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Galaxy Note 10: Samsung hopes to strike the right Note

Remember how outlandish the first Samsung

Galaxy Note looked when it was unveiled in 2011?

It was huge - a smartphone with 

screen and a stylus.

I remember standing on a Barcelona street with an

early version, embarrassed to put it to my ear and

make a call because I'd look like something out of

a Dom Joly sketch.

But it quickly won a sizeable fan base including the

kind of people who had owned Psion Organisers or

the Nokia Communicator.

They wanted a device that could do almost

everything a laptop could do.

Over the years, many smartphones have acquired

those kind of capabilities and just about all of them

have grown much bigger.

For Samsung, that presents a challenge - how can it

make each new model stand out from the crowd?

At its swish new exhibition space in London's Kings

Cross this week, Samsung invited technology

journalists to come and try out the latest Galaxy

Note.

Key difference

Set out on pine tables, the Note 10 and the Note

10+ looked... well, like any other smartphones -

shiny slabs of glass.

They were of course huge, quite a bit bigger than

the original humungous Note. The new Note 10 has

a 6.3in screen and the 6.8in Note 10+ is virtually

the size of a tablet.

But then again, Samsung's latest flagship Galaxy

S10+ has a 6.4in screen and the 5G version has a

6.7in screen.

The South Korean company's two most important

phone ranges - once easily distinguishable - now

overlap.

But Mark Holloway, Samsung Europe's senior

product manager, says there is one key difference.

Terrible handwriting

"The S-Pen is the key reason most European users

choose the Note," he says.

Over the years, the stylus has become ever more

sophisticated. In the Note 10, you can use it to

scribble a message and have your terrible

handwriting converted to text. It also works as a

remote control for the camera.

Once, the idea of using something the size of a

Note to take photos or shoot video was almost as

laughable as doing such a thing with an iPad.

But now it has become commonplace and, as with

any new phone, Samsung has a lot to say about its

new camera features.

Extreme sports

You can use augmented reality emojis to give

yourself a dinosaur's head. And there's a feature

called Live Focus Video that lets you focus on a

subject and blur the background in real time.

It also has a "zoom microphone" that gives

enhanced audio from whatever is in the centre of

frame, even from across a room.

And then there's Super Steady video stabilisation,

which Mr Holloway suggested might be used for

extreme sports. Although, to me, the idea of a

skydiver or downhill skier strapping on a Note 10

seems optimistic to say the least.

But it seems Samsung has concluded the Note now

has to be all things to all people - the business

users who will take advantage of the ability to

transfer content seamlessly between the phone and

their laptop, the Instagrammers using all the

camera's bells and whistles to make their Stories

more creative, even gamers wanting to play Call of

Duty on the move without draining the battery.

Plunging profits

And make no mistake, Samsung is in need of a hit.

The Galaxy S10 won great reviews but less than

stellar sales.

Last week, the South Korean giant reported plunging

profits. Much of the blame was put on its core

chip business but the lacklustre performance of the

mobile phone division did not help.

The global smartphone market has stuttered, with

the research company Gartner predicting a 2.5%

decline in worldwide sales this year compared with

2019. And despite Huawei's problems, Chinese

rivals offering very capable phones at lower prices

threaten to eat into Samsung's market share.

The radical new folding phone was meant to signal

the next phase of innovation but the new dawn has

been delayed by production problems. The

Samsung Fold is now due to go on sale in

September.

Even then, expensive folding phones are likely to

appeal to a small niche of early adopters at first.

Samsung will have to hope the rather larger crowd

that has been drawn to the Galaxy Note over the

years stays loyal to this latest version.