PC World - USA (2019-10)

40 PCWorld OCTOBER 2019

REVIEWS SAMSUNG GALAXY NOTE 10+

streaming. Benchmarks echoed my real-world

experiences with better than 11 hours of

screen-on time, and if you flip on Adaptive

power saving in the Device carrier settings,

you’ll easily be able to push it to 12 hours.

Short of a major battery breakthrough, the

Note 10+ is as good as it gets.

MORE S PEN GIMMICKS

LEAD THE WAY

Samsung has once again added some new

tricks to the Note 10’s signature feature, the S

Pen, but the implementation is just as half-

baked as last year. Samsung built Bluetooth

into its mini stylus with the launch of the Note

9 so it doubled as a remote, but it never built

out functionality beyond rudimentary camera

controls and music playback.

On the Note 10, the stylus can act as a sort

of magic wand, so Instead of

simply clicking to advance a

track, you can wave your hand

to change the camera mode or

raise the volume from a

distance. Does it work? For

the most part, yes, though

some of the gestures are tricky.

Is it useful? Not really. Since

the S Pen is generally docked

inside the Note, it takes more

planning to use Air Actions

than the other S Pen features. I

suppose there could be a

situation where you prop up

your S Pen to take a group photo and use the

S Pen as a shutter, but it’s certainly not a

feature you’re going to use every day.

Far more useful is the optical character

recognition built into Samsung Notes. As

always, the prime benefit of the S Pen is for

quickly jotting down notes, but Samsung has

The Note 10+ will convert and index your messy handwriting into

legible text so you can search for written words within notes.

Along with the usual Air Commands, the S Pen on

the Note 10+ also has gesture capabilities.