The Samsung Galaxy Note 10 and Note 10+ went on sale in over 80+ markets yesterday. The company’s latest flagship phablets are impressive devices that offer a great software experience as well. If you have purchased a Galaxy Note 10 or Note 10+ or plan on buying one, you should check out some of the top tips and tricks for it in this article.
These tips and tricks will help you use your Note 10 to the fullest and will also help you discover some of the relatively unknown features that they come with.
Best and Hidden Galaxy Note 10 and Note 10+ Tips and Tricks
Use the 25W Charger
Samsung has finally bumped the wired charging speeds on its flagship devices. The Galaxy Note 10 and Note 10+ both support 25W wired fast charging, though the latter supports even faster 45W wired charging.
Samsung is bundling a 25W fast charger with both Note 10 variants which are going to be plenty fast for most consumers. So, if you are someone who keeps using different chargers to charge their device, you should stick to the bundled charger with the Note 10 for the best charging experience.
With any other charger, the Note 10/10+ will charge at a speed of 10W or 15W, which means they will take over two hours to go from 0-100%. With the bundled 25W charger, the Note 10 and 10+ charge to over 50% in just 30 minutes and to 100% in just over an hour.
Record HDR10+ Videos
DxOMark has highly rated the Galaxy Note 10’s triple-camera system. What’s impressive is that the Note 10 series is capable of recording 4K videos in HDR10+. Compared to regular videos, HDR10+ videos have better dynamic range and colors, though you will need a compatible device to playback the videos on.
To record HDR10+ videos on the Galaxy Note 10 series, open the Camera app and tap the Settings icon on the top-left corner. Now, go to Advanced recording options and enable the HDR10+ video toggle.
Do note that you can only record HDR10+ videos from the rear camera of the Note 10 or Note 10+.
Night Mode for Selfie Camera
Samsung added a dedicated Night mode for the rear camera on the Galaxy S10 series with a software update down on the line. On the Galaxy Note 10 series, Samsung is one-upping things by including a dedicated Night mode for the selfie camera as well.
What this means is that in low-light scenarios, you are going to get notably better selfies on the Note 10 than what you would get on the S10 series thanks to the Night mode. But do note that Night mode selfies are going to be soft in nature.
Navigation Gestures
The Galaxy Note 10 and Note 10+ ship with a navigation bar by default. But Samsung also offers navigation gestures as a part of One UI. Instead of offering Google’s version of navigation gestures as debuted on Pie though, Samsung is offering its own version of navigation gestures which it is calling Full screen gestures.
You can enable navigation gestures on your Galaxy Note 10 by going to Settings -> Display -> Navigation bar. Select the Full screen gestures option from here. These gestures hide the navigation bar but replicate their functionality. So, to go back to the home screen, you just need to swipe up from the bottom of the screen where the home button is usually located. Similarly, swipe up from where the back button is shown in the navigation bar to go back.
Dark Mode
With Android Q, Google is getting around to adding native system-wide Dark mode to Android. In this regard, Samsung has already one-up Google as it includes a system-wide Dark mode in One UI. Its called Night mode for some reason though.
On the massive OLED displays of the Galaxy Note 10 series, the Dark mode looks even stunning. It can be enabled from Settings -> Display -> Night mode. You can schedule Night mode to turn itself on automatically during a certain period of the day or just enable it permanently.
Cycle Between Open Apps
Here’s a tip to quickly cycle between open apps on your Galaxy Note 10 if you use the navigation bar on it instead of navigation gestures. Simply put your finger on the home button and drag it to the right across the navigation bar. This will bring up the Recent Apps view and you can cycle through all the open apps by dragging the slider. You do the entire process without lifting your finger from the screen even once.
One-handed mode
With a 6.3-inch and 6.8-inch display, the Galaxy Note 10 and Note 10+ are massive phones. While the big displays are great for content consumption and creation, they can also pose a problem when one is trying to use the phone with one hand. For such scenarios, Samsung includes a handy one-handed mode on the Galaxy Note 10 series. This shrinks the phone’s display to the left or right corner of the screen, thereby making it easier to operate one-handed.
You can enable One-handed mode on your Galaxy Note 10 or Note 10+ from Settings -> Advanced features -> Motion and gestures -> One-handed mode. There are two ways to enable One-handed mode: a gesture which involves swiping diagonally from the left/right bottom corner of the display or by tapping the Home button 3 times.
Bixby Routines
You will find plenty of automation apps on the Google Play Store. However, almost all of them are complex to use which is why casual users stay away from them. Samsung bundles its own automation feature in One UI on the Galaxy Note 10 series. Called Bixby Routines, you can use this feature to automate a number of tasks on your Galaxy Note 10. It is not as powerful as Tasker but it is still good enough for basic automation tasks.
You can use Bixby Routines to automatically enable auto rotate when you are inside certain apps, mute your phone when you go to sleep, automatically play music when your Note 10 connects to a Bluetooth speaker, etc.
Smart Stay
Want to keep the display of your Galaxy Note 10 on as long as you are looking at it? For this, you will need to enable the Smart Stay feature. This feature will ensure that as long as you are looking at your Note 10’s display, it will not turn it off thereby overriding the screen timeout option.
Enable Smart Stay from Settings -> Advanced features -> Motion and gestures -> Smart stay.
Disable Always On Display
Like almost every other flagship smartphone in the market, the Galaxy Note 10 series also comes with Always On Display. This means that even when the phone is locked and not in use, it displays the time, date, and unread notification icons in a low-power state. It can be handy if you always want to stay on top of the time and your notifications. Some may not be too fond of it though and would like to disable it.
For some strange reason, despite being associated with the display, all Always On Display related options are tucked under Settings -> Lock screen. Apart from disabling the feature, you can also customize the clock style, the type of content displayed, and more from here.
Stick with the Stock Screen Protector
Like the Galaxy S10 series, Samsung pre-installs a decent screen protector on the Galaxy Note 10 series as well. I will strongly recommend you not to remove it from the phone thinking that it is just another piece of plastic. The pre-installed screen protector is of extremely high quality that you will not find anywhere else in the market.
What are some of your favorite tips and tricks for the Galaxy Note 10 series? Drop a comment and share them with us!
