Global flagship with an Indian heart

The word flagship has been used and abused in the mobile world. Ideally, it should mean a device that lets a brand showcase the best it can offer, by way of design, performance, or chipset. Flagships tend to be more expensive because they are premium, with longer shelf life than other phones. But brands have diluted the concept by dubbing value-for-money, phones as flagships just to grab eyeballs. Some add prefixes, just to sound cool -- like value flagship, affordable flagship, stylish flagship... Samsung, however, has held its ground as the best exemplar of a true flagship.

This time around, Samsung claims that Note 10+ has the best features for both productivity and quirky 'time pass'. It comes with sophisticated AI and machine learning, that converts handwriting to text and save your scribbles in multiple formats. What enables this, is the Samsung S Pen, the stylus that has evolved to operate with 6-axis gesture control. In its latest avatar, the pen features something called Air Actions, that detects direction and acceleration from your movements of the S Pen, and performs preset actions. With the Galaxy Note 10 series, Samsung has opened this feature to developers, hoping to enhance its usability and adding more functionalities.

The Samsung R&D institute, in Bangalore, has contributed key enhancements, mix of fun and AI-driven productivity tools, to the Galaxy Note 10 series of phones, specifically targeted at young, restless millennials. The fact that the life of these uber cool people is one big folder of content -- with audio, video, stories, live streams, and everything in between -- inspired the Bangalore R&D centre to introduce features like Auto Doodle where you can scribble your unique drawings over photos and videos and it automatically predicts what you are trying to express, and creatively animates your scribbles. Big Bokeh, on the other hand, provides a catalogue of depth-related enhancements to your photos and videos, inspired by DSLR cameras. Another interesting innovation is intelligent sorting of your image gallery by virtual tags, using AI to automatically classify your pictures and suggest hashtags for it.

With a 16 MP ultra-wide, 12 MP wide-angle and 12 MP telephoto lens at the back, the Note 10+ churns out impressive low-light photos and shake-free videos. The 10 MP front camera compliments this by offering attractive selfie enhancements. Features such as the curved infinity display, wireless PowerShare have been standard across Samsung flagships, while this time around, the Note 10+ (6.8-inches) and the Note 10 (6.3-inches) are powered by 3500mAh and 4300mAh batteries respectively. Starting at Rs 69,999 and Rs 79,999 respectively, the Note 10 and Note 10+ devices are the ones to be seen with, in the foreseeable future!