Last week I bought a refurbished Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ 5G and I'm using it as my daily use phone. You might be wondering why I bought this three-year-old flagship now in 2022.
Earlier this year I was so excited about the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra. Finally, Samsung was bringing a phone that had the best of the S series and the note series. I had been using my current phone for more than 3 years now and I wanted to upgrade to the S22 Ultra.
But I realised I could not afford the S22 Ultra. It simply made no sense for me to spend over 1000 pounds on a phone right now. And I could not get a phone contract due to issues with my credit score.
Now the Note 10+ came out in 2019 and Samsung no longer sells it so you cannot buy a new one. But you can easily find a refurbished one for around 250 pounds. I bought this one from a site called Blackmarket and it includes a 1-year refurbisher warranty from Blackmarket.
The phone comes in decent packaging but they only include a charging cable unlike the original packaging of the Note 10+ which came with a charging brick and earphones as well. But considering the new S22 Ultra only comes with an extra sim ejection tool I can't really complain. As advertised it has a few scratches but nothing serious. It turns on like a charm and is good as new.
My previous phone had 6GB of RAM, 64 GB of storage and an SD 660 processor and I was looking for an upgrade. So a device with at least 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, a better processor and a decent camera. And I wanted a device from a Non-Chinese Manufacturer if possible; personal preference!
Now I'll tell you why this phone makes a lot of sense to me and why it appealed to me over other new devices in this price range.
In this price range, most of the phones available here in the UK have 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. Not that it's a bad configuration, in fact, that would be more than sufficient for most people. Even the base model of the S22 Ultra comes with 8GB Ram and 128GB storage and that costs 1149 pounds here in the UK. This Note 10+ is the base model of the series and it has 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage with an SD card slot supporting up to 1TB of expandable storage it was listed on BlackMarket for 230 pounds.
The one I have here is the single sim 5G enabled version in Aura Glow colour. It has a USB Type C charging port and supports up to 45 Watts fast charging and 15 Watts wireless charging that keeps its 4300mAh battery juiced up to power its Exynos 9825 chipset. While the Exynos chip may not be as good as the Snapdragon alternative, for my use it is really smooth and I've faced no lags or throttling.
The Note 10+ has a 6.8-inch Dynamic AMOLED display supporting HDR+ and 60Hz refresh rate and is protected by gorilla glass 6 and it is absolutely gorgeous.
This is where the Note 10+ knocks out the competition. The fact that it is a note and that it comes with an S pen. That is something no one else offers. There aren't a lot of things I do with the S-Pen but it is good to have it.
It has a quad-camera set up on the back and a single camera on the front both of which support 4k recording at up to 60fps.
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