The Tenth Note

The new Note 10+ is definitely an upgrade to the Note 9 in terms of functionality and utilisation of the note-keeping which I use every day at work. It forms an integral part of my daily work, and with the new version, there certainly beefed up the note-taking feature. I am pretty happy about that.

It also came in a slicker package, and the battery lasted longer than before. However, unlocking the device was a nightmare. With the old Note 8 and 9, I just disable the fingerprint reader and keep the unit unlocked. For the new version, you still needed to slide the screen up, and I depended on the “smart unlock” feature to enable the unit. Often, I was prompted to use my thumb and using it, the screen was just so slow. Both the Huawei P30 Pro and OnePlus 7 Pro did a much better job with their onscreen thumbprint recognition.

But for the blog, I am more interested in the camera. Note 9 had a decent enough camera for me to use to take photos for my blog. So, I took the new camera for a spin.

The wide-angle camera is a welcomed feature. Video recording was on par with the iPhone. But the computational photography was moving towards what Huawei was doing - too much modification to the snaps, ending up being unnatural. The captures looked pixelated on scrutiny and the HDR photos, especially when captured in broad daylight were hideous! The captures also appear to be more contrasty to Note 9, but unfortunately in a bad way. I prefer the softer colours and resolution of Note 9.

I ended up disabling it, and for indoor photos, I actually used the night mode. Luckily, unlike the OnePlus, night mode allowed the use of the wide-angle lens. And the captures looked more natural, with the artefacts pretty much been eliminated. There was minimal capture lag, and most of the time, I got the shots I wanted. Autofocus was snappy.

For the video, the 4K videos looked decent, although I pretty much used my preferred option - 1080p at 60 fps. Has not had the time to post any videos on YouTube as yet. Maybe I will do that later in the week.

A worthy upgrade from my work point of view, but the camera has its quirk. Maybe over time, I will figure out ways to get consistent photos from it.

At the Edge

I had been impressed with the review on the S6 since the announcement was made. It was a toss up between this new Samsung flagship or the HTC M9. 

Having owned the M7 and Galaxy Nexus and S2 previously, I was familiar with the strength of both lines, but clearly the Galaxy S series had moved along quite far, compared to the HTC. 

So, I did a free order and picked up my phone last weekend. I went for the S6 Edge. Although honestly, apart from the slicker form factor and bigger battery capacity, there were not much deterrence between the standard S6 and the Edge. The specs were identical. 

After a couple of days of use, I was struck by how comfortable the phone felt on my phone compared to my staple, the iPhone 6 Plus. 

The Edge was just blazing fast and the Lollipop OS just sang! There was no lag which I could detect although I hardly put any skin on the system to compliment the standard Samsung interface. 

I use the standard Google app - Mail, Calendar and the rest. Of course the first thing I did was download Facebook, Twitter, Feedly, 2Do, Instagram, Flickr and VSCO cam among others. Then I went about putting the phone through its pace. 

A couple of things was plain obvious from the start. Yes, the screen was gorgeous and reception on LTE was fast. But unexpectedly the camera and battery life were the features which impressed me the most. 

Let's start with the camera. 16MP with optical stabilisation. Sound basic, but that's double the amount of pixel on the iPhone camera. And the results were just fantastic. Hands down, out of the camera they were better jpgs compared to the iPhone. Almost at the level of the Lumia 930, but with better post processing apps to chose from. 

The app of choice so far for image post-processing was Snapseed. The newly updated 2.0 version was just amazing. I can't stop admiring the camera output and I have yet to explore its full potential. 

The second thing which impressed me was the battery life. I had been reading reviews that due to high resolution screen and small form factor, battery life was limited. I have yet to experience such a drain so far. At least compared to the Nexus 4 and M7. Or even the Oppo Find 7 which carried the same.screen resolution - although on a physically larger-dimensioned screen. 

I have a wireless charger placed at my clinic and I just put it on the tray while seeing patients. No issues. And setting up emails were a doodle, but I was still using the basic apps for them. None of those fancy app or Samsung's proprietary programs. They were just too fiddly. 

One major criticism I had out of the box was the keyboard. They were just lame. Fleksy soon fixed those up. If only they could make some similar to my Z10 - which I still use for emails at home - then the S6 Edge would be perfect! 

These were still my early impression but I think this phone would be a hit, especially for the power user. I have set up my Feedly account to connect to my bitly service, so expect many updates on Facebook coming soon!‎