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She said she really likes the feature, even though I noticed that the eye patch came away from Adam's face as he turned. With its four camera sensors, the Galaxy Note 10 Plus is definitely an upgrade over the Galaxy Note 9's two cameras. The back of the Note 10 Plus houses a wide-angle camera and telephoto lens like its predecessor, but adds an ultrawide shooter to fit in more of the frame and a depth sensor to achieve more convincing bokeh effects when shooting portraits. Check out the photo gallery below and side-by-side comparisons versus top cameras phones below that to see how the Note 10 Plus' cameras stack up.
I like the Big Circle and Color Point effects especially, though the bokeh effect looked a bit messy. Big Circle looks good at first glance but blurred out Adam Ismail's hair. Color Point puts the subject in color and the background in black and white, which I could see myself using more often. However, the Note 10 Plus' Night mode did impress.
I appreciated how easy it was to drag the slider tool and trim clips with the pen, and you can choose from multiple effects to spruce up your footage. Most of the Pixel's default apps can be found on the Play Store. CNET may get a commission from these offers. Rootless Launcher. But it's the brightness that makes all the difference. At this point, it's difficult to imagine a scenario in which Air Actions would be especially beneficial, save for the classic tripod scenario. The pen is one piece of plastic, instead of two like the Note 9, and supports more advanced Air Actions that allow users to control the phablet remotely with the pen.
As you can see from this photo taken in near darkness, the Night mode on the Galaxy Note 10 Plus performs quite well. With Night mode turned on, the gloves on the right become a lot more visible, as does the multi-tool in the foreground and the cube on the left. Google's phone has an edge, as it delivered a brighter shot with slightly more vivid colors. In this low-light test on a city street, the Galaxy Note 10 Plus snapped a remarkably bright photo with Night mode engaged; you can make out the buildings and cars clearly.
However, some areas of the shot look a little more blown out than in the Pixel 3 XL's shot, especially the lights on the left side.
And the tan in the Cadillac's roof on the right looks a little more crisp on the Pixel 3 XL. This round is really no contest. The light above me nearly blows out the scene. My teenage daughter called the photo "garbage. The Pixel 3's bokeh effect is almost too aggressive but overall it's the superior shot.
Once again the Galaxy Note 10 Plus renders a warm-looking photo in this shot of flowers, and the exposure looks pleasant. Turning our attention to cupcakes, the Galaxy Note 10 Plus delivers more details in the shot from front to back. Check out the chocolate one in the background. However, the Huawei P30 Pro gets the color of the pink frosting right on the cupcake in the foreground, and the white-and-yellow flower looks better on the Huawei pic. I like both shots for different reasons.
Check out the detail in the columns and in the lion statue. Samsung says the Note 10 Plus now offers pro-grade video. For example, the phone offers Live Focus video effects, so you can blur out the background or change the background to black and white while the subject is in color. This worked well in my testing; my colleague Rami jumped off some stairs with the Live Focus on and the background of plants and passersby was indeed blurred.
The Note 10 Plus did a remarkable job blurring out plants and other people but at times Kate looked a little blurry, too. Still, the whole clip looks pretty compelling and kind of reminds me of a soap opera. I was also impressed with the improved Super Steady mode in the camera. Once you press the little wavy hand icon towards the top of the screen and start recording, the camera can minimize any camera shake. As you can see from the results, the Note 10 Plus' footage looks much smoother, while the iPhone XS Max's video looks a bit shaky.
There's also a Zoom-In Mic feature that amplifies the audio in the frame.
This feature didn't impress me that much. That's because as I zoomed in on two subject, their words got louder but so did the ambient noise of cars passing by. Samsung backs this all up with an improved video-editing app that's optimized for the S Pen. I appreciated how easy it was to drag the slider tool and trim clips with the pen, and you can choose from multiple effects to spruce up your footage.
As for the front MP camera, I didn't love the selfie the Note 10 Plus took of me outside on an overcast day. My skin looks a little washed out, as does the rest of the photo. I do like there's a Night mode for the front camera now, which can come in handy at restaurants, bars, concerts and more. And you get GB of storage standard with the option of upgrading to a GB model.
In everyday use, the Note 10 Plus is a swift performer. It delivered console-like detail without any stuttering even at the highest setting, and the phone remained relatively cool. On Geekbench 4, which measures overall performance, the Galaxy Note 10 Plus turned in a very good score of 11,, which is comparable to the OnePlus 7 Pro 11, but lower than the iPhone XS Max 11, Samsung's phone fell behind the iPhone once more on our video editing test, for which we transcode a 4K video to p in the Adobe Rush app.
After applying a filter and transition effect and hitting go, the Note 10 Plus took 1 minute and 34 seconds to complete the task. When it comes to gaming performance, the Note 10 Plus has an AI-based Game Booster mode for optimizing performance and power consumption based on the game. And you'll even be able to stream games from your PC to this phone using Samsung's Play GalaxyLink, a P2P streaming service that the company says will be available at launch. The Galaxy Note 9's battery was the biggest yet in a Galaxy phone at 4, mAh, but the Note 10 Plus ups the ante with a 4, mAh battery, which is even bigger than the 4, mAh pack in the Galaxy S10 Plus.
That number proved an outlier, as subsequent tests produced results ranging from 10 hours, 15 minutes to more than In the end, across four tests, the Note 10 lasted 10 hours, 47 minutes across four tests, beating the average for a smartphone by more than half-an-hour. By comparison, the Galaxy Note 9 had a slightly longer runtime 11 hours and 16 minutes but the S10 Plus lasted an epic The regular Galaxy Note 10 lasted an average of 9 hours and 25 minutes, so those who want more endurance should opt for the Note 10 Plus. Samsung does sell another phone with a screen size that's nearly identical in the Galaxy S10 5G.
That handset packs a 6. On our battery test, the S10 5G lasted a good-but-not-great You may not need the latter, though. As you'd expect from a Samsung phone, the Galaxy Note 10 Plus supports wireless charging, but this time around it's 15 watts, while the Galaxy S10 supported up to 10 watts. However, the results are disappointing based on our testing. You can also use reverse wireless charging on the Note 10 Plus, which means you can charge the Galaxy Buds or other phones using the back of Samsung's handset.
Once connected, you'll be able to drag-and-drop files back and forth and use your laptop's mouse and keyboard to navigate the phone. And with the Link to Windows app, you'll be able to receive notifications and send and receive messages on the desktop. The DeX app found the phone pretty quickly, popping up a desktop atop macOS. And I could easily access photos, make calls and even transfer files from the phone to my Mac. However, I got an error message when I tried to drag and drop files from the computer to the phone.
It seems like Samsung still needs to work out some kinks with DeX, at least with the Mac. One feature that's exclusive to the Galaxy Note 10 Plus and not available for the Note 10 is Quick Measure, which instantly can give you the dimensions of pretty much any object. It's like an augmented reality tape measure that one-ups the Measure app in iOS, because you get the length, width and depth with a single scan. With the iPhone you have to draw virtual lines on the object before you get a measurement. For example, I pointed the Note 10 Plus at a can and it returned a height of 4.
I verified those numbers using a tape measure and the Note 10 Plus was accurate. The Galaxy Note 10 Plus does something unique, thanks to its depth sensor on the back. You can scan objects in 3D with relative ease. You just walk around the object and the phone creates a 3D model. Samsung demonstrated this feature during its launch event with a stuffed bear, as you can see in the below tweet.
The Galaxy Note 10 doubles as a 3D scanner. Pretty impressive in action. SamsungEvent samsunggalaxynote10 galaxynote10 pic.
After the phone is done creating the 3D model, you can embed it into videos and the object can become animated and even mimic dance moves that are on screen. It's a fun demo but I'm not sure how people will use this yet. The Galaxy Note 10 Plus looks like the big-screen phone to beat.
Even though it's the most saturated, that's kind of what you want from a food photo. The rest are bland, with the Pixel 3's the least tasty looking. Skin tones skew a little greener, but I like how the camera and software makes me look just a bit more peppy. The iPhone XS takes the most realistic selfie pores and all and the others aren't too shabby. The only one that looks terrible in my opinion is the Pixel 3 XL.
It's so dark and gloomy. All of them are straight out of the cameras and haven't been edited at all. Feel free to click on them to enlarge them to their original size. If you're wondering how the Note 10 cameras compare to other phones in conditions not covered here, I'm open to DMs on Twitter raywongy and Instagram sourlemons.
I've had a lot of great discussions on smartphone photography and I'd love to continue to do so. While the regular cameras may not be dramatically different than the shooters on the Galaxy S10 phones, Samsung has dialed things up for video recording. My favorite new video recording feature is Live Focus Video. It's basically portrait mode for videos with backgrounds replaced with effects such as blur, big circle, color point, and glitch. The video above shows the "big circle" Live Focus Video effect in action and the video below demonstrates the "glitch" effect.
As you can see in the video above and below, the results are OK. In the right conditions, especially without people or things moving in the background, Live Focus Video effects can look sort of cool, even if the separation between you and the background isn't perfect. Personally, I think think the glitch filter looks the best, mainly because the lo-fi aesthetic and graininess cover up a lot of the visible imperfections around the edges. Another new improvement for video recording is Super Steady. When the setting is turned on, the camera stabilizes your video so it's less shaky — it works to a certain degree, but don't expect miracles.