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Every year, phone manufacturers release new flagship phones, and in Samsung's case, they
do this twice a year.
And with the limited time of keynotes, its hard to really see what changed.
That's where I come in.
Hi guys, it's KJ the MiTechGuy here, and today I'm going to be comparing the cameras found
on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ and S10+.
These were both released this year, so I'm really curious what changes, if at all, Samsung
made to the image processing.
In this video, I'll be comparing the cameras in various lighting conditions, both indoors
and outdoors, and I'll also take a look at the video and audio qualities of both phones.
Make sure to stick around to the end of the video to see how phenomenal the night mode
on the Note 10+ is.
Both phones were set to automatic.
Let's get right into it.
Outside of a small difference in telephoto camera apertures, the camera systems on both
phones is identical.
They both have triple camera setups with 12 megapixel wide and telephoto cameras, and
16 megapixel ultrawide cameras.
They can both shoot 4K on both their rear and front facing cameras, but with the Note
10+, Samsung actually did away with the front depth camera, which didn't really add much
utility.
Both main selfie cameras are 10 Megapixels.
Now we're going to get into the side-by-sides.
We're going to first look at images shot in great lighting conditions, and then we'll
look at images shot in progressively worst lighting until we get to night shots.
Right off the bat, we can see that both phones capture some great pictures.
The S10 seems to have a bit more contrast in its shot, which we could see on the ground.
On the other hand, the Note 10 seems to have produced the slightly more vibrant photo.
These subtle differences will come down to personal preference.
| The differences in color are clearer in this next image.
If you're familiar with other smartphone cameras, I'd say that the S10 processes colors closer
to what the Google Pixels would produce with the more muted and contrasty look, whereas
the Note 10 seems to be processing colors more similarly to an iPhone with the slightly
warmer and more saturated image.
| The exact same trends hold for when I switched to the other cameras on the phones.
The ultrawide cameras really gave an awesome perspective, | whereas the telephoto cameras
did an great job of picking up details on everything in the image, even the buildings
that were pretty far away.
| Samsung phones have been known to slightly overexpose their images sometimes, and it
seems as if the Note 10 may have made slight improvements, but both still blow out most
of the color in the sky in instances like this where there is a lot happening in the
foreground with the sky showing in the background.
When we take a look at the portrait images of both phones, we can see that the S10 used
its ultrawide camera for depth whereas the Note 10 used its telephoto camera, making
for this difference in perspectives.
| I honestly think I like the colors better in the S10's portrait images.
The colors in the Note 10's portrait shots seem unnecessarily washed out, whereas the
S10 was able to still maintain a lot of the colors of my face.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
Before we get into the lower light images, let's take a look at the video and audio qualities
of both phones.
The S10 already took some impressive 4K video on each phone, so lets see how they stack
up.
When looking at the videos, I can say that there are slight differences in the ways both
phones process the colors, and I have to say that I'm liking the colors in the Note 10's
video.
However, I understand people who prefer the colors on the S10 because they look great
there too.
The biggest thing that I noticed in the video, however, was the image stabilization.
Everything from the panning to the walking just seemed significantly smoother in the
Note 10's video, which was a pleasant surprise.
Again, both phones took phenomenal video.
In terms of the front video qualities of both phones, I think there was a noticeable improvement
with the Note 10 in just about all aspects of the video.
It was more stable, was able to isolate my voice better in the audio, and overall the
video looked a lot better from the Note 10.
Colors were better defined and exposure throughout the image was a lot better and more consistent
on the Note 10.
The S10 always had this problem where it would just make everything seem a bit washed out,
but thankfully Samsung changed that with the Note 10.
So to nobody's surprise, both smartphones performed great in great lighting.
It's 2019, and that's just how it's supposed to be.
So for the rest of this video, we'll be taking a look at images shot in lighting that isn't
as ideal.
This lighting is challenging because the scene transitions from shadows at the bottom of
the image to the bright sky at the top of the image.
Surprisingly, I think the S10 surprisingly took the better image.
Every part of the image is better exposed on the S10's image.
And the S10 was actually still able to pick up the blues of the sky, which I can't say
the same for the Note 10.
| This next image is challenging because of the exposed light fixtures.
Both phones did a decent job, but in this case, the Note 10 did a better job of handling
the noise and haze caused by the direct exposure of the light fixtures.
This results in a more balanced image from the Note 10, in my opinion.
| In this next image, the lighting is even more challenging because not only are lighting
fixtures exposed, but also they are reflecting off the ground.
But at this point, I couldn't really make out any significant differences outside of
the fact that the Note 10 eliminated a bit more image noise than the S10 had.
| Here, we can see that again, there really just aren't any significant differences.
The S10 already took some incredible pictures when there was still some light out, leaving
little room for improvement, so honestly, I'm not too disappointed in the fact that
the pictures don't show too many differences when there is still light.
Now we'll see how the two smartphone camera systems compare when it got really dark.
Here in the US, the S10+ has no night mode, and has to solely rely on its f/1.5 aperture
mode to let in light.
However, the Note 10+ now has a night mode on all of its models, so let's see how much
that improves night pictures.
Here we can see how much night mode can improve images.
The S10's image is not bad at all, don't get me wrong.
But with night mode turned on the Note 10, its able to properly expose lighting fixtures
while picking up a lot of the lost detail throughout the rest of the image.
The extra 2-3 seconds to take the pictures is very much worth it.
| In auto, the Note 10 doesn't seem to show any significant improvements when put side-by-side
the S10, but as expected, | when night mode is turned on, the Note 10 is just able to
better expose light sources and bring in a lot more light.
I would say that it may have brought in a bit too much light for my liking, making it
look kind of hazy.
| The cool thing about night mode is that you can turn it on whenever on the Note 10.
So in a scenario like this that has relatively poor lighting, | you can turn on night mode
and let in more light and detail.
The difference is clear if we take a look at the detail preserved in the floor in the
Note 10's image.
| As you can expect, night mode isn't perfect though, and this image shows what it looks
like if I wasn't holding the Note 10 perfectly still while I took the picture.
It was still able to let in an impressive amount of light, but the details got smeared
because of my slight movement, even though I was making an effort to stay still when
taking the pictures.
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So going into this camera comparison, I didn't really have that many expectations.
I just thought the Note 10 would be better, but didn't know by how much.
But honestly, outside of maybe the front facing video and night mode capabilities, there weren't
any real significant improvements made to the camera.
If you have an S10, and were thinking of upgrading solely because of the camera, I don't think
that is the move.
Or if you were stuck deciding between the S10 and Note 10 because of the camera, I'd
say go S10.
The S10 still takes some incredible pictures by any standards, and some pictures I'd say
it actually did better than its older brother the Note 10.
But remember, this video was just comparing the two camera systems.
The Note 10 is an awesome phone and it's actually my daily driver at the moment, I just don't
think significant enough improvements were made to its camera to pick it over the S10
simply because of the camera.
If you choose the Note 10, it should be for other reasons.
Make sure to follow me on Instagram and Twitter to see what I'm up to.
As for this channel, expect to see lots of iPhone 11 and OnePlus 7t content soon, so
subscribe and have the notification bell clicked for those.
As always, thanks for watching, and I will see you in the next video.