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Galaxy Note 10 Hands-On: Samsung’s Superphone Gets A Magic Wand

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Samsung’s stylus finally learned to wave back.

Michael Fisher, better known as MrMobile, has carried a Galaxy Note in his pocket for nearly eight years, so when Samsung split its flagship in two and handed the S Pen a set of motion gestures, he had a very specific wishlist walking into the August 7th Unpacked event in New York. His hands-on breaks down what actually changed on the Galaxy Note 10 and Note 10+ — and what got left on the cutting room floor, headphone jack included.

• Samsung split the line into a 6.3-inch Galaxy Note 10 and a 6.8-inch Galaxy Note 10+, both with centered punch-hole Cinematic Infinity AMOLED displays and an Aura Glow finish.
• The redesigned S Pen adds “Air Actions” — hold the button and wave the pen to cycle camera modes, zoom with clockwise circles, or control media playback via a built-in six-axis accelerometer/gyroscope and Bluetooth.
• The 3.5mm headphone jack and dedicated Bixby button are both gone, while the Note 10+ alone keeps microSD expansion, a QHD+ panel, a 4,300mAh battery with up to 45W charging, and a rear DepthVision Time-of-Flight sensor.

The Magic Wand Gets Real Gestures

Fisher’s core fascination is the S Pen itself, which Samsung is treating less like a stylus accessory and more like a remote control. With the six-axis sensor package onboard, holding the pen’s button and waving it in the air lets a user flip between camera modes without touching the phone, draw a clockwise circle to zoom the lens in, or skip and pause media playback from across a room. It’s the same Bluetooth-enabled unibody pen Samsung introduced last year, but the gesture layer — Air Actions — is what Fisher spends the most time putting through its paces.

Eight years of Note phones, and this is the first S Pen update that actually feels like a magic wand instead of a fancy stylus.

Two Sizes, Two Very Different Phones

Samsung didn’t just stretch one chassis into two sizes — it carved out real hardware differences between them. The smaller 6.3-inch Note 10 drops to an FHD+ resolution panel and loses microSD expansion entirely, a notable sacrifice for a line that built its reputation on storage flexibility. The 6.8-inch Note 10+ keeps the QHD+ display, the microSD slot, a bigger 4,300mAh battery capable of up to 45W fast charging, and a rear DepthVision Time-of-Flight sensor bolted onto its triple camera array — meaning buyers now have to pick a size and accept a genuinely different feature set, not just a bigger screen.

Samsung Removes Key Product Features

Two long-running Note staples didn’t survive the redesign. The 3.5mm headphone jack is gone from both models, with Samsung bundling USB-C AKG earphones instead. The dedicated Bixby button is gone too, folded into a single Side Key on the left frame, beneath the volume rocker, that now handles both power and the assistant. For a device series that once prided itself on giving users more physical controls, not fewer, Fisher treats these as the two biggest concessions in the hands-on.

Software Tricks Built Around the Pen and the Cameras

Beyond the hardware, Samsung loaded in software meant to make the S Pen and cameras feel new again. Live Focus Video adds real-time background bokeh while recording, Zoom-In Mic isolates audio from whatever subject the camera is zoomed in on, and AR Doodle lets users draw 3D-tracked sketches directly onto a moving video subject. Samsung also rebuilt DeX so it connects straight to a Windows or Mac PC over a single USB cable — handy for anyone who wants their phone’s apps, or even a PC game like Apex Legends, running through the same cable-and-monitor setup they’d use for something like Destiny 2.

Fisher’s verdict on the Air Actions is that they’re clever but still a party trick more than a daily habit — waving a pen around a room to skip a song only works so many times before you just reach for the phone. What he’s actually curious to test past the demo units is whether the Note 10+’s DepthVision sensor and 45W charging make the size trade-off worth it for people who’d otherwise default to the smaller model.