Unboxing Samsung Note 10 Plus

Note 10 Plus performance
This is the fastest Samsung phone TechRadar has tested, and I have the Note 10 that's packing the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chipset and 12GB of RAM. It doesn't have the souped-up Snapdragon 855 Plus chip that's appeared in a few Android phones in recent weeks, but it's no slouch.

At the end of the day, the numbers don't matter nearly as much as some people like to claim. This phone is incredibly fast.
What helps is the fact that the Note 10 Plus is 7.9mm thin, meaning it's slimmer than last year's Note 9 by almost a full millimeter. It's still easy enough to wrap in one hand without a Note 10 case, but you'll need two hands to operate it properly.

I did run into a few jarring false touches when tightly gripping this massive handset, often encroaching on the sides of the curved screen. But it's not as bad as when I first started using Galaxy Notes (starting with the Note 3), back when they had extra-sensitive displays compared to an iPhone.

The center-aligned punch-hole front camera isn't as distracting as you might think. So far, it's easy enough to ignore and is 26% smaller than the Galaxy S10 punch-hole.

The most likable perk: the outline of the front camera lights up when you take a timed selfie (as on the S10 series, but this will be a first for Note users). That's incredibly handy when you're taking a group selfie and non-Samsung-phone-owning friends need to know where to look.
Big, but thinner, and the punch-hole has shrunk
The Note 10 Plus is a mighty big phone – its 6.8-inch screen has me yearning for the innovation of the Samsung Galaxy Fold. It's meant for extra-big hands, whereas the 6.3-inch Note 10 screen is suitable for big-to-normal-sized hands.

The phone can fit in jeans pockets fine, but that's not the case with shorts that have smaller pockets or almost all back pockets – it's just begging to slide out when I sit down. I've had that happen to me with big glass phones like this before – and this one is even bigger.
What's not here: Normal headphones. That's because the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Plus doesn't have a 3.5mm headphone jack, instead relying on the USB-C charging port and the included USB-C headphones for personalized audio.

Samsung is among the last phone manufacturers to axe the standard headphone port from a flagship phone. Bonus: The USB-C headphones are AKG earbuds, so they're at least of good quality if you don't opt for wireless earbuds.

Also not here: A 3.5mm-head-jack-to-USB-C adapter to use normal earbuds. They're inexpensive on Amazon if you need one.
USB-C charger: My favorite part of the Note 10 Plus unboxing was seeing the newish 25W USB-C charger, offering fast charging speeds out of the box. The Samsung Galaxy S10 5G came with the same 25W charger, but the Note 10 Plus is going to be a significantly more popular phone, so it'll be a first for many fans who are used to Samsung's old USB-A charger block and slower 15W charging speeds. There's a USB-C-to-USB-C cable included in this box, too.

Other tools: There's a SIM card ejector tool, USB-C-to-USB-C adapter, and a claw-like tweezer tool for replacing S Pen stylus tips when they wear out.