note 10, I ended up with my notification shade across it, then my player controls once I had swiped that away. The good news is that at least I never found myself accidentally mashing the Bixby button, RIP. And the screen that I was watching my movie on was freaking awesome. Now, Samsung has been and continues to be a pioneer when it comes to bright, color accurate mobile displays. And they frankly gone far beyond the point where my mere mortal eyes can find any flaw in them, whether it's late at night, reading in bed without unnecessary fatigue, or trying to make out the details in an image while my screen is under direct sunlight. But that isn't to say that I think they couldn't have done better here. There are already multiple vendors, notably OnePlus and Asus, shipping 90 Hertz and one 20 Hertz AMOLED phones respectively. By the way, this is the ROG Phone 2, and stay tuned, be subscribed, because I'm gonna be reviewing it very shortly. And that makes Samsung's attempts at gaming marketing feel a little out of touch. What even is real time gaming? Unless you're playing chess by mail, gaming is real time. And while high end specs and a solid vapor chamber cooler mean that the Note 10 and the 10 Plus put forth excellent performance in gaming benchmarks, there is so much more to a great gaming experience than just a powerful rig. And Samsung's ignorant tagline tells me point blank that if they knew anything about gaming, they'd be building in features that are meaningful to gamers rather than working on pointless, exclusive launch partnerships. Furthermore, a high refresh rate display contributes to more than just animation smoothness in games. It makes for a very real difference in the perceived responsiveness of a device. I mean, fun fact, the outstanding 90 Hertz screen on the OnePlus 7 Pro is made by Samsung. Now, it's possible that they're just waiting to ensure that they can deliver both the high fidelity color and high refresh rates in their rumored upcoming M10 generation panels, or it's also possible Samsung just doesn't care about how responsive their devices feel, as weird a position as that feels to take. Though for them, it's not exactly a new one. Samsung's current software is better than their previous Android skins by a long shot, but it's still not built for snappiness when it comes to navigation animations and style. In fairness though, I mean, I have been daily driving One UI for the better part of the last year, and my complaints are less to do with that and more to do with the random idle battery drain that still crops up very occasionally for me, and the way that new notifications don't always go to the very top of the queue, that is, if they show up at all. Check out this one on the Note 10 Plus. We've got no fresh notifications, but I do in fact have new emails, nice. With that said, when One UI isn't being buggy, basics like background app switching and the camera launch speed are fast enough for my liking. And while there's no timeline on an Android 10 version of One UI, the version that is shipping already on the Note 10 has some of the highlight features, including built-in screen recording and Samsung's DeX desktop mode, which I played around with recently and found pretty darn impressive if I had to get something done in a pinch and my fingers weren't good enough, which I guess brings us to the big upgrades to the camera. Both the Note 10 and 10 Plus have triple rear shooters, so you can... Oh, good. Both the Note 10 and 10 Plus have triple rear shooters, so you can zoom in on far away objects or take wide shots with all your friends in them and everything in between. And the 10 Plus also rocks a depth scanning time of flight sensor that should allow it to scan real world objects with greater accuracy and enhance its background blur video recording capabilities that... Wait, sorry, why am I selling that feature? It looks terrible. Honestly, it kind of feels like one of those things that Samsung just kind of throws into its phone just to say that they have it and then later pretends that it never happened, like an iris scanner. Zing. In more realistic daily use, the Note 10 Plus camera was definitely better than the Note 9, more accurately compensating for poor lighting conditions and pulling more detail, particularly thanks to its much better telephoto sensor out of far away objects. This shot in the park near dusk really stands out. That looks great. Now, as a filthy casual though, when it comes to photography, I did find that it usually didn't make a huge difference for me, but the key word is usually. It is a better camera. And if you're a mobile shutter bug who hates iPhones and pixels, I guess it's probably worth a look. I mean, check out this difference in sharpness while recording slow-mo video in a well-lit gymnasium. Damn. The S Pen has some new gimmicks including six axis motion sensing thanks to an onboard gyro and accelerometer, but the current use cases for that new hardware like swiping in the air with it, like a little bitty magic wand, weren't very meaningful to me. The good news though, is that everything that was already great about the S Pen is still here. So quick GIF creation, the ability to scribble more accurately on screenshots, et cetera, et cetera. And it feels a little more balanced in the hand. No complaints there whatsoever, which segues us perfectly into my complaints. And I do have a few. So many in fact, that by the time you watch this, I'll have already transitioned back to my Note 9 as my daily driver. Complaint number one has got to be the hole punch. I mean, it's actually pretty minor because mercifully it's at least symmetrical this time, and it's much smaller than the one on the S10 Plus. Also, if you really hate it, you can just have your top Note 9 bezel back by tweaking the advanced settings, but I'm still gonna mention it because it's a kludgy, stupid solution, and Samsung knows it. They already have pop-up camera full screen designs in their A series, and the S11 is rumored to follow suit. So if you buy a hole punch, you are basically buying a weird chunk of phone history that nobody asked for, and no one will miss when it's gone. Number two is the speakers. When I said that you can have your Note 9 bezel back a moment ago, I lied because the Note 9 bezel has a conventional speaker grill on it that not only sounds better than the Note 10 Plus, but also doesn't vibrate the whole phone at high volumes, making it feel like a cheap toy. And finally, number three is, well, it's not there, the headphone jack. What frustrates me so much about this one is not that the device is somehow unusable without a headphone jack. I mean, I already carry both a Lightning and a Type-C to headphone adapter in my headphone case, but it's that its omission takes away from what a Note is for me. My Note is the never get caught missing a feature device. It doesn't have to do anything the best because it can do anything reasonably competently, or at least that was true last generation. There's no combined facial and iris scan for enhanced security, meaning that the most secure way to unlock this phone is to go back to touching it, and Samsung's underscreen fingerprint scanner, while definitely better than when they launched it, is still not as fast as OnePlus's, then making matters worse, they did weird stuff. Like the non-plus model has a lower pixel density display and ditches the expandable storage. And okay, there's not that much more, but you know what, I'm still mad about the three and a half millimeter jack because it means that if I'm stuck without a dongle in my friend's older car, I'm stuck with their crappy music instead of my own crappy music. Honestly, it's not the kind of thing that comes up that often, but it's at those times when I'm already kind of annoyed, like, oh crap, I forgot to charge my wireless headphones. Like those are the moments when it's important to be confident that there is an easy backup plan. I appreciate what Samsung included here in return. It's not like they pulled the same move as some of their competitors, and we're like, ha ha, we ripped away the headphone jack, LOL, everything else is the same. You get a noticeably bigger battery, or well, in the plus model anyway. You get wireless power sharing, you get a better camera, you get a bigger and better screen, and all of that somehow in a thinner chassis. Also, maybe unpopular opinion here, but I actually liked the left side lock button instead of the right side lock button. But they already had the S series to be the premium phone for normies who don't care about certain niche features with the Note series for the freaks who want everything crammed in and are willing to pay extra for that. So now then, we're left with like the S series and the S series with a pen. I don't get it. By the way, if you don't like online ads, maybe go check out our video about how to block them. However, if you do like them, check out this message from our sponsor. dbrand is your source for awesome textured vinyl skins and they're available for laptops, phones, tablets, consoles, controllers, and more. Their skins are made from high quality 3M vinyl that is true texture. Their patented adhesive is guaranteed to leave no residue on your device if you wanna change your skin in the future. 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