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Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ Review

There's a lot going on with the Galaxy Note 10+ ($1,099.99 and up), Samsung's biggest phone.

There always is; the Note line is the epitome of Samsung's technology.

It's where the company piles all of its features in, with price and size being no object.

And I admire it, but I find it hard to love.

A lot of this comes down to how many phones Samsung's been slinging out this year with similar features, as well as my own growing lack of patience with $1,000+ handsets.

Ultimately, the Galaxy S10+ ($799.99 and up) and the smaller Galaxy Note 10 ($949.99) are slightly more affordable ways to get most of what the Note 10+ offers, for less.

The Handbuster

The Note 10+ is 6.39 by 3.04 by 0.31 inches (HWD) and 6.91 ounces.

It's slightly bigger than the Note 9 (6.37 by 3.01 by 0.35 inches, 7.09 ounces) and noticeably bigger than the S10+ (6.20 by 2.92 by 0.31 inches, 6.17 ounces).

It comes in four "aura" colors, pictured below: black, blue, white, and "glow," which is a shimmery rainbow effect.

All of the colors attract fingerprints like crazymy "glow" review unit looks utterly greasy and flat-out gross after less than a week.

There's going to be a theme in this review that you should buy a case, and this is one reason.

The Note 10+ has a sharply curved 6.8-inch, 19:9 screen, so the phone almost comes to a point on the sidesthe edges are sharper than the Note 9.

Samsung also did away with the separate power and Bixby buttons, for a combined power/Bixby key on the left side.

Don't worry; you can set it to be primarily a power key, and then you aren't accidentally launching Bixby all the time.

The phone has dual speakers, including a big beefy one on the bottom face, and a nearly invisible one at the very top edge.

Also on the bottom, the new S Pen stylus pops out with a touch.

Still plastic, the Wacom-powered S Pen is now "unibody," meaning it doesn't have the gold top third the Note 9's pen has.

It feels pretty much the same in the hand, though.

And yes, the phone doesn't have a headphone jack.

That's going to anger a lot of people, especially those who were sucked in by Samsung spending years mocking Apple for doing away with the 3.5mm jack.

Samsung includes a pair of USB-C, AKG-branded earbuds, but no dongle; however, the phone works with generic USB-C-to-3.5mm headphone dongles.

I've been using a OnePlus 7 Pro for a while, which is about the same size as the Note 10+, yet the Note 10+ feels more unwieldy.

After a while, I realized why: When I'm reviewing Note phones, I'm very focused on the S Pen, as it's the feature that separates a Note from the crowd.

And if you're trying to use the S Pen, you need to hold the phone securely with your other hand.

That can be difficult with a 3.04-inch-wide phone.

The phone's size feels unwieldy when using the camera, too.

I feel that way about the OnePlus 7 Pro as well, for what it's worth, but gripping the phone between my thumb and forefinger, horizontally, while tapping on the camera UI has always been an issue with Notes, and it's an issue here too.

Now, I have pretty small hands, and I was largely testing the phone with women and teenagers.

I know one of our analysts at Daxdi who has giant paws and swears by phones as wide as possible.

But I have to tell you, this thing is at the edge of what a lot of people's hands will be able to handle.

The device is waterproof, at least, although it's far from rugged.

As with any phone this expensive, I advise getting a case.

Left to right: Galaxy Note 10+, Galaxy Note 10

A Beautiful View

The screen is a big reason to come to this big phone.

As mentioned, it's a 6.8-inch, 19:9 bezel-less panel with a front-facing camera at top center.

At 3,040 by 1,440 pixels and 498 pixels per inch, it's actually lower density than older phones like the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Note 8, but not to any degree that you can notice.

In general, the Note 10+ screen behaves a lot like the S10+ screen in terms of brightness, color accuracy, and overall performance.

This is good news, as the S10+ has an excellent screen.

I tested the phone's color accuracy with a Klein K80 colorimeter attached to Portrait Displays' CalMAN software, and found that its two color profiles are very close to the Galaxy S10's and to the Note 9's Adaptive and Basic modes.

They're all among the best displays out there, and they don't have the over-saturated look we used to see on old Samsung OLEDs.

Ray Soneira at DisplayMate Labs goes into more detail with even more advanced lab equipment.

Specifically, he says that blue light has been reduced by 37 percent from the Note 9, while the overall color accuracy hasn't changed.

There's also a peak brightness mode, used in bright natural light, which goes to 793 nits, 12 percent better than the Galaxy Note 9 and about the same level as the Galaxy S10+.

That said, there's a new wave in screens that I'm a little sorry we're not seeing here.

Razer and OnePlus have both gone to 90-hertz screens on their leading devices, a move that makes scrolling feel smoother and would increase the responsiveness of drawing apps using the S Pen.

I wish Samsung had made that move here, too.

There's an ultrasonic, in-display fingerprint sensor two thirds of the way down the screen.

While it's accurate if you get your dry, clean finger oriented correctly in the right spot, it suffers from the problems that all the in-display fingerprint sensors do right now: There's no physical guide where to put your finger, and it has real trouble with off-angle touches.

A Better S Pen

In my mind, the S Pen is why you should really come to the Galaxy Note.

There's no other phone with a similar feature.

The S Pen is an intelligent, active stylus with pressure and tilt detection.

If you want to write or draw on another kind of phone, you're stuck with a capacitive or Bluetooth stylus.

Capacitive styli like those on the LG Stylo series don't have pressure sensitivity, and Bluetooth stylii sometimes lag.

The S Pen also tucks into a slot built into the phone, which makes it much harder to lose than an Apple Pencil.

If you're going to use an S Pen, you want to put your phone in a case.

Ever since the Note 8 introduced curved screens, I've had some issues with trying to draw on the screen without touching the edge of the curve.

A case really helps.

I had a professional artist and an experienced Note 8 user, separately, draw with the S Pen in Samsung Notes, Adobe Sketch, and Autodesk Sketchbook.

The Note 10 pen is definitely more responsive than the Note 8 pen, with better pressure sensitivity in Samsung Notes.

Adobe Sketch developed lag when we added too many layers, though, which is surprising and infuriating on a device with 12GB of RAM and a 2.8GHz processor.

Samsung's "let's throw things at the wall" approach to software features has popped up here again.

It keeps adding new ways to use the S Pen, trying to see if they stick, but they're generally so haphazardly integrated that they fall flat.

Two years ago, it was Live Messages, which let you draw animated messages.

It's cool, but was never integrated into any popular messaging program, so few people use it.

This year, it's AR Doodle.

On paper, the AR Doodle idea is super cool.

You can draw persistent augmented-reality objects in space and take photos and videos that include them, like this:

The problem is that the AR Doodle tools are lousy and there's no eraser.

All of the drawing options are these worm-like, shiny pipes, and as soon as you make a mistake you have to start over.

That gets old fast.

The top complaint, though, is that the phone is just so big it's hard to hold while drawing.

That's part of why I'm excited by the smaller Note 10 model, which has the S Pen, but which you can also better grip with one hand.

For more writerly types, Samsung Notes also now tries to auto-recognize handwriting and transfers it into Microsoft Word.

This is another good idea that doesn't quite work because you can really only write three or four words on a line, so everything comes out squashed to one side of the document.

Still, the note-taking experience on a Note is like that on no other phone, because you can scribble rather than having to look at a touch keyboard.

If handwriting is still automatic to you (which feels like a Gen X proposition), that means you can write while looking at something else, which is a big deal.

The S Pen also now works as a remote control for the phone's camera.

If you have the phone on a mount, you can switch cameras or change zoom by waving the pen around.

I found that less useful than just using the pen's button as a remote shutter, which lets you hold the phone at more distant or daring angles for selfies.

The remote shutter feature is on the Note 9 and the smaller Note 10, though, so it isn't unique here.

Processor and Performance

Once again like the Galaxy S10+, the Note 10+ uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chipset running at a maximum of 2.8GHz.

On prcessor measures, it benchmarked slightly better than the Galaxy S10 and the OnePlus 7 Pro.

We got 9,843 on PCMark and 11,180 on Geekbench multi-core.

The S10+ got 9,682 on PCMark and 11,105 on Geekbench, while the OnePlus got 9,828 on PCMark and 11,012 on Geekbench.

The OnePlus benchmarked better at web browsing, though, at 481.94 on the Basemark Web test compared with 447.54 for the Note and 304.03 for the S10.

OnePlus has always been really good at UI optimization, and that shows on the browser benchmark score.

iPhones, alas, beat all Android phones when it comes to web-browsing efficiency: The iPhone XS Max scores 537.4 on Basemark Web.

On GPU benchmarks, the Note 10+ once again performed just like the Galaxy S10+ and OnePlus 7 Pro.

One thing to note is that you can improve effective graphics performance by turning down the screen resolution.

Kicking it from QHD to 1080p, for instance, improves the framerate on the GFXBench Car Chase onscreen test from 23fps to40 fps.

The Note 10+ has a whopping 12GB of RAM, which according to Samsung lets it cache up to 12 apps.

Compare that with the S10+'s 8GB, or the OnePlus and Note 9's 6GB.

That said, I haven't had much of a problem finding applications being forced to reload on 6GB and 8GB phones, and even with 12GB, the Note 10+ had trouble handling those layers in Adobe Sketch.

The device comes in 256GB and 512GB models, both with a microSD card slot tucked in by the SIM card.

It's important to note the smaller Note 10 doesn't have a microSD slot.

Outside North America, the Note 10+ uses a Samsung Exynos 9825 processor and Samsung modem; we didn't test that unit.

4G, Calling, and Wi-Fi

The Note 10+ and Note 10 have the same 4G modem and abilities as the Galaxy S10.

It's based on the Qualcomm X24 modem, with all the 4G frequency bands used in the US and support for Category 20 LTE with 7x carrier aggregation and 4x4 MIMO on five carriers.

That means you'll get better LTE performance than on any previous generation of phone, or any iPhone.

Performance will be very similar to the S10+; we're working with the same modem, the same antennas, the same software, and pretty much the same body size here.

We can use Ookla's Speedtest Intelligence to point out how the S10+ compares with the Note 9 and Note 8, and you can see how adding additional levels of carrier aggregation will help speeds (note: Ookla is owned by Ziff Davis, Daxdi.com's parent company).

This Samsung generation also brings new Wi-Fi capabilities.

The S10 and Note 10 are among the first mainstream phones to support 802.11ax or Wi-Fi 6, a new standard that improves Wi-Fi speed and range in crowded conditions.

To take advantage of that you'll need an 802.11ax router, and those are expensive right now.

But if you intend to keep your phone for three years, buying an 802.11ax-compatible device is a good idea.

At PC Labs we still have 802.11ac, or Wi-Fi 5, which is much more common right now.

On both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, I got slightly longer rangeby about 15 feetfrom the router with the Note 10+ than with a Note 9.

This can mean the difference between some connection and no connection in a public Wi-Fi hotspot, for instance.

But once again, this is generational, not unique to the Note 10+.

See How We Test Phones

Making phone calls on the Note 10+ is a great experience, with one little asterisk.

The Note 10+, like all Samsung flagships since the S8, supports high-quality calling with the EVS codec, which really improves call quality.

But to achieve the bezel-less screen, the earpiece has been moved to the very top edge of the phone.

If you're used to placing a phone against your ear, relying on the bezel for the location of the earpiece, the feeling of pressing the edge of the Note 10+ against your ear might be a little disoncerting, and it doesn't block quite as much outside noise.

The Note 10+'s speaker is technically the same volume as the Note 9's, at 85dB at 6 inches while playing the same song.

But the Note 10+ sounds noticeably louder to me, which is probably an effect of equalization boosting the midrange.

What About 5G?

If you're buying a gigantic, $1,100 smartphone, you'd hope that it would be able to take advantage of the latest networks the carriers are laying down.

But I'm sorry to say, the Note 10+'s 5G situation is a mess.

The Note 10+ 5G will come to Verizon first, for a $200 premium over the standard Note 10.

That model uses Qualcomm's first-generation X50 modem, the same as we've seen in other first-gen 5G phones, and it works with Verizon's millimeter-wave 5G network in a small number of central cities right now.

Verizon's 5G service plan has a perpetually suspended $10 surcharge over its 4G plan, and it includes unlimited 5G data and hotspot use.

The biggest concern I have is that all the X50-based phones so far have overheated and dropped to 4G in hot weather.

According to experts I've talked to, Verizon could fix this by slowing down 5G data access on the phones, but it may not want to do that so it can keep showing off spectacular speeds.

The Note 10+ 5G has a vapor-chamber cooling system that the S10 5G doesn't havebut the LG V50 also has vapor-chamber cooling, and it still has overheating problems.

I'll test the Verizon Note 10+ 5G in mid-September to see if it overheats.

On the other carriers, things are messier.

The Note 10+ 5G won't be able to use the fast 5G T-Mobile has installed in six cities; instead, it will use a slower, potentially nationwide form of the network that will feel more like good 4G.

Ditto for the AT&T...

There's a lot going on with the Galaxy Note 10+ ($1,099.99 and up), Samsung's biggest phone.

There always is; the Note line is the epitome of Samsung's technology.

It's where the company piles all of its features in, with price and size being no object.

And I admire it, but I find it hard to love.

A lot of this comes down to how many phones Samsung's been slinging out this year with similar features, as well as my own growing lack of patience with $1,000+ handsets.

Ultimately, the Galaxy S10+ ($799.99 and up) and the smaller Galaxy Note 10 ($949.99) are slightly more affordable ways to get most of what the Note 10+ offers, for less.

The Handbuster

The Note 10+ is 6.39 by 3.04 by 0.31 inches (HWD) and 6.91 ounces.

It's slightly bigger than the Note 9 (6.37 by 3.01 by 0.35 inches, 7.09 ounces) and noticeably bigger than the S10+ (6.20 by 2.92 by 0.31 inches, 6.17 ounces).

It comes in four "aura" colors, pictured below: black, blue, white, and "glow," which is a shimmery rainbow effect.

All of the colors attract fingerprints like crazymy "glow" review unit looks utterly greasy and flat-out gross after less than a week.

There's going to be a theme in this review that you should buy a case, and this is one reason.

The Note 10+ has a sharply curved 6.8-inch, 19:9 screen, so the phone almost comes to a point on the sidesthe edges are sharper than the Note 9.

Samsung also did away with the separate power and Bixby buttons, for a combined power/Bixby key on the left side.

Don't worry; you can set it to be primarily a power key, and then you aren't accidentally launching Bixby all the time.

The phone has dual speakers, including a big beefy one on the bottom face, and a nearly invisible one at the very top edge.

Also on the bottom, the new S Pen stylus pops out with a touch.

Still plastic, the Wacom-powered S Pen is now "unibody," meaning it doesn't have the gold top third the Note 9's pen has.

It feels pretty much the same in the hand, though.

And yes, the phone doesn't have a headphone jack.

That's going to anger a lot of people, especially those who were sucked in by Samsung spending years mocking Apple for doing away with the 3.5mm jack.

Samsung includes a pair of USB-C, AKG-branded earbuds, but no dongle; however, the phone works with generic USB-C-to-3.5mm headphone dongles.

I've been using a OnePlus 7 Pro for a while, which is about the same size as the Note 10+, yet the Note 10+ feels more unwieldy.

After a while, I realized why: When I'm reviewing Note phones, I'm very focused on the S Pen, as it's the feature that separates a Note from the crowd.

And if you're trying to use the S Pen, you need to hold the phone securely with your other hand.

That can be difficult with a 3.04-inch-wide phone.

The phone's size feels unwieldy when using the camera, too.

I feel that way about the OnePlus 7 Pro as well, for what it's worth, but gripping the phone between my thumb and forefinger, horizontally, while tapping on the camera UI has always been an issue with Notes, and it's an issue here too.

Now, I have pretty small hands, and I was largely testing the phone with women and teenagers.

I know one of our analysts at Daxdi who has giant paws and swears by phones as wide as possible.

But I have to tell you, this thing is at the edge of what a lot of people's hands will be able to handle.

The device is waterproof, at least, although it's far from rugged.

As with any phone this expensive, I advise getting a case.

Left to right: Galaxy Note 10+, Galaxy Note 10

A Beautiful View

The screen is a big reason to come to this big phone.

As mentioned, it's a 6.8-inch, 19:9 bezel-less panel with a front-facing camera at top center.

At 3,040 by 1,440 pixels and 498 pixels per inch, it's actually lower density than older phones like the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Note 8, but not to any degree that you can notice.

In general, the Note 10+ screen behaves a lot like the S10+ screen in terms of brightness, color accuracy, and overall performance.

This is good news, as the S10+ has an excellent screen.

I tested the phone's color accuracy with a Klein K80 colorimeter attached to Portrait Displays' CalMAN software, and found that its two color profiles are very close to the Galaxy S10's and to the Note 9's Adaptive and Basic modes.

They're all among the best displays out there, and they don't have the over-saturated look we used to see on old Samsung OLEDs.

Ray Soneira at DisplayMate Labs goes into more detail with even more advanced lab equipment.

Specifically, he says that blue light has been reduced by 37 percent from the Note 9, while the overall color accuracy hasn't changed.

There's also a peak brightness mode, used in bright natural light, which goes to 793 nits, 12 percent better than the Galaxy Note 9 and about the same level as the Galaxy S10+.

That said, there's a new wave in screens that I'm a little sorry we're not seeing here.

Razer and OnePlus have both gone to 90-hertz screens on their leading devices, a move that makes scrolling feel smoother and would increase the responsiveness of drawing apps using the S Pen.

I wish Samsung had made that move here, too.

There's an ultrasonic, in-display fingerprint sensor two thirds of the way down the screen.

While it's accurate if you get your dry, clean finger oriented correctly in the right spot, it suffers from the problems that all the in-display fingerprint sensors do right now: There's no physical guide where to put your finger, and it has real trouble with off-angle touches.

A Better S Pen

In my mind, the S Pen is why you should really come to the Galaxy Note.

There's no other phone with a similar feature.

The S Pen is an intelligent, active stylus with pressure and tilt detection.

If you want to write or draw on another kind of phone, you're stuck with a capacitive or Bluetooth stylus.

Capacitive styli like those on the LG Stylo series don't have pressure sensitivity, and Bluetooth stylii sometimes lag.

The S Pen also tucks into a slot built into the phone, which makes it much harder to lose than an Apple Pencil.

If you're going to use an S Pen, you want to put your phone in a case.

Ever since the Note 8 introduced curved screens, I've had some issues with trying to draw on the screen without touching the edge of the curve.

A case really helps.

I had a professional artist and an experienced Note 8 user, separately, draw with the S Pen in Samsung Notes, Adobe Sketch, and Autodesk Sketchbook.

The Note 10 pen is definitely more responsive than the Note 8 pen, with better pressure sensitivity in Samsung Notes.

Adobe Sketch developed lag when we added too many layers, though, which is surprising and infuriating on a device with 12GB of RAM and a 2.8GHz processor.

Samsung's "let's throw things at the wall" approach to software features has popped up here again.

It keeps adding new ways to use the S Pen, trying to see if they stick, but they're generally so haphazardly integrated that they fall flat.

Two years ago, it was Live Messages, which let you draw animated messages.

It's cool, but was never integrated into any popular messaging program, so few people use it.

This year, it's AR Doodle.

On paper, the AR Doodle idea is super cool.

You can draw persistent augmented-reality objects in space and take photos and videos that include them, like this:

The problem is that the AR Doodle tools are lousy and there's no eraser.

All of the drawing options are these worm-like, shiny pipes, and as soon as you make a mistake you have to start over.

That gets old fast.

The top complaint, though, is that the phone is just so big it's hard to hold while drawing.

That's part of why I'm excited by the smaller Note 10 model, which has the S Pen, but which you can also better grip with one hand.

For more writerly types, Samsung Notes also now tries to auto-recognize handwriting and transfers it into Microsoft Word.

This is another good idea that doesn't quite work because you can really only write three or four words on a line, so everything comes out squashed to one side of the document.

Still, the note-taking experience on a Note is like that on no other phone, because you can scribble rather than having to look at a touch keyboard.

If handwriting is still automatic to you (which feels like a Gen X proposition), that means you can write while looking at something else, which is a big deal.

The S Pen also now works as a remote control for the phone's camera.

If you have the phone on a mount, you can switch cameras or change zoom by waving the pen around.

I found that less useful than just using the pen's button as a remote shutter, which lets you hold the phone at more distant or daring angles for selfies.

The remote shutter feature is on the Note 9 and the smaller Note 10, though, so it isn't unique here.

Processor and Performance

Once again like the Galaxy S10+, the Note 10+ uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chipset running at a maximum of 2.8GHz.

On prcessor measures, it benchmarked slightly better than the Galaxy S10 and the OnePlus 7 Pro.

We got 9,843 on PCMark and 11,180 on Geekbench multi-core.

The S10+ got 9,682 on PCMark and 11,105 on Geekbench, while the OnePlus got 9,828 on PCMark and 11,012 on Geekbench.

The OnePlus benchmarked better at web browsing, though, at 481.94 on the Basemark Web test compared with 447.54 for the Note and 304.03 for the S10.

OnePlus has always been really good at UI optimization, and that shows on the browser benchmark score.

iPhones, alas, beat all Android phones when it comes to web-browsing efficiency: The iPhone XS Max scores 537.4 on Basemark Web.

On GPU benchmarks, the Note 10+ once again performed just like the Galaxy S10+ and OnePlus 7 Pro.

One thing to note is that you can improve effective graphics performance by turning down the screen resolution.

Kicking it from QHD to 1080p, for instance, improves the framerate on the GFXBench Car Chase onscreen test from 23fps to40 fps.

The Note 10+ has a whopping 12GB of RAM, which according to Samsung lets it cache up to 12 apps.

Compare that with the S10+'s 8GB, or the OnePlus and Note 9's 6GB.

That said, I haven't had much of a problem finding applications being forced to reload on 6GB and 8GB phones, and even with 12GB, the Note 10+ had trouble handling those layers in Adobe Sketch.

The device comes in 256GB and 512GB models, both with a microSD card slot tucked in by the SIM card.

It's important to note the smaller Note 10 doesn't have a microSD slot.

Outside North America, the Note 10+ uses a Samsung Exynos 9825 processor and Samsung modem; we didn't test that unit.

4G, Calling, and Wi-Fi

The Note 10+ and Note 10 have the same 4G modem and abilities as the Galaxy S10.

It's based on the Qualcomm X24 modem, with all the 4G frequency bands used in the US and support for Category 20 LTE with 7x carrier aggregation and 4x4 MIMO on five carriers.

That means you'll get better LTE performance than on any previous generation of phone, or any iPhone.

Performance will be very similar to the S10+; we're working with the same modem, the same antennas, the same software, and pretty much the same body size here.

We can use Ookla's Speedtest Intelligence to point out how the S10+ compares with the Note 9 and Note 8, and you can see how adding additional levels of carrier aggregation will help speeds (note: Ookla is owned by Ziff Davis, Daxdi.com's parent company).

This Samsung generation also brings new Wi-Fi capabilities.

The S10 and Note 10 are among the first mainstream phones to support 802.11ax or Wi-Fi 6, a new standard that improves Wi-Fi speed and range in crowded conditions.

To take advantage of that you'll need an 802.11ax router, and those are expensive right now.

But if you intend to keep your phone for three years, buying an 802.11ax-compatible device is a good idea.

At PC Labs we still have 802.11ac, or Wi-Fi 5, which is much more common right now.

On both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, I got slightly longer rangeby about 15 feetfrom the router with the Note 10+ than with a Note 9.

This can mean the difference between some connection and no connection in a public Wi-Fi hotspot, for instance.

But once again, this is generational, not unique to the Note 10+.

See How We Test Phones

Making phone calls on the Note 10+ is a great experience, with one little asterisk.

The Note 10+, like all Samsung flagships since the S8, supports high-quality calling with the EVS codec, which really improves call quality.

But to achieve the bezel-less screen, the earpiece has been moved to the very top edge of the phone.

If you're used to placing a phone against your ear, relying on the bezel for the location of the earpiece, the feeling of pressing the edge of the Note 10+ against your ear might be a little disoncerting, and it doesn't block quite as much outside noise.

The Note 10+'s speaker is technically the same volume as the Note 9's, at 85dB at 6 inches while playing the same song.

But the Note 10+ sounds noticeably louder to me, which is probably an effect of equalization boosting the midrange.

What About 5G?

If you're buying a gigantic, $1,100 smartphone, you'd hope that it would be able to take advantage of the latest networks the carriers are laying down.

But I'm sorry to say, the Note 10+'s 5G situation is a mess.

The Note 10+ 5G will come to Verizon first, for a $200 premium over the standard Note 10.

That model uses Qualcomm's first-generation X50 modem, the same as we've seen in other first-gen 5G phones, and it works with Verizon's millimeter-wave 5G network in a small number of central cities right now.

Verizon's 5G service plan has a perpetually suspended $10 surcharge over its 4G plan, and it includes unlimited 5G data and hotspot use.

The biggest concern I have is that all the X50-based phones so far have overheated and dropped to 4G in hot weather.

According to experts I've talked to, Verizon could fix this by slowing down 5G data access on the phones, but it may not want to do that so it can keep showing off spectacular speeds.

The Note 10+ 5G has a vapor-chamber cooling system that the S10 5G doesn't havebut the LG V50 also has vapor-chamber cooling, and it still has overheating problems.

I'll test the Verizon Note 10+ 5G in mid-September to see if it overheats.

On the other carriers, things are messier.

The Note 10+ 5G won't be able to use the fast 5G T-Mobile has installed in six cities; instead, it will use a slower, potentially nationwide form of the network that will feel more like good 4G.

Ditto for the AT&T...

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