#I mean we did punch that quote on quote hunk of metal but still
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Mercy, Sabotage, and Dead Space
(gif credit to @redwyyne-archive)
Part One of The Bet series
Pairing: Poe Dameron/Reader
Rating: Explicit
Word Count: 12.7K
Summary:
1. No sex.
2. No touching yourself.
3. No orgasms.
Warnings/Tags: DUBCON/NONCON elements, fuckboy Poe (OOC), Enemies to Lovers, degradation/humiliation, mentions of oral sex, SMUUUTTTTTTTT also I’m not sorry for what I did but you’re not allowed to read if you’re gonna get mad at me okay byeeee
***
This.
This shit, right here.
If the question was ever, “What’s the stupidest fucking thing you’ve ever let Poe Dameron somehow talk you into doing?” then the answer is this stupid shit, right the fuck here. This is like. You remember that one game, Mercy? The one where you’d dig your nails in and twist arms and just needlessly inflict pain on each other as children until one of you cried uncle because someone somewhere once decided to turn torture into a matter of pride?
You always thought those games were fucking ridiculous. Who can hold their breath the longest, who can handle a lit deathstick against their flesh the longest, who can take the hardest punch—who cares? It’s child’s play. It’s self-inflicted agony for the sake of bragging rights and even as a youngling, you refused to fall for it.
But then you met… fucking Dameron.
You know those people that… they don’t just rub you the wrong way, but literally every single aspect about their personality is sandpaper against wet skin and your whole entire being feels chafed raw just by existing in their general vicinity for an extended period of time?
You’re… you’re not usually a competitive—much less aggressive person. You never have been. It’s just not part of your nature. If you ever excel at anything in life, it isn’t because of some secret, deep-seated desire to win or be better than anyone else. You just… do you. You do whatever you do, and if it’s good, it’s good. And if it’s bad, it’s good. Because at the end of the day at least it’s still you, and you’re okay with that.
But this?
This shit? Right here?
“This is fucking dumb,” you say, because you know it’s what you both must be thinking so you may as well just get it out in the open. “This is the dumbest fucking thing, Dameron. What are we doing? Why are we doing this?”
The grumpy, orange-jumpsuited figure sitting behind you just sighs heavily and slumps even further down in his bucket seat, as if it isn’t the first time you’ve tried asking this incredibly valid question (it totally is), bringing a palm down to thunk the top of the guidance controls between his legs in a quiet irritation you’re almost certain has everything to do with the very topic you’re trying to bring up.
“Because,” comes that infuriating drawl. You can only see his face from this angle by looking at his reflection in the transparisteel barrier directly in front of you, but even just imagining the way his mouth moves while he rounds out the words makes your jaw clench. “The coordinates we picked up were scrambled and this rendezvous could be going down at any one of thirty-six locat—?”
“No,” you interrupt him with a scowl, “not why I’ve been floating in dead space in this Maker-forsaken ship with you for eight fucking hours a day since… fuck, what’s today? Thursday? Friday? Nope, can’t be Friday, Friday’s our off-day. Thursday, then. …Thursday?” You shake your head. “Ugh, see? Time doesn’t exist when I’m not allowed to cum, life is like one never-ending nightmare.”
“Oh.” He takes a second to think about it in silence, the calloused tips of his fingers scratching the side of his face while he considers. It wouldn’t usually be as loud as it is right now. Maybe it’s the haunting quiet of space surrounding the ancient powered down hunk of metal you’re both stuck in, inadvertently isolating and amplifying the sound—or maybe it’s because your copilot’s jaw is currently covered in a thick, dark beard that you swear barely took his testosterone-overloaded ass a fucking week or two to grow, if that. Regardless, the dark bristles crunch loudly under his short fingernails and it takes you about a grand total of five whole uninterrupted seconds of the scraping sound to realize you’re grinding your teeth along with it. “Well,” he finally says, “that was your stupid idea.”
“Hmmmmmmmno,” you contest firmly, wiggling your elbow back to poke at his shin with your index finger once, twice, thrice, until he finally slaps your hand away in quiet irritation. To the misfortune of you both—and likely the other hundred or so pilots concurrently taking rotating shifts in these tandem x-wings in a glorified mass stakeout, the cockpit of this ship is just way too fucking small. Your arm is squeezed uncomfortably against machinery and electronics to get to him from this angle and a light slap isn’t going to stop you now that you’re here. “You—” (poke) “—have a superiority complex and decided to turn it into a competition, not—” (poke) “—me.”
“Oh, I have a superiority complex, okay,” he scowls and nods in vehement, fake agreement, finally giving up and letting you poke at will, but the appeal is lost as soon as you realize he’s over it and your arm eases back into your lap. You watch his reflection look out of the viewport and scan the empty void of space for the twentieth time in the past five minutes, clearly just as desperate to get back to base as you are. “So what is it you call saying—wait, no no, not even saying, loudly declaring—‘Of course I can go longer without sex than “wham bam thank you ma’am” Dameron, you brainless fucks, it’s a simple fact!’”
“Alright—I don’t sound like that, fuck you very much,” you return, in reference to his shrieking, high-pitched impression of you surrounded by your fellow pilots in the rec room when you’ve had a bit too much to drink. “Also, you don’t have to finger-quote literally every single syllable of my fucking sentence, Dameron. First and last word, that’s all it takes. And if it’s so superiority complex-ey of me to state simple facts, then what is it you call saying ‘betcha two weeks worth of pay you can’t, pretty baby’?”
“Uh, easy credits?” He immediately asks, side-eyeing your reflection through the transparisteel. “ Easy credits. Just begging for it. Two weeks of your slutty, sexy, easy fucking credits just begging to be taken and used— ”
“You need to get laid,” you cut in to tell him bluntly, scrunching your nose in what you hope looks like disgust. As per protocol, the power to the x-wing was cut at the beginning of your shift—what feels like a fucking eternity ago—as a preventative maneuver in case the target falls out of hyperspace unexpectedly. Avoiding the scanners of a fleet that may never actually show means it’s cold and dimly lit in here—just starlight in front of either you, but you’re hoping he can gauge the severity of your revulsion with your back to him. “You just turned my money into a sex object. It was vile. I feel violated on its behalf.”
“Sounds like you’re the one who needs to get laid,” he tosses carelessly back at you, and you roll your eyes with as much sass as you can physically muster, so tired of all the dodging. You know this hasn’t been easy for him either, he just has too much pride to admit it. “Besides, you’ve gotta be past the withdrawal stage by now. Is it really all that bad?”
“The fuck you mean, ‘Is it really all that bad’?” You snap at him, shuffling around grumpily in your seat, hating the way the bulky weapons controls sit right between your thighs and prevent you from closing them. Withdrawal stage, ha. “Of course it’s all that bad. It’s horrible. It’s the fucking worst. And more importantly, how are you not having any trouble with this? Oh, wait—that’s right,” you answer yourself before he has a chance to. “Because you cheated.”
“I did not cheat,” Dameron’s reflection immediately challenges with an accusatory finger pointed at you. “I did not. When the fuck did I cheat? I swapped housing assignments with your shitty roommate and slept in the bunk below yours for a month and a half—all because you don’t believe in the honor system—just so you could tell me I fucking cheated?”
You scoff, feeling your annoyance spark even more. He’s always been able to get under your skin, but the neglect you’ve been forcing your body to endure is just throwing gasoline on an already roaring fire. “Okay, first of all? Rude. I am a fucking joy to have as a roomie, alright? I put up with your snoring, your 2:00 AM dinners, you blasting your radio while I’m trying to sleep, I barely complain about your body odor—”
“My snoring is adorable, I get snacky at night, only sad people with fucked up lives hate music, I smell amazing,” Dameron casually lists off on his fingers, the self-confidence so easy and unshakeable that you swear he’s almost preening at the compliments he just gave himself by the time he’s finished rebutting everything you can think to throw at him. And, while you’d never admit it, he does smell good. He smells… unbelievably fucking good. Always. Something dark and woodsy, you can never quite put your finger on. It pisses you off, so much that you’ve made a habit of pulling a face of disgust whenever the warm, rich scent noticeably reaches you, hoping it deflates his ego just a little bit. No such luck so far.
“Whatever. The point is I’m a good fucking neighbor, alright, I’m neighborly as fuck,” you grumble, crossing your arms over your chest defensively. “And don’t make it sound like I’m putting a chastity lock on your balls every night, because you can fuck anyone you want. In fact, I strongly fucking encourage it—I just want to know about it when it happens.”
Dameron smirks and you groan, already knowing what’s coming. “You wanna hear it?”
Yep, there it is. “Second of all—”
“Feel the whole bunk rock with it?” He goes on, completely ignoring you. “Use the excuse that you’re trapped up top so you can just stay there the whole time and listen? You know you can do a lot more than just—”
“Second of all,” you project over him, “you’re seriously telling me you haven’t had any wet dreams then, hm? No snorgasms? Hmmm? No happy naps? No captain midnights? No mattress fracking? Hmmmmmm???”
His voice very quickly sounds… shocked. “How many fucking euphemisms—?”
“Wait wait, one more—” you quickly interrupt, too much momentum to stop now, “—sleepskeet.”
You watch in immense satisfaction as his expression seems to progress through all five stages of grief, before he exhales a long, unamused sigh and scratches his beard again. You want to pluck each strand of it out of his face one by one. “Anyways. Wet dreams are totally different and don’t count.”
“It’s not different!” You burst out, unable to help yourself, “it’s an orgasm, and rule number three is no orgas—”
“I know what the rules were, Gold-Ten,” he returns calmly, and it infuriates you, how he’s always able to make it seem like you’re the instigator who’s overreacting. And he knows exactly what he’s doing by calling you by your flight designation, and it pisses you off even more because calling him Black-Leader in any other situation besides active warfare just feels like an unnecessary reminder of his skills. Why he’s currently behind you manning the guidance controls and why you’re currently stuck in the front seat with the bulkier weapons systems. “The question is if you’re seriously that bad enough of a sport to automatically disqualify me because of something that happens to any human with a dick indiscriminately when we blueball ourselves.”
“But that’s the entire fucking point, Dameron!” You shrill, throwing your hands in the air in pure exasperation. “There it is! You need it more than I do, you just said it yourself! Not to mention I said I can go longer without sex than you can— sex , not orgasms, but as it turns out I win at both. Now can we please call this shit off so I can finally cum? This isn’t fun anymore.”
“Nope,” he says immediately, popping the P with a bit too much hard emphasis to be genuinely amused. He’s frustrated, too—his voice is too pleased, too fake to not be masking irritation underneath. “Sorry. But this was also your stupid idea, so.”
“You’re insufferable,” you grumble, anger flaring equal to his, just way more… verbal. And descriptive. “Wet dreams don’t count, fucking right. Tell that to the oceans of Kamino I got going on down there, huh? I move on this seat wrong and I’ll slide off it—”
A loud slam of a palm against the controls suddenly echoes throughout the small cockpit, causing you to jump slightly.
“Don’t,” Dameron snarls, “... say shit like that to me. Not right now. Not right now, fuck .”
You go quiet for a moment, not expecting that much of an outburst at something you considered to be a throwaway remark, but then… oh. Something occurs to you, something… sinister. Oh, well, now there’s an idea.
Everything inside you immediately surges up and burns at the thought—the mere whisper of a way out of all of this, quickly, without giving in and letting him hold your surrender over you for Maker knows how long. It’s so fucking simple, you don’t know why you didn’t think of it before. You don’t have to wait him out at all; instead, you just need to… entice him into giving in first.
Neither of you say anything for a while, and you don’t know what he’s thinking (nothing, probably—a dry tumbleweed bouncing across an empty desert landscape, you imagine) but you take the dip in conversation to consider a plan. You can’t go at it too outright, it’ll be too big of a turnaround and he’ll see it coming lightyears away. A halfhearted joke about your pussy tossed out without thinking is what catalyzed the most substantial reaction from him you’ve seen, so… maybe you can keep steering the conversation towards the idea.
“How many wet dreams have you had?” You suddenly ask, your heart beginning to pick up in your chest as soon as the words are out of your mouth.
“Excuse me?” Dameron grunts from behind you, and you catch his reflection raising a thick eyebrow at you.
You take a deep breath and disguise it by stretching your back out just a little bit, lifting your shoulder blades and arching the sore muscles there, before settling back down in your normal crappy posture once more. “Now many times did you cum in your sleep? Had to at least been once for you to claim they don’t count.”
“Why does it matter?” He asks, completely sidestepping the question for the second time. “It was involuntary.”
You shrug. “Just so I know how many freebies I can get tonight.”
“No,” Dameron instantly counters, his voice dead serious. “Not fucking allowed.”
“Why not?” You ask, and this time, there’s significantly less challenge than you’d typically deliver it with. Instead, your voice is soft, questioning. Not argumentative, but curious, and there’s just enough of your point left unsaid that it’ll seem like he conjured the rest of the image himself.
There’s silence while he considers his response to the perfectly executed bait. You assume you’re both picturing the same thing, because it’s what you’ve pictured almost every single night spent in this celibate hellscape. The cool darkness of your shared quarters, the standard-issue sheets that still feel crispy and rough on your skin no matter how many nights you’ve slept in them, with one of your hands pressed tight over your mouth and two of your fingers circle your clit.
“You only get to do it if I’m in the room,” he poses instead, and you swallow thickly, feeling your body tighten with an unintentional drop of pure heat through your tummy at the thought. Maker, it must be really bad if Poe fucking Dameron is getting to you like this. The bane of your existence shouldn’t make your insides twist in on themselves—at least, not in a good way.
“Not like I’d have much choice,” you eventually respond, keeping it purposefully ambiguous. “It’s your room, too. Unfortunately.”
Stars, it’s been so long since you’ve done this, since you’ve walked the fine line between flirtation and seduction, wanting to turn on the charm slowly—gradually ease it up like a hyperdrive lever under your fingertips so that you’re at maximum by the time he realizes you’re even there. You take a moment to glance at his reflection, watching Dameron look back at you curiously, a flash of interest in his eyes.
“By the way, how does that one girl feel about us doing this?” You ask out of nowhere, suddenly remembering the existence of his pretty little number. You’ve seen her under his arm around base at least a few times, which is more than you can say for the rest of them. “Red-Six. Tall brunette with the tattoos—I don’t bother learning names, they all come and go.”
“Nihla,” Dameron nods with a wistful sigh, tilting his head to rest against his shoulder. “Or, wait… Neah. No—it was… Nalal. Yeah, Nalal, I think that’s right…”
“Unbelievable,” you mutter. “One of the greatest mysteries of the universe is how many people get in line for you, I’ll never fucking understand it.”
“They just want me for my cock,” he tells you without missing a single beat, sounding like he’s not joking in the slightest. “It was starting to get obnoxious. Glad I finally have an excuse to turn them down.”
“Unbelievable,” you repeat, stunned by how truly, mind-blowingly full of himself he is. “You’re… fucking…”
You end up just staring at him and making a sound somewhere between a laugh and a scoff, at a complete loss for words, and Dameron eventually shrugs and continues on after you fail to form a coherent thought in the allotted time frame he provides.
“Now I can just tell them I’m in a long-running bet with Gold-Ten over who can sexually deprive themselves the longest and weirdly enough, they don’t seem all that interested anymore,” he remarks, tilting his chin up and rubbing at his beard again, and for some reason… the sound of it bothers you somewhat less now, the way he phrased that resonating deeper inside you than it should. Lower than it should. You blink a few times, almost shocked by your body’s unprecedented response to his admission—Poe Dameron uses you as an excuse to turn down sex with pretty girls? Happily?—and your mind goes blank for a second while he watches you through the transparisteel. “It’s alright,” he eventually goes on, tilting his head. “Sometimes a sabbatical is good. I do really miss pussy, though.”
“Well,” you finally tell him, oddly not having much else to offer at the moment. “I’m sorry? And… you’re welcome. I guess.”
Dameron shrugs once more and makes an apathetic sound without opening his mouth, and you drop your stare down to the machinery between your spread thighs after feeling like you were looking at each other for too long. The position started uncomfortable and seven hours later, it’s still fucking uncomfortable. At first the discomfort twinged at your hips and lower back, but now the sensation seems to be… centering itself a bit more, finding a spot right between your legs, especially when his words echo through your subconscious and make you naturally want to push your thighs together. I do really miss pussy, though.
You try to snap out of it a bit, try to stop hyperfixating on the way your underwear has felt sticky and wet for fucking hours now, but it’s so fucking difficult to chill yourself out when your body already went into this whole situation with a month and a half long stumbling block. He’s not really doing anything at all—he’s leant back in his chair and staring out the window into the black emptiness of space when you steal a look once more, but something about how his casual responses are affecting you makes it seem like he’s the one currently seducing you.
Maker, you have to focus. You have to control yourself. You’re starting to feel a little warm in your thick jumpsuit—a particular shade of orange that does not compliment your complexion but you normally rejoice in wearing regardless. It’s baggy and uniform and hides most of your curves and most importantly, it keeps you toasty on missions like this. Space is cold —especially this far out in the Cauper Void, and there’s no fucking reason this powered down hunk of floating metal should feel as muggy and stifling as it does in here.
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” you suddenly hear yourself say, spontaneously, no thought put into it whatsoever. One last try, one last attempt to avoid it, a last-ditch go at flight before he gives you no choice and you’re left with this one remaining option. “This isn’t a good idea. It’s… not healthy. I don’t want to do this anymore.”
This gets a small chuckle out of him. “I know you don’t, pretty baby.”
“Then let’s just call the whole thing off,” you propose once again, trying to lighten your tone, make it a… a friendly thing. It sounds so fake, even to your own ears—since when would you be desperate enough to let the dreaded petname slide?—but granted, you know what they say about time and measures and all that shit. “We can call it a tie, just go back to the way things were befo—”
He cuts you off and pins you with his gaze through the reflection. “You realize that you begging me to put an end to your suffering is—ridiculously hot, mostly—but also only an incentive to make me keep pushing until you finally give in?”
You groan and comb some of your hair off your forehead, not liking the way it’s getting just the slightest bit damp. “Fine, we won’t call it off, but can we at least just stop—” You immediately catch yourself, not wanting to unintentionally push this too far too quickly, but your hesitation is clear and compelling enough for him to prompt you.
“At least just stop what?” Dameron asks, and though you don’t think it’s intentional or even noticeable from his perspective, something about the way his voice sounds… husky. Low to the ground.
“Stop dragging it out,” you breathe, your heart pounding. Why is your heart pounding so fucking fast? This is a fucking sting op, a facade, so why are you getting so caught up in the lie you’ve spun for yourself? “Finish it. Sooner, rather than later. Quit being masochists about it, just fucking put it to—”
Maker, your eyes instinctively snap to his at your poor choice of wording, having almost said bed on complete accident. Genuinely, you didn’t mean to phrase it that way, but at the same time, the thought of it almost burns you alive. Fuck. Dameron, and you, in bed. It could be mean. It could be rough. A fight for dominance more than anything. He’s bigger than you and he could make it fucking hurt, especially after going without it for as long as you have, but something about how double-edged that type of relief would be isn’t really sinking in for you right now. Like a person slowly dying of thirst that’s fantasizing about drowning. Regardless, the idea of a night with him and the sudden assortment of vivid imagery it provides is enough to get you to shut up and take a deep breath, just wait with your mouth shut for whatever his response is.
Unfortunately, you don’t have to wait long at all.
“This is cute,” he suddenly tells you, and you jerk back and sputter a bunch of consonants stupidly like he smacked you.
“Fuck you?” Are the first recognizable words that can be heard. “I’m not—this isn’t fucking— cute?”
“It’s cute,” Dameron repeats, hiding a soft smile from you with a few of his fingers pressed to his lips. “You,” he says as he points at your reflection, twirling his finger around in circles, “trying to be all sneaky about it, go about your little performance. It’s like… watching a little kid just blatantly fuck up a magic trick but they’re naive enough to think it’s working. Keep going, I’m enthralled.”
You hold still for just a second as ice suddenly sinks through your tummy and clears away any trace of warmth you may have once felt from before. Of course. Stupid. Stupid, you shouldn’t have even tried something like that, you don’t know why you thought…
Horrifyingly, you go dead silent and the lack of an immediate response from you hangs awkwardly in the still air. You’re usually so quick with him, so fiery, letting the things he throws at you just glide right off you, but for some insane reason, you’re actually fucking… embarrassed? A little bit?
You should say something, but your whole body is just frustratingly blank, almost buzzing in mortification, and it gets worse and worse the longer you stay quiet. You don’t usually put yourself in a position to be compromised, and you certainly didn’t think the place he decided to jab this time had particularly thin skin.
You… you’d forgotten what it’s like to have someone laugh at you when you’re genuinely trying your best to flirt.
Well, it’s too late to say anything now, you think. Now it’s just uncomfortable in here—true discomfort, not the typical angry silences. You’re used to that, you’re used to huffing and crossing your arms and ticking your jaw through the breaks in conversation, refusing to say a word because you’re beyond pissed off. This is different. This quiet sits different in the air, this emotion hits different in your chest, somewhere vulnerable. A crack in your armor he found without even necessarily intending to, but at this point, the stupid way you can’t seem to hide the wound from him is just as much to blame.
“So, uh…” Dameron clears his throat as you shut your eyes tight against the awkwardness, but you can still feel a strange little shift in the air from behind you. There’s something about the enclosed space, the quiet darkness surrounding you both, you feel… too close to him. Sharing his air, feeling the energy when it’s cramped and you’re not able to just get up and storm away from him like normal. You don’t like it. You don’t like that you can immediately tell something has changed without being able to see him, that type of intimacy between you is pushing a boundary you can’t quite pinpoint but know exists.
You snap your eyes open and look over at Dameron’s reflection when he’s quiet for too long, and though you try to glare as fiercely as possible at him while you do it, the look on his face almost stops you dead. The pure intensity raging in his expression, the way he’s got his eyes narrowed, flicking back and forth between yours, carefully studying you, wondering if perhaps he may have gotten it all wrong. “I mean, y’know. Theoretically speaking, and all. If I broke, you’d let me fuck you?”
You… aren’t expecting that.
You don’t know why but your heart suddenly starts to race again, but it’s not the same as before. Before it was speeding up and at an angle, like a rocket trying to escape a body’s gravitational pull, to go somewhere, search for something. This time it just feels like it’s ricketing downhill, unsteady and out of control, about to break apart with every single pothole that rattles and slams through you. Shit. You didn’t expect the ultimatum would be presented to you so up front like that—you thought there’d be… some resistance, at least.
Fuck, you take way too fucking long thinking about it, and your face feels warmer and warmer the more you mentally pick apart his specific phrasing, wondering where you should even begin. You still haven’t said anything, but the damage is already done. What should've been a firm, instantaneous go fuck yourself is left suspended, unanswered, open for interpretation. You miss your window of opportunity to shut him down, you overshoot it by a longshot, and then you feel that spark of a what-if flare deep down once more.
No, fucking stop it. Stop it. Maker, your eyes do everything they can to not look at him while you concentrate and work to tap into your anger, stoking the flames of your fire to avoid feeling… temptation. How dare he? How fucking dare he do this to you, especially when there’s no chance to get out of here, to abort mission and cut your losses? You clench your jaw and isolate that fury, magnify it until it’s the only thing you can feel anymore.
“My turn now,” Dameron eventually breaks the silence to clarify, blinking at you, and by this point you’re so fucking pissed off that you don’t recognize that isn’t actually a question.
“No,” you immediately snap, strung far too thin to deal with this new, treacherous territory with him. Defaulting to normal is best, it’s easier. “No, it’s not your turn, and fuck no, you can’t fuck me, not even if it means I win this stupid bet. No to everything that has anything to fucking do with you, alright? Don’t talk to me. You’re lucky if I agree to sleep in the same fucking room as you tonight. And—and?—I think your beard looks dumb.”
Okay, so maybe the last part was just a little bit childish, but you’re in such a bad fucking mood and you want to insult something he’s clearly just trying out for right now, hasn’t yet solidified as part of his usual appearance and unshakeable confidence in it. It’s a downright lie—you think he might look more attractive with it than he ever has. Effortlessly rugged and masculine, framing his face and making his eyes all the more piercing.
You don’t think it works, but regardless, he heeds your sharp words and says nothing for a good few minutes at least. You had hoped the break in interaction would allow you the ability to reset a little bit, give yourself time to work through it, but it’s like the pressure in the air steadily increases regardless of how silent it is in here—or perhaps, because of it.
You can’t help it. You flick your eyes to the transparisteel in front of you once more and catch his reflection staring directly at you, unmoving. It jars you as much as it sparks your anger, and you glare down at your hands and give him a few seconds. A few seconds of grace, of mercy, before you try again.
Sure enough, he’s still got his dark eyes pinned to you when you go to check once more, like he’s actually fucking thinking about something right now, which is just… astounding, for obvious reasons. Mainly, the nerve of him. The fucking nerve of him to be able to look at you like that, like he’s just entitled to study your every feature, searching your eyes for things you’ve never looked deep enough to find within yourself, making incredibly loud assumptions with his mind that he has absolutely no right to be making.
“Shut up,” You snap at him defensively, feeling like you’re sweating buckets even in the freezing emptiness of dead space. You can’t figure out if it’s a cold sweat or if your body is legitimately just malfunctioning under his stare. “Shut up.”
You watch as his reflection suddenly drops his head back against the seat and rolls out the stiffness of his neck, blinking his eyes shut and raising his eyebrows like you’re completely overreacting, like he has absolutely no idea. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You’re not that dumb,” you challenge. “You’re… plotting. Evil plotting.”
A thick eyebrow drops so that only one is quirked up, and a grin pulls at his lips.
“You’re right,” Dameron admits casually after a moment with his eyes still closed, his voice pitched low in the cramped ship. “I was thinking about what it’s gonna take to get you to lose.”
You swallow against the dryness in your throat, starting to unintentionally bounce one of your legs up and down without even realizing it. Fuck, this ship is small, it’s too fucking small in here—you gaze wistfully out at the vast endlessness of space, wanting to grit your teeth at the irony of being surrounded by the one thing you so desperately wish you had.
“I just have to find a weakness,” he shifts forward in his seat and reveals to you, bewilderingly shameless in his honesty. Like all of a sudden you’re an accomplice to this endeavor instead of its target, as if he isn’t spoiling the secret by letting you in on it. “Something that you like, that gets you going. Something that riles you up, gets you all hot and bothered down there—”
“So you can exploit it,” you huff, slouching over a bit and trying not to sound like you’re pouting.
“—so I can exploit it,” he finishes happily, collapsing back into his seat like he’s glad you caught on so quick and he doesn’t have to explain further. “Now we can do the whole routine—the bickering, the tension, the undeniable sexual chemistry we have—or we can skip all that and you can just tell me flat out what it’s gonna take to rev that pretty little engine up, because I want it purring.”
And, it’s so fucking weird, because the specific verbiage that would normally make you cringe just hearing it spoken aloud doesn’t inspire the typical response, even though it feels like it should. It feels like you should be grossed out, it feels like a moment you should screw up your facial expression and act offended, but you’re… not. This is actually fucking working, it’s unbelievable. The undeniable fact infuriates you just as much as it stumps you.
“You do realize that everything you say is a game that two can play at, right?” You point out, not really sure where you’re going with this but feeling heated about it all the same. “What’s stopping me from exploiting something you like?”
“See now that’s a great idea,” Dameron announces, clapping his hands together happily and sending you jumping a few inches in your seat at the sudden sound, your hand automatically shooting up to rest on your thumping heart. “I can tell you what I like, and you can just listen.”
Alright, no, wait—backtrack—
“How about I tell you what I don’t like,” you snip breathlessly, tucking your hair behind your ear and feeling all the blood rush to your cheeks. Default to normal, default to normal. “Your fucking attitude. Your demeanor. The way you talk down to me. You don’t listen. You walk around like you’re such hot shit just because you’re a good pilot but none of that means anything when you don’t ever fucking listen. You’re terrible at it, doesn’t matter who’s talking—you don’t listen to me, you don’t listen to people who actually like you, you don’t listen to orders, you don’t listen to reason—”
“You think I’m a good pilot?” He suddenly asks, and you have to take a second. This cockpit isn’t designed for anything other than sitting, much less turning all the way around, but you’re sure you can find some way to throttle him from here. He chuckles as you let out the loudest sigh you’ve ever heard yourself make—which, is an incredible feat you think both of you should be congratulated for—before Dameron eventually carries on. “You could tell me that,” he admits with a shrug, a hidden smile on his face that he’s trying to bite back. “Or you could tell me the truth.”
You shouldn’t encourage him, but you just can’t fucking help it. There’s something inside you, something you can only compare to a morbid sort of curiosity. Maybe you’re just a glutton for punishment, even more so than agreeing to this bet has already confirmed. “And that would be—?”
“That you use anger as a defense mechanism because I touch a nerve you didn’t realize you had,” Dameron replies breezily. “Have since the moment we met. And that you maybe want me to touch something else, but you’re too stubborn and proud and committed to hating me to ever admit it. You can admit it, it’s okay, I can touch whatever you need me to tou—”
“How about the emergency eject button?” You hiss, finally feeling your frustration peak. “Pop the top on this bitch. Put me out of my fucking misery, right now. You’ve got such a big head that the blood flow will probably keep your tiny little brain warm enough as long as you strap yourself down beforehand, I’ll wait. And then you can go back to base, alone , and find another poor girl to emotionally torture since you probably don’t get enough of it from the ones you work your way through but can never remember the most basic things about.”
Remarkably, that actually shuts him up. You’re doubtful the jab really hurts him, but you’re not going to feel bad about it either way. He deserved that. You cross your arms over your chest and don’t even bother looking at him, huffing and flushed with the climax of your ferocity, now left feeling strangely exhausted in its wake. Eventually your breathing evens out and disappears into the silence, until nothing at all can be heard.
It’s like that for a moment—only a moment, before the loud tearing of velcro suddenly shreds through the quiet in the cockpit, completely rattling you. Automatically your eyes shoot over to his reflection, watching large hands pull the orange jumpsuit apart at his chest and then shrug it over broad shoulders. It’s not sexual. It can’t be sexual, because there’s just no fucking room to allow it—it takes him forever to pull the long sleeves down his arms, but the way he drags it out somehow just increases your anticipation for an event you should have absolutely no interest in spectating. He’s wearing a white sleeveless undershirt underneath and the jumpsuit bunches at his waist, making him look all the longer and more defined as he finally collapses back into his seat and reclines in it, the distant constellations bathing his lean torso in dim speckles of starlight.
Your gaze catches on every good part of him—it falls down the muscular lines of his neck and follows the thin gold chain wrapped around it, disappearing into the white of his scooping neckline. His toned body finds a place to rest and stretch out without looking awkward or uncomfortable, coarse hair darkening his jaw and dusting the strong lines of his forearms—but it’s his eyes that make your heart stutter. They’re endlessly deep and dark and knowing , and you can’t seem to look away from him, not even when he opens his mouth to address you.
“You’re always so fucking mean to me,” Dameron remarks, and for just a split second—just a split second, you feel a stab of regret. “I should eat you out tonight.”
Fuck, he hits the nail right on the head on his very first try, and just hearing the words come out of his mouth so effortlessly makes your pussy clench in on itself in need. Nothing about his inflection changed from one sentence to the next, nothing in his voice made it seem like he just flipped the fucking galaxy upside down with just a few words. To an onlooker who doesn’t speak Basic, they’d have absolutely no hint as to why your face is suddenly radiating heat at an industrial capacity, blazing hot enough to warm the whole cockpit. You feel like you’re literally burning up with it. You have to put a palm to your cheek to make sure it’s not actually on fucking fire. “What— what did you just say to me?”
“That’s what you need,” he drawls, unbothered by the sharpness of your tone. “What you’ve needed, ever since I can remember. Should’ve done it a long fucking time ago, now that I’m thinking about it. How long’s it been? Tell me the truth, I know it’s been awhile.”
You feel like you’re being roasted alive like one of those hairy little Kowakian monkey-lizards that you’re pretty sure have sentient designation but are the first to be skewered and cooked over the firepit regardless. Your heart is slamming against your sternum and you scramble to come up with an even slightly clever response after such an ambush.
“This is your plan?” You raise an eyebrow at him, feeling a bead of sweat drop down your temple and onto the corner of your lashes. Oh fuck, be cool, be cool. “You think this is gonna work? Ask me if I want a weak orgasm and rugburn on my thighs?”
“I can shave,” Dameron proposes quietly, lifting his chin and gently scrubbing the side of his cheek. The sound of the thick bristles against his fingers makes you swallow thickly and push back very vivid thoughts of how his face would feel between your legs. How soft and wet his mouth would feel at the center of that thick, coarse beard. “Tonight, I’ll shave it off. Make it nice and smooth for you.”
Something inside you surges up to assure him he absolutely should not shave, and you actually have to bite your tongue to keep it buried at the last second. Stars, that was a close one, what the fuck prompted that?
“I don’t give a shit what you do,” you quickly return, resisting the urge to wipe your brow. “Beard or no beard, makes no difference. Foreplay is overrated, I’m not big on wasting time.”
“Oh, you poor thing,” he immediately laments—so quick , and the worst part is that the sympathy in his voice actually sounds sincere. You’re having trouble looking him in the eyes right now, hearing the genuine pity come through in his tone. “Who… who did this to you?”
“You said you want to figure out what I like, what turns me on,” you return, tucking your hair behind your ear once more and trying not to sound self-conscious. Maker, how long until your shift is over? You need to get out of here, this shit is… way out of your league. “I’m not into it, so try again.”
“Really?” Dameron takes a moment to look at you, furrow his thick eyebrows at you in barely concealed curiosity, before his head tilts sideways and drops to his shoulder. “Normally I’d respect that, but I meant it when I said you need it.”
“We fucking hate each other, Dameron,” you hiss, a reminder to him as much as it is to yourself. Fuck, you really don’t like where this is going. “You don’t know anything about me, you don’t know what the I n—”
“I bet you think we’d fuck hard,” he murmurs, low enough that you have to take an unsteady breath and physically brace yourself for whatever is going to come from that dirty mouth next. “You think that maybe I’d throw you around a little, give it to you from behind, teach you a fucking lesson for always talking back to me. But that’s primitive shit, Gold-Ten, that’s not for you.”
Resist. Resist . You’re part of the fucking Resistance, for Maker’s sake, you’re taught to hold out until death in torture scenarios. Since when did this tin can suddenly become a new POW camp simulation you have to train for?
“I want to take you apart so slow that you can’t talk at all,” Dameron continues quietly, and you close your eyes, biting your bottom lip hard enough to sting. “We don’t even have to fuck—I mean, I want to, but mostly I just want to taste you. Go nice and slow. I want you on your back, so I can look in your eyes and see all that anger just… fade away. I want to watch you try to fight how fucking good I’ll make it. How hot it’s gonna be when you can’t glare at me anymore, when your pretty doll eyes go all soft and sweet and you finally realize that I’ve never hated you at all.”
Maker. This is a trick. It’s not a question, it shouldn’t be presented like one—this is a dirty rotten trick , and you’re not gonna fall for it. You can’t fucking fall for it. It’s a low blow, and you refuse to even acknowledge he said anything at all. He’s lying to get your guard down. He laughed at your flirting. He’s a shit person, he’s using you, this isn’t real.
Real or not, you still gulp loud enough for him to hear it.
“We could go back to our room after our shift is over,” he offers out of the blue, and you have no clue why, but when he pauses and lets it hang in the air for a second, you don’t interrupt him. You stay completely silent while he waits for you, waits for your typical snarky comeback. You have it in your head instantly, you know what you’d normally say. Your room. It’s not ‘our’ room, it’s fucking your room that you’re generous enough to let him bunk in, a privilege he’s this fucking close to losing—but you can’t find it in yourself to say it right now. Your anger is gradually losing the war to your arousal and you’re forced to watch every single small defeat inside you happen from the sidelines.
His reflection blinks at you through the transparisteel, his eyebrows raising just slightly at your prolonged silence, before he suddenly sits up a little and leans forward.
“And I could lock the door,” Dameron continues, lowering his voice, both in volume and register. “The lights in there are way too fucking bright but I don’t want to be in complete darkness, so maybe we can turn them off and open the port shade, let just enough light come through to see. I could turn on the radio, find something quiet, easy to listen to. Something you like, I’ll let you pick it out. And then… Wait, hang on, which bed?”
You clench your jaw and purposefully say nothing even as your pussy squeezes, glaring right through his reflection into the black void of space.
“Mmm. Your bed,” he eventually decides. “I want you comfortable. You shower at night. Your hair will be wet and you’ll be in those baggy pajamas that you think I can’t see your nipples through, the ones that I know you take off under your covers and then put on in the morning when you think I’m still asleep. That’s good, I want you relaxed, so that maybe… maybe you’d let me take your panties off at some point. And you could lay back and open your legs, and I could go down on you for a little while. However long you need.”
Fuck.
No, this isn’t fucking happening. Your lower muscles aren’t twisting in so hard that it actually fucking hurts, your pussy isn’t leaking through two layers of fabric under your jumpsuit, your body isn’t outright revolting against the sheer neglect you’ve put it through. Maker, it’s fucking painful. You have to clench your hands into fists and dig your fingernails into your palms before you can open your mouth.
“You want to know what I need?” You nearly wheeze, a drop of sweat sliding down the back of your neck this time. Your body feels like it’s three sizes too big for this cockpit and your skin feels like it’s three sizes too small for your body. “I need you to shut the fuck u—”
“What you need,” Dameron purrs, sliding up closer behind your seat and sighing soft against the worn material of your headrest, “is a warm mouth to cum in. Don’t be shy, pretty baby, you can tell me.”
You growl out his last name as threateningly as you possibly can before he purrs yours right back in your ear, and fuck, you’ve never heard it sound so sexual before. Last names allow pilots to maintain a respectful distance from each other. Flight designations are Resistance-wide, but last names are just… allies. Not friends, not companions, but a vast network of people brought together by a common enemy. It hurts to lose a first name. But the way yours sounds rolling off of Dameron’s tongue is just too sinful, too intimate when calling you that is meant to sever intimacy by design. He says it slow and makes it dirty, muddies it in the back of his throat as he slides up even closer to you, until his face is right next to yours as you stare at each other through the transparisteel.
“I’m really…” he pauses, before exhaling through his nose and swallowing thick enough to make his Adam’s apple drop and bounce up again, his tongue coming out to wet his plush lips as he blinks slowly at you with a heavy gaze, “… really good at it. Call me Poe and I’ll do it for you all night.”
Shit, your pussy is just a fucking mess right now. It feels like it’s melting sweet and syrupy all over your thighs, throbbing and pounding and clamping up and screaming at you to do something, at least press your hand down there to alleviate some of the aching tensi—
No— stars, no touching yourself is rule number two. You drop your hands to your thighs and squeeze them, trying to reign yourself back in.
“I think you’re—just projecting,” you try, but turns out responding in general is just an all-around bad idea. Nothing about it comes out right. The ‘just’ sounds like your tongue is stuck to the roof of your mouth and your voice cracks on the word ‘projecting,’ but you don’t even have time to be self-conscious or embarrassed at how much you’re giving yourself away—all your energy has to go towards fighting the tightness between your open legs, how you’re so fucking turned on that you’re worried you’ll cum without even touching yourself. Oh Maker, can you imagine? How fucking proud of himself he’d be? You can’t let that happen, but fuck, holding back something so appealing is so much harder than it sounds.
Tap into that anger, tap into that anger—only, you can’t suddenly find it. Where’d it go? Fuck, doesn’t matter, conjure it. Quick, before it’s too late, get mad —don’t let him lure you into a… a false…
Dameron tilts his chin down towards the line of your shoulder and then slowly turns his head towards your neck, breathing you in gently.
A false sense of…
His soft exhale makes goosebumps break out all the way down your arms.
… What?
“Maybe you’re right,” Dameron acknowledges, talking just under your ear. You watch his eyelids dip and the dark beard brushes against your skin and you catch just a hint of that woodsy, spicy scent engulfing you. Like… teakwood, maybe? Stars, you don’t know, you think you’re starting to lose your mind. What the fuck does teakwood even smell like? “Maybe it’s just what I need. You should exploit it, chances are I’ll still cum first.”
That rockets another painful spasm down low. It hurts so fucking bad—fuck, maybe you could… rub yourself up against these weapons controls? Just a little bit? That joystick, right there, just ease yourself up against it just to nurse this wound a little bit…?
No, fucking— bad. That’s bad, you have to stop—
“This isn’t real, this isn’t—y-you just…” You flutter your eyelashes shut, digging your fingernails into your thighs like it’ll help break through the fog of his lulling voice, how fucking amazing he smells right now. “You just want to win th-the b—”
“ Fuck the bet,” he tells you quietly, his head dipped low enough now that his lips brush against your neck, and you shudder so hard at the sensation that your shoulder almost knocks into his chin with it. “You really think I’m doing all this for a fucking bet?”
Don’t trust him, don’t trust him, don’t—
Your deep breath is so stuttery and uneven that it’s technically just a series of shallow inhales all anxiously strung together, too desperate for oxygen to go about it legato. It’s painfully obvious to him by now, it has to be, but you very quickly miss the shaky breathing as soon as he takes away your ability to do it all together.
“Let me taste you,” he whispers, his voice almost breaking with how gentle it is, how it sounds like it flips in and out of his register when he speaks this low. “Right now, let’s make it real, let m—I know you have to be soaking fucking wet, baby, just let me try a little bit of it, please—I’m… holy shit, I’m so hard just thinking about it.”
“You c-can’t,” you stammer, reaching up to pinch the bridge of your nose in frustration. At him, at the situation, at the painful throb of emptiness between your legs. “Fuck, it’s not allowed, it’s against the rules—”
“It won’t be,” he assures you, and you hiccup when you suddenly feel his hand brush against your side, strong fingers branching out to curve against your ribcage. “You don’t have to do anything, you can stay just like this. Just a few seconds and then I’ll stop, I promise.”
Oh, Maker, it’s on the very top of your tongue, so unbelievably close to telling him something—but you don’t know what it should be. You’re right at the tipping point, on a tightrope right between what you want and what you should want. And, knowing you’re this close to giving in, Dameron slowly eases his hand down your side and starts to trail it inwards, and just the lightest brush of his warm tongue against your neck shatters any composure you have left.
You whimper and instinctively try to close your legs, but you fucking can’t— your knees are forced wide apart by controls and your whole body freezes when his hand slides down and folds gently along the curve of your pussy through the thick fabric of your jumpsuit.
The feeling of being held like this by him is just too good , cradled so perfectly in his palm as he opens his mouth and flutters his tongue out to taste your skin again, giving you a little more of it this time and letting you feel the roughness of his beard with the way his lips move. Your breath catches, then he hooks his fingertips up just the slightest bit and pulls back, and you suddenly have to smack your whole hand over your face in a terrible attempt to stifle your loud gasp.
“Oh, Maker, I c-can’t,” you stammer against your fingers, not being able to trust him or your own body. You continue to protest even after he moves back up, resting his palm low on your abdomen, letting the heat bleed through the fabric and transfer directly to your floor muscles as he lifts his head up from your shoulder. “I can’t, we can’t, I…”
You can’t see him, but you know he’s looking at you. He’s staring right at you through the reflection, studying the way you’re hiding your face from him, how you’re still melting, still losing your composure just from the warm palm pressed tight your tummy.
His touch leaves you for a second. But then the deafening sound of velcro ripping at the crotch of your jumpsuit has you dragging your hand down your mouth and your eyelids dipping.
“Dameron,” you breathe into your fingers, just as his carefully slip into the small opening and begin to work at the button to your pants. “Dameron, this isn’t—you don’t want—”
“You don’t get to tell me what I don’t want,” he grunts at you, and you try not to bite yourself at the sound of him unzipping things and yanking fabric to the side. “What I really fucking want is the real thing, but I guess this’ll have to do for now.”
“I—” Your mind whirs desperately, trying to process when his fingers wedge under your panties and down. But he doesn’t give you a single fucking second. As soon as the tip of his middle finger reaches your slit, he’s dropping it and sliding it through your slick, hot, unbearably neglected cunt.
“Fuck,” he spits, and you feel like you might be about to break your own fucking jaw with how hard you’re clutching it, trying so desperately not to make a noise. The pad of his finger is rough and calloused as it drags against your clit in slow, tight circles, and you clamp your eyes shut and try to breathe normally, but it’s no use. Fuck , it’s been so long . You’ve been aching for it for a full fucking month and a half now and you know that even if he couldn’t feel it, he can hear how drenched you are right now. It’s making an obscene sound as he steadily masturbates you with one heavenly finger, giving your body what it’s desperately craved for so many weeks. “Fuck, baby’s pussy got fucking wet hearing me talk about how good I’d lick it, huh?”
That sends a bright flare launching through you and you gasp raggedly, both hands whipping out to snatch at his forearm where it disappears between your legs. “No, shit, wait, stopstopstopstop stop , I—”
His hand slips out immediately and yet you continue to tremble like his finger is still right there, like your clit is just imagining it so vividly that it’s successfully convincing itself of the illusion. The aching bit of flesh is burning, that good burn, the one that’s searing and bright that makes your muscles continue to chase the sensation long after the stimulation is gone. Fuck, he almost made you cum. He barely touched you for a few seconds and yet your fingers have to tighten into claws to slow your body down the fuck down, flexing against your thighs and trying your best to halt the impending climax.
By the time you’re able to wrangle yourself back from the edge and look at his reflection, his middle finger is already in his mouth and he’s blinking slowly at you, his pupils blown wide. You’re breathing hard at him, staring open-mouthed at the way his lips are closed below his second knuckle, how he takes forever dragging it back out again. You have to close your eyes. You have to clamp them shut and keep them that way, knowing you won’t be able to look at him through whatever he’s going to say next.
Except, oddly, he doesn’t say much.
“Shit,” he breathes, dropping his mouth to your neck once more. “Shhhit. I…”
Your eyes snap open in sudden, blind panic when he doesn’t continue, horrified at the possibility that he doesn’t like it. Dameron always has something to say, he doesn’t go speechless. “Oh—Maker, is it not—?”
“Mmmfuck, just—” he grits, panting hot air against your skin, “—fuck. Give me a second.”
You can only see the crown of his head with the way he’s angled, but you can see his shoulders a little further back. They start… moving slightly. Just the littlest bit, a smooth motion, like his whole body is slowly easing back and forth—
The nav controls are between his legs, you immediately realize. He’s grinding up against them with how close he is to you and your seat.
And suddenly, it’s like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. A ray of sunshine that breaks through the raging storm. Dameron might cum in his pants like this. Which means you’ll win, and arguably more importantly, you’ll finally be able to cum. You don’t even take a moment to consider the potential consequences—how you’re going to have to withstand the stimulation until he succumbs to it, how you’ll have to outlast—but you’re not thinking straight. You’re not really thinking at all.
“You can…” you suddenly hear yourself whisper, and your heart pounds in your throat when he instantly stops moving. “One… one more. If you want. You can put your finger inside this time, it’s where I’m the… w-wettest.”
“Fuck,” Dameron croaks into the crook of your neck, his voice scraping low and rough and sending a tremor through you. “Fuck, okay, yeah—”
His hand slides across your hip and down, but you catch him just in time.
“But don’t touch my clit.” You try to sound as firm as possible through the breathlessness, still trying to put your foot down even when you’re giving in, and Dameron’s teeth come out as he stifles a soft groan into your neck in response.
“Yes, baby,” he murmurs obediently as his hand sinks down once more, and so diligently, he avoids it altogether. His fingers slide under your panties and fall straight down to your entrance, down to where you know you’re the hottest, where your pussy is flexing and pushing wetness out with a steady, wicked throb. The pad of his middle finger presses gently against the tight muscles there, rubs just the slightest bit to feel that resistance, and then the length of it eases inside you so slowly that your knees rattle against bulky metal.
“Fucking Maker , ” he hisses as he slides it in, his body making a sudden jerk against the controls.
Your eyes roll back at the feeling of something inside you after so long, after such a torturous buildup, and you grasp at his forearm again when it curls naturally up against searing pleasure. Oh, it’s so good, it’s so good, your hands shake while he very carefully moves it in and out, the raw sparks of heat threatening to incinerate you as your muscles cling to every ridge of his finger. He gets it sopping wet, bathes it so completely in your slick that you’re almost certain it’ll come out pruny and drenched.
“Shit, okay,” you pant, squeezing desperately around his finger, “o-okay, fuck, that’s enough.”
His hand pulls out… slower this time. He slips his finger out of you quick enough, but he drags the tip of it through your folds as he retreats, just barely grazing your clit and making you jolt in your seat. Shit, you don’t know if it felt intentional enough to fault him for it—mostly it just excites you, thrills you to have him edge you like this without really needing to put any effort at all into it.
Dameron lifts his head to sink his finger deep into his mouth once more, and you tremble as you watch him enjoy it, staring at the way his shoulders seem to relax as soon as your taste is on his tongue, how his face goes soft with it and he almost slumps.
Relief. Genuine, not embellished. He still doesn’t say anything after he slowly slides it out and blinks at you, no sugar sweet drawl telling you how amazing you taste, no candied words to make you give in and let him have another go. You’re both breathing hard at each other, staring, waiting to see who will break first.
Stars, you… fucking like this. You want him to keep going, but you can’t offer it again. It’s just too exposing, too revealing to let him you’re actually really fucking enjoying this, you can’t—
“Do you w—?” Your voice automatically comes out through the silence without your permission, sounding just absolutely fucking wrecked by this point, but his palm is already slithering back down as soon as you speak, and you make the softest little submissive noise in your throat at him taking immediate initiative like that. He’s not as careful about it this time—his hand finds its target with less frill, his finger slides in quicker, sinking deep into your heat with little hesitation, lighting you on fire from the inside out, and you bite the meat of your thumb to stay quiet.
“Fuck, this is so hot,” he suddenly breathes next to your ear while your legs spasm and you gasp brokenly. “This is so—fuck, pretty baby letting me do this to her, I can’t fucking believe—”
Dameron eases a second finger inside you this time, letting you feel that delicious stretch from this angle, unable to lift your legs or shuffle around to help and subsequently resigned to simply experience it the way he gives it to you. Your teeth have probably permanently indented your bottom lip from how hard you’re clamped down, a testament to how much you’re trying to hold back the loud moan you miraculously haven’t released yet. Somehow it makes it sexier, not letting him hear you, not having your own noises to drown out the spark of urgency in his voice beginning to peek through.
Shit, it’s too much. You can only let him touch you a few seconds at a time before you feel that familiar tug towards mind-numbing bliss, and the more he does it, the more appealing that feeling then becomes. It’s teasing you, floating right in front of you and calling into question what could possibly be so bad about just reaching out to meet it? You could. You could cum right now. What’s two weeks of pay? You could cum all night long if you want, that is a thing you can do—
Quickly snapping out of your hypnotic downfall, your trembling hands snatch at his forearm once more, and Dameron, the fucker, drags his fingers slowly over your clit on the way out— so not accidental, not even close to it this time, but the sensation makes your hips stutter upwards and chase it nonetheless.
“Fuck you,” you groan at his audacity, your chest arching as you drop your head back, “I said don’t touch my—” but two wet fingers slipping past your lips and onto your tongue muffle the rest of your sentence. Your heart does half a somersault before slamming down early, the taste of your pussy filling your mouth as you automatically start sucking on them.
“None of that,” Dameron tells you softly, massaging his fingers along your tongue before pressing a sweet kiss under your ear. “Be nice. I’m being nice.”
You should bite him. Instead, you just close your eyes and mphh weakly around his fingers, your body sagging as you give into it and let him explore your mouth with them, your lower muscles cramping up in painful desperation even when he’s not anywhere near that part of your body right now. Your tongue even comes up to lick between them, swirl around them so soft compared to how hard you’re puffing through your nose.
Dameron slowly inches his fingers out, letting the tips of them rest against your bottom lip for just a brief moment, before his hand is moving again. Not down, but back and around, so he can open his mouth and taste you another way this time.
Shit, you feel like you’re dying. You need air. Your hands clench into fists and you use the back of one to wipe the sweat from the bridge of your nose while he takes his time sampling you like this. If anything, he looks just as blissed out as before, continuing to rub his crotch up against the solid metal between his legs and teasing you with it as much as he’s teasing himself.
“Maker, let me do this for real tonight, okay,” Dameron pants after dropping his fingers from his mouth, sounding like he’s fighting for his breath while you can’t find yours at all. Your eyes flick down to watch the way his hand disappears behind the chair to grab the controls and push his cock up against them even harder, how he drops his forehead to your neck like he just can’t fucking handle it anymore. “Fuck, I’ll shave, I’ll do anything you want, just let me—”
“Cum,” you gasp out before you can stop yourself, and there’s a moment after it where his hips suddenly stutter against the controls, and you both freeze.
Shit. Shitshitshit, did that actually work?
No, you very quickly realize, his body isn’t spasming like it would if he finally emptied his load after a month and a half. He’s just… holding there, his head buried in your neck, completely still.
You didn’t mean it like that. Well… fuck, you did, but you didn’t realize you’d be that reckless about it, that upfront about reissuing the challenge.
Dameron pulls back to look at you from the side this time, but it’s too cramped—he keeps his head turned facing you even as his eyes flick up to the transparisteel to take in the finer details of your features, the thin sheen of sweat on your forehead, and the slightly alarmed way you’re blinking back at him, worried you just shot your blaster at him in the midst of a mutual ceasefire and you fucking missed.
You see the understanding in his eyes instantly fall into place, and it’s not fucking good. Ohhhhhh no, it’s not good. Your chest starts rising and falling rapidly, suddenly registering the position you just put yourself in. Fuck, you didn’t think—you saw your opening, so clearly, you didn’t have time to think about the consequences.
“D-Dameron…” you try your best to placate.
“Don’t touch your clit?” He asks quietly, the raspiness of his voice ripping a hole through you while his hand suddenly shoves its way back down your body once more.
“Dameron,” you whimper, your heart stuttering in panic as you grasp weakly at his arm reaching between your spread thighs, “Dameron, this is—this is against the r-rules—”
“You keep saying that,” he comments, his fingers easily finding the opening in your jumpsuit no matter how hard you flex your thighs against bulky mechanics to try and close them. “How clearly do you remember the rules? What were the rules again?
You open your mouth to respond but his hand sliding under your panties and down just obliterates any chance you were going to attempt. No words, nothing comes out but a shaky whine as his finger sinks into your soaking heat, going right for the kill.
“Come on, baby, the rules,” Dameron reminds you when you never give him an answer. “Tell me. No fucking, no jerking off, and…?”
You suddenly struggle forwards in a last-ditch attempt at preventing the inevitable, hoping you can scoot up enough in your seat to escape his reach from behind. But fuck, your thighs have been shoved wide open for nearly eight hours—none of the muscles are working the way they should be anymore. There’s just enough room in front of you to get there and you probably would’ve been able to do it at the beginning of the shift, even with his hand between your legs like this, but you’re sluggish and your thighs pull sharp and urgent with the movement. The frantic maneuver enough to veer his fingers off course just slightly, moving one of your lips to the side at an angle, and you keep pushing against the pain no matter how useless it is.
“—No cumming,” he finishes for you, and his other hand is slithering up under your arm and groping one of your breasts through the jumpsuit before shoving you back tight up against your seat once more, totally helpless against it. “Probably have another fifteen minutes or so before our shift ends. Better hold it in, pretty baby, because this one is all you.”
“This—this isn’t fair, this is—” The second the slippery pad of his finger presses hard against your clit, you’re biting your lip to cut off a breathless whimper that slips out. “This is… is sab— sabotage— ”
“Oh, I know,” he moans next to your ear, mocking your high plea of distress with a fake, overly sympathetic whine. “Feels so fucking good though, doesn’t it?”
Fuck, it does. The build feels like an orgasm in itself, just working your way to it. You’re already so unbelievably close after just a few seconds of direct stimulation, an obvious consequence of originally agreeing to such a hardcore edging workout. You’re pouring sweat, so swollen and tight between your legs as you do everything you can to revolt against your body’s needs.
“Oh fuck, stop touching my clit—” you gasp raggedly, heart thundering in panic while your lower muscles start to immediately seize up, “oh—fuckfuckfuck— Poe, take your finger off m—”
Instead of doing it, his hand just slows down until the tip of his finger comes to a halt, maybe less than an inch over top of it. You still can’t catch your breath though, not when you feel yourself throbbing against absolutely nothing, the calloused pad holding perfectly still over the bundle of nerves. The swollen bud still arcs and flares at a steady frequency, building and building, and you choke out a wordless garble, absolutely fucking furious that this is what’s gonna make you cum.
“Don’t make me cum,” you switch up your sentence but not the terrified plead in your voice, the way it’s pitching up and out of control in the dead quiet of space. He doesn’t even acknowledge it. “Don’t make me cum, don—”
“Say it again,” he prompts instead, and lightning arcs up your spine.
“Poe,” you wheeze, the words coming from you without thought, your fingernails digging into his forearm even as your hips jerk up into his touch, “fuck, don’t make me cum, Poe—please don’t make me c—”
“But it’ll be so good,” he counters lowly, and your clit throbs in desperation at the richness of his voice when he speaks like this, saying things from deep in his chest. “It’ll be so fucking good when it happens. Stars, you’ll feel so much better, won’t you? Cum right now and I’ll give you as many as I can until we have to go home.”
“N-No,” you whine, feeling his teeth scrape at the crook of your neck. “No, I can’t—”
“Cum for me,” Dameron raises his voice, sharpening it into a direct order. “Right now. Come on— fucking make yourself lose.”
“But I—I—” you sob, starting to feel your body curl inwards, nearly about to succumb to the burning, the tightening, right on its last breath, “I-I don’t want to cum—”
“And I don’t fucking care,“ he hisses while your hands start flexing unintentionally, grasping helplessly at his immovable forearm where it disappears between your legs, the dark hair sliding under your fingertips as you claw desperately at it. “You’ll fucking cum when I tell you to cum and you’ll like it, you disrespectful, cock-deprived, bratty little—”
And then everything goes dark.
No, literally. The stars disappear.
The cockpit is suddenly shrouded in pitch blackness, and you’re almost certain it’s because you pass out, except then Dameron is all but ripping his hand out of your jumpsuit and cursing repeatedly in alarm. You crumple in on yourself, eyes clamped shut and not hearing anything, right at the peak of your ecstasy and ready to soar into the light completely unassisted, your muscles doing all the work on their own—
“—shit, they’re way too close—” you hear his voice shout, “—we have to turn the engines on—Gold-Ten, baby, turn the fucking eng—”
You’re almost there, you’re almost there, you’re gonna cum, you’re gonna fucking—
Your first name, roared out in startling, blinding panic.
You don’t often hear it. Just during roll calls mostly, but only if you’re flying with a different squadron and need a new temporary flight designation for the day. First names hurt. You can’t remember a time you’ve ever willingly told anybody yours.
Your head jerks up to look at his reflection but something else beyond the transparisteel takes immediate precedence. Your brain takes about two seconds to catch up before thundering terror slams through you and halts your previously inevitable orgasm in its fucking tracks. A runaway train about to launch off its tracks suddenly slamming directly into a megaton force-field of cold, hard fight or flight instincts.
A staggering fleet of First Order ships silently plunging out of hyperspace on all sides—your powered-down x-wing stationed right in the middle of the drop location.
***
Stay tuned for part two coming soon!!
#poe x reader#poe dameron#poe dameron x reader#SMUTTTT#reader insert#star wars#fanfic#the formatting on this one is downright horrendous but im so mad that i cant even fix it right now so thatll have to come later im sorry
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Ectober Week Day 4: Artifact - Realities Little Joke For Infinity
A semi-vanquished ally is here for the end game, but way more confusing and completely unable to be taken seriously.
Strange looks to Wong, “is that everyone?”. Who squints back at him, sounding a bit incredulous, “what, you wanted more?”.
AntMan punches down a ship, the small slowly forming portal behind everyone going largely unnoticed. Before massive missiles start slamming into the ground and a little ugly brown van blows up.
Captain Marvel faces Thanos with a harsh desperate glare. Grabbing his hand and struggling to hold it, to stop him from snapping his fingers. Hearing Strange gasp, slightly started, and both her and Tony turn their heads slightly to look. Blinking, firmly confused, they didn’t have anyone who made green portals did they? As a kid? Teen? Just hops through, smirking slightly and sitting down on the rim of the portal. Followed by a blast knocking Thanos back and one of the stones flying away. The kid swings his legs, carefree, “yes he wanted more”. Then the kids blue-eyes look around at everyone, before he hops to the ground and starts walking forwards, swinging his legs wide and silly as he waves slightly, “what’s up? Was told some crazy shit was going down and, this is a quote by the way, ‘lose the stars to gain the stars. In a clashing of gold fists against one who consumes life’. So, uh, care to explain?”.
Captain Marvel gestures with her hands at the fighting going on. Thanos punching Thor as they clamour over the drooped stone, makes for pretty good added emphasis. The black haired kid tilts his head slightly, hums, and nods, “okay yeah, giant fight and giant purple asshole seems rather self explanatory”.
Hawkeye shots arrows at one of Thanos’s goons as it charges at the damn kid, what the Hell is he even doing here? Blinking a bit in disbelief as the kid just sidesteps a goon and then kicks it in the head, sending it flying. Hearing the kid snicker, “well that was easy”, before siding over to Tony.
Tony glances between the fight and the kid repeatedly, blasting at a goon while trying to figure out what’s going on. He’s all for more help, pretty actively desperate for it actually, but how old is this kid? He doesn’t even look all that bothered by what’s going on. Screwing up his face as the kid just hops around a little, “battle suit, nice. Looks for all the after-world better than Skulker’s. I’m Phantom by the way, from the future. Here to fix your shit, cause apparently you need it”.
Tony squints at him as he blasts away another goon, “how old are you? Better yet, who the Hell sends a random unarmed kid to a battlefield?”. At least Peter had his damn suit. This ‘Phantom’ looks like he just got out of school. But hey, the name implies he’s probably a hero of some kind.
Phantom smiles toothily, “oh that’s easy. Sixteen and some sixty billion year old dead guy did. So what’s going on here? Obviously these army beasts are problem pests, like skeletons, and purple nasty is, well, nasty”.
“Kid, this is the middle of battle. Not really the time for chit-chat and debriefing”, while sending Strange a ‘what the Hell look, will this work out?’.
Phantom laughs and uppercuts a spaceship with a massive mouth, it exploding apart, “naw! Fighting's the best time to open your yap. I mean Zone, talking while getting or giving an ass kicking is basically my shtick!”. Danny kicks another goon, “back in blacks get ready for a heart attack because my dead-ass is here”.
Making Tony shake his head, obviously this kid was extremely strong, “Christ kid. Purple guy’s Thanos. Removed half the life in the universe, trying to stop that. Used the thing on his arm to do it. Infinity Gauntlet, super powerful but needs some stones, just snapped his fingers and we all lost someone we goddamn loved. Now he just wants to destroy everyone, so don’t goddamn waste my time kid. If you’re gonna help then help”.
Phantom chuckles, “tsk tsk tsk, touchy are we?”, tapping his chin dramatically, “though yeah, that’s pretty fucking bad. Gonna take a gander and say this shit can be undone and stopped?”.
Tony groans calling Strange over and pointing at the kid, “is he useful?”. While a few other magicians take over dealing with the massive waterfall.
Phantom just tilts his head as Strange looks him over, before Strange furrows his brows, “I can’t see him in any timeline”.
Tony blinks, “what?”, being distracted enough to get slammed in the side by a rock.
While Phantom waves Strange off, “expected, cape boy”, lifting up the gear shaped necklace he’s wearing, “‘tis a Time Medallion. Basically excludes me from time. Technically this past isn’t my timelines past, so if I take this off I’ll be transported back to my own timeline. But I’m here to make this past my timelines past! So hooray! Complicated time shit to stop the world from ending”, back handing another goon and putting that hand on his hip, “so how’s we gonna stop this crap?”.
Strange sighs, ‘complicated time shit’ was one of the banes of his life. “That makes you an unknown to me but fine. Wearing the gauntlet allows the wearer to have one wish, regardless of what it is, granted. At the expense of losing one of the things they care for most or self-sacrifice. But the person must also be able to bear the power of it, though this power could be shared”.
Tony grunts as he flies by, “which is our plan! Now stop being a distraction!”.
Phantom tilts his head and laughs, “well that explains that! So basically this guy’s a strong SOB and doing some reality bending shit with a hunk of arm metal. But he’s doing it like a dick, probably over some weird philosophy”, Phantom slides to the side, avoiding a goon, “don’t worry your pretty little heads. Imma be an ironic copycat and I always did need to lose the one thing I cared for most”.
“Kid, we need help fighting right now, not for the later hand joining circle! Help stop people from dying and let the grown ups handle Thanos!”.
Phantom swings off his back pack and shoves his hand in it, “oh you misunderstand”. Standing up with a massive shit-eating grin, something looking concerningly similar to the Infinity Gauntlet on his arm.
Strange eyes this kid, obviously that wasn’t actually the same gauntlet, other wise paradoxes. Just so many paradoxes. Not even having to ask as the kid speaks cheerily, “this is the Reality Gauntlet. If you know how to activate all the stones, it grants you control over all of reality. Everything really. No limits. No down falls. Purple grape ‘bout to be my bitch”.
Multiple people around cough or choke. There was something even more dangerous and powerful? And some random kid had it?
Watching as the kid waves erratically, with a goofy smile, at Thanos. Who glares with at first anger then deep confusion. Grumbling out, “though I’m unfamiliar, that is nothing but a cheep imitation. Nothing surpasses my grand design and purpose”.
Phantom snorts and laughs exaggeratedly. Flicking his wrist, which somehow seems to result in a bunch of the goons turning into ducks and piles of worms? Twitching his hand again, the trees and rocks seemingly coming to life and chasing after the ducks.
Everyone stops and stares around for a beat, highly confused. Antman muttering, “well what the fuck”.
Tony blinks at this random kid, “thanks?”.
Thanos glares, punching away Captain America and grabbing the stone off the ground. Before charging at Phantom, not about to be seriously harmed by another small creature he doesn’t even know, who laughs and flips in the air. Most watching as Phantom just starts floating before transforming into a glowing black and white kid. Thanos grumbling, “you are a mortal yet dead. Interesting but no matter. I will crush you all the same”.
Phantom laughs and it echoes. Flicking his wrist again, followed by spaceships turning into hundreds of bouncy balls. Phantom flipping in the air slightly, “halfas the word!”, turning his legs into a freaking tail and simply flying out of the way of the titans punch, blasting a green energy ball out his hand as he goes; stopping Thanos from attempting to snap, “so you’re Thanos. You honestly don’t seem all that good at this. I mean nice army and all. But hey, I guess I’m just used to stronger opponents”. Phantom kicks away a random goon, “but props for all the dramatics!”.
Thanos grumbling, “you are foolish to think you can stand against or face things above me. For nothing exists above me”.
Phantom laughs again, “oh I’m something far above you. For you see, I am Phantom. Future guardian of the land of the dead and Earth. Long after all of these fucks, and you, have perished. Even the king of ghosts has fallen to me. If you really want to speak about the most powerful being in the universe. Well then”, giggling, “it’s a sixteen year-old half dead kid and you’re a just a grape”.
Phantom waves his hand and suddenly Thanos turns into a bunch of grapes and falls onto the ground unceremoniously. Infinity gauntlet clattering down next to it.
Tony blinks, “you...you have got to be kidding me”.
Phantom shrugs and sticks out his tongue at the pile of grapes, picking up the Infinity Gauntlet and putting it on. Looking his arm over with a little smirk, watching the power flow through it with mild amusement, everyone else too stunned to move. Phantom chuckles and holds out his two gauntlet covered arms, “too bad they don’t truly match. But hey, this aesthetic is still fucking sick”.
Tony walks up in front of the kid slightly, “do you even know what you’re doing? How powerful that thing is?”.
Phantom hums and spins in the air, “Of course I don’t. I never know what half the crap I do is. That’s the fun of it”, floating upside down and cross legged, “I realise you all seem to take this hero shtick pretty seriously and with heavy hearts. I may be a battered one whose lost plenty myself, and seen worlds destroy and life fall to perish. But I’ll never be weathered and beaten down. Imma a little shit basically”, looking around, “anyway, any o’ y’all know how to fix all the shit? Or should I just start trying random shit or hitting it. That usually works out for me”.
Strange steps up, “are you intending on using the gauntlet alone?”, sighing, this was suitably strange but if it works then it works, “you simply have to push your will into and snap your fingers”.
Captain America frowns, “are you sure you’re willing to give up something dear to you? This is our fight”.
Phantom smiles and for once it seemed more soft and serious even, “oh of course. I figured out that riddle. See for me to exist I must partly die. Lose half my life and the one thing I held most dear. My desire to become an astronaut and see the stars. Sacrificed in the name of fulfilling the role of a hero in a world were no others exist. Damned to exits forever more and ensure protection of everything and one. Yet unable to ever fulfil my one deepest dream and wish”.
Tony blinks, firmly stunned, that was incredibly depressing. But Phantom seemed to be implying that he had to use the gauntlet himself. And that he knows exactly what he’ll lose, that it’ll half kill him, and the fate it’ll force upon him. That was a lot of sacrifices.
Everyone gets stunned again when Phantom laughs, “it’s a blessed half-life indeed! Gaining the best thing by losing the best thing. What beautiful irony”, sighing happily, “ahhh life just loves playing jokes on me. Nothing like a good joke at my expense”. Watching as the kid simply holds up the glove, waits for a beat and snaps his fingers. The people around gaping over the complete nonchalance and watching the mess clean itself up. The people they care about returning in earnest and others appearing in flashes before going back to where they had been before all this. Orange portals slowly closing in the background.
Tony tears up ever so slightly and hugs Peter, whispering, “kid”. While Peter nods rapidly and squeezes back.
Phantom sighs, “ahhh I can just feel and see myself getting 6 billion electrical volts to my whole being now. Sweet sweet tingly nostalgia”.
Antman squints at him, “you have issues”.
Tony walks up closer with Peter, a smiling Phantom floating to land on the ground; hair swaying around untethered to gravity. Tony clears his throat, “thank you. I mean it”.
While Peter awkwardly waves, “hi, um, I’m Peter”, smiling slightly, “nice to see a teen owning the old folks huh?”.
Phantom gives Peter a silly thumbs up before laughing and waving off Tony, “‘tis what I do tincan. Self sacrifice for the betterment of everyone else, is what I see and know day in and day out”, bowing dramatically, “I’m in the sheets with broken bones, bloodied wounds, and never enough sleep”, standing back up straight, “but you know what you could do for little o’ me? A smoothie. I could really use a smoothie. One of those ones with all the little crushed berries. The good shit. Then I can head back to school”.
Half the people asking, “your in school?”. While Tony nods, he really had just came from school...like this was some sort of everyday thing, “whatever you want kid”.
Phantom waves everyone but Tony off, “course. No one actually knows I do what I do, so I’m treated the same as any other teen. The whole secret identity shtick”, shrugging and speaking thick with humour, “but hey, if the world knew they’d experiment on me so I think I’ll take my parents shooting at me instead. Dissection is honestly not that glamorous. Kind of boring after the third time”.
Tony breathes out, “Christ that’s messed up”.
While Strange disappears and reappears with a smoothie, extra large, and shoves it at Phantom. Feeling both humbled and disturbed. Especially being the most familiar with what exactly would go on in any kind of dissection.
Phantom nabs it looking eager and innocent. Like getting a nice drink was the biggest worry he had. Everyone watches him sip it and smile happily. Sighing with contentment, “ah yeeeeeeessssss that’s nice. Been a few days since I’ve had the time to drink or eat anything”, before looking at the Infinity Gauntlet and it promptly exploding into dust. Smirking, “there, problem solved. TimeDaddy will be tickled green”.
Everyone just gapes as he spins around in a little circle, looking cheery and waving at everyone, “whelp been nice and I’ll be taking the drink with me”.
Tony puts his hand on Phantom‘s arm as he grabs the medallion and starts the motions to remove it, “are you sure there’s nothing more you can use or need? You seem like you need it honestly”.
Phantom shrugs, “naw, I’m good. I’m a plenty suffered thing. Which is good”, smiling bright and wide, “so long as I’m suffering then others suffer less”. And like that the medallion is slipped off and the glowing teen is gone.
Everyone standing around feeling awe, shock, respect, and a sense of grief. Happy to have everyone back properly but unable to get the strange oddly mirth-filled Phantom, one who seems to live an existence that’s basically torture, out of their heads.
End.
#Danny Phantom#phandom#ectober#ectoberweek19#artifact#danny fenton#tony stark#steve rogers#antman#captain marvel#peter parker#Dr. Strange#thanos#danny's a little shit#everyone else is confused#time travel#danny's from the future#avengers#end game#fanfic#phanphic#have a fic suck my dick#phantomphangphucker#My writing#wong
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Coran may be a gorgeous man, but you’re my gorgeous man.
Happy Valentines Day @shipsinkingbastard I hope this is ok
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Keith’s stomach grumbled as he made his way to the kitchen, his feet dragging.
He hadn’t been intentionally skipping meals, but sometimes they got too busy fighting Zarkon, or he was too tired after a late night training session with the training bot that he just went to sleep without eating. The lights turned on automatically as he made his way through the doorway As he scooped some green goo onto his plate, Keith still didn’t feel any inclination to eat. At least on Earth the food had some flavor.
Now he was staring a plate of unappetizing goo in the face, his stomach letting out another grumble in response. Sitting down he ate reluctantly, thinking about how upsetting it was to be sitting in the kitchen alone, with nobody to keep him company and distract him from the flavorless food. Altean food was all about nutrition, not taste. Usually he could appreciate that, but usually he could watch Pidge fiddling with something and mumbling to herself, or Lance debating animatedly with Hunk “You just don’t understand Hunk, Star Wars is so much better than Star Trek.” “Uh huh, sure Lance.” He didn’t even have Shiro’s calming presence and occasional looks of concern or amusement.
His thighs were getting cold from sitting on the metal chair, so he tucked his knees up toward his chest and held them close to him. His bangs fell into his face, long fallen out of the ponytail he wore to bed. He let out a long sigh, abandoning his half empty plate of food. He nodded off slowly, unintentionally, as he watched the clock.
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“-like a dork sleeping in such an awkward position” Keith fumbled to stand up as he was awoken by Lance’s teasing. His legs giving out. Lance lunged for Keith, catching him before he crashed to the floor. “I didn’t think you’d ever actually fall for me” Lance quipped, pulling Keith up to a standing position, his arms still wrapped tightly around Keith’s middle. “What time did you fall asleep here?” he asked, slowly pulling the ponytail out of Keith’s hair. It's not like it was actually doing much at this point.
Keith chuckled at Lance’s pick up line. “I got up to eat around three to eat, my stomach woke me up, so I don’t really know, some time after that I would assume.” Keith mumbled into Lance’s chest, appreciating his warmth. He sighed in appreciation as Lance ran his hands through his hair, massaging his scalp.
“Thanks for not like pushing me out of the chair while I was asleep” said Keith, backing up from Lance a little to stretch his legs when a look of confusion crossed his face. “It’s 7, Lance, why are you awake?”
“Oh, well, see the reason for that would be that I had planned to make you breakfast. Hunk taught me how.” Lance rushed the end of his sentence, looking down at his feet. “Well I wanted it to be a secret, which is why I woke up earlier than usual.” Keith titled his head in confusion.
“Obviously it's not a secret anymore” Keith used his hand to tilt Lance’s face back up, forcing Lance to look at him. “So why did you wake up early to make breakfast for me?” Keith asked, wondering if there was something he was missing. It wasn’t his birthday, and nothing worth celebrating had happened recently. Lance had asked him out a few months ago, it was much too late to be making him breakfast if that was the cause.
Lance blushed and quietly he said “It’s Valentine’s Day, back on Earth.” Now it was Keith’s turn to blush. He backed away from Lance quickly, his mind racing, he paced. He hadn’t even known when Valentine’s Day was, much less what to get Lance. What could he do? With his back turned to Lance he mulled over his options, none were good as he had just come up with them.
“Keith” Lance said quietly, walking towards him. He sounded upset. “Keith… I'm sorry” He said, now standing behind Keith. “What?” Keith asked, turning around to take in Lance. He looked on the verge of crying, his fingers digging into his palms.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for you to get mad.” Lance choked, trying to contain his emotions. He shut his eyes tightly, preventing tears from getting out. “I didn’t know you didn’t want to celebrate Valentine’s, but you could have at least said so instead of leaving me so suddenly.” Lance shook his head, as if that would shake off his sadness too. “I didn’t mean to get so emotional.” he said quickly, and turned to leave, walking out without even giving Keith time to process his words, much less respond.
“Damn it!” Keith shouted in anger. He was about to chase after Lance and tell him that he did want to celebrate Valentine’s with him, that he had only forgotten and was trying to figure out what to get him, not that he was mad at Lance for bringing it up, when Shirou walked in, looking very concerned.
“Keith, calm yourself. What if the princess walked in just now instead of me? Would you have felt proud having her hear you cuss like that?” Shiro asked, walking closer to Keith and placing an arm on his shoulder. “What happened? And why did Lance rush out of here crying?” Shiro’s voice had genuine concern in it and that was the only thing keeping Keith from punching him in the face, or brushing this off with the excuse of going to the training deck, because honestly right now he didn’t care whether the princess had heard him cursing and he didn’t want to talk about this with Shiro.
Keith took heavy breaths, trying to calm himself so he could give Shiro a measured reply. “It’s Valentine’s Day, Shiro” he said tensely, “and I didn’t even know it was today, and Lance had planned to make me breakfast and I had nothing so I pulled away from him and he took it as me being mad so he got upset and left and I didn’t even have time to explain to him that it wasn’t that case” Keith rambled, Shiro listening patiently the whole time. “He was crying?” Keith asked, looking into Shiro’s eyes.
“Well, yeah he was, but he ignored me so I couldn’t ask him what was wrong.” Shiro replied awkwardly, putting a bit of distance between himself and Keith. “Listen.” He started slowly, still mulling over what Keith had told him. “Lance probably wasn’t expecting you to know when Valentine’s day was, it’s not like you’re known for your many love interests, are you?” Shiro said, trying to lighten the mood. “Maybe, try to make it up to him later?” Keith glared at him. “I know from your end you didn’t do anything wrong, but look at things from his perspective.” Shiro added quickly. “He just told you he was going to make you breakfast for Valentine’s day and you automatically withdrew. To anyone that would look like you were upset or mad. Understand why he reacted the way he did, Keith.”
For once, Keith thought before he spoke. ‘I understand why he reacted the way he did.” Keith mimicked Shiro. “I’ll try to make it up to him later, but first I’ll let him calm down while I figure out what to do.”
“Well..” said Shiro offhandedly, “The stars are supposed to be nice tonight, the atmosphere of Arusia is supposed to be very clear.” Turning around, Shiro dismissed Keith silently, sparing him the need to thank him.
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“Lance” Keith called softly, knocking on Lance’s door. “Lance I know you’re in there. Hunk told me you haven’t left your room since this morning and when he asked you why you said, and I quote, Keith is the-”
“I'm not hERE” Lance screeched quickly in an attempt to silence Keith before he finished his sentence. “I don’t want to talk” He said, very obviously on the other side of the door, his voice only slightly muffled.
“We don’t have to talk about it just yet I promise” Keith said softly, “but will you at least let me in?” He asked, leaning on the cool metal door. He heard a small “yes” as the door opened and he nearly fell over when Lance caught him again,
“This is the second time in one day you’ve fallen for me, Kogane” Lance said smoothly, looking down at Keith with a smirk on his face. It was evident he had been crying, his eyes were red and his face was flushed, but he was putting on a front for Keith.
Keith wrapped him in a hug, unsure of what to say, when Lance started apologising. “I didn’t mean to get all emotional this morning” Lance started, “I just thought you got mad, I know we haven’t been very public about our relationship but I thought you’d be ok with us celebrating Valentine's Day together at least.” Lance murmured into Keith’s shoulder.
“I know I know.” started Keith, rubbing to reassure him. “I wasn’t mad at all, just caught off guard.” Keith explained softly. “I didn’t even know it was Valentine’s day, it's not like I cared much about it on earth.” Lance let out a small chuckle at that. “So I was trying to come up with what to get you really quick, and you took my separation from you as anger which is completely understandable” Keith echoed Shiro’s words. “But if you’d still like to spend the rest of the day with me, I have something planned.” Keith finished, staring at the wall.
“Of course” Said Lance, kissing Keith’s neck, “I’d want nothing else.” Lance separated from Keith. “Woo me with your plans and preparations.” Lance smiled slightly. “I deserve it.”
“Meet me at Red’s hangar in 30 minutes”
______________________________________________________________
Keith was running through his plans for the evening for a final time with Red, who had obligingly bent down, lowering her ear to Keith’s level when Lance walked in, a spring in his step. “What’s up Keithy boy, whatcha telling Red there? That I’m the handsomest guy you’ve ever laid eyes on? Or perhaps that in bed you-”
“Lance!” Keith screamed, his face matching color with his lion’s as he scrambled to cover Red’s ear with his two hands. “You can’t just say these things in front of my lion! She respects me!” Keith pleaded. Red let out a sort of purr that sounded more like a chuckle to Keith before she rested her head on the ground waiting for Keith and Lance to climb aboard.
“Scream my name, though not like that, usually.” Lance laughed before strolling over and wrapping an arm around Keith’s shoulders as he huffed in annoyance, “But for real. I’m ready for this magical night you have planned. Then we can come back and I can show you my idea of a magical night.” Lance whispered in Keith’s ear which made him blush again and make furious motions at himself and his lion. Lance kissed Keith’s cheek before walking towards Red. “You’re coming aren’t you?” Lance asked. “Even if you’re not now, you will be tonight.” Lance heard a scream of exasperation from outside and stomping as Keith made his way to the cockpit. “No respect for my lion or common decency” or something like that.
______________________________________________________________
Edit: Alternative Constellation Scene That I Actually Prefer
“-and that’s the one I’ve decided to call ‘Coran’s Moustache’ because see how it’s all-” Lance used both his arms to make a conductor like motion and Keith looked puzzled, so Lance did it again with commentary, “it swooshes just like his moustache, see?” Lance saw the moment it hit Keith because he let out a giggle and covered his face trying to regain his composure.
“No we can’t do that!” Squealed Keith from behind his hands. “What would Coran say if he found out? What if the Arusians found out and started worshiping it like the “lion godess” remember that Lance?” Lance started laughing too but really wanted to fight Keith that ‘Coran’s Moustache’ was a perfectly acceptable name.
“Well to be completely honest I think Coran would be flattered.” Lance stated matter of factly. “Remember when he made those cubes repeat ‘Coran, Coran, the gorgeous man’? He would love this!” Keith wrapped his arm around Lance and pressed a kiss to his cheek. He loved when Lance got all passionate, even if it was over something like this. Lance turned toward Keith with a daze over his eyes.
“This was a good idea.” He murmured. Keith didn’t know whether he meant the night stargazing or their relationship in general, and he didn’t have time to ask before Lance leaned in kissed him, smiling.
______________________________________________________________
Edit: Original Stargazing Scene that I drink to forget (jk im a minor)
“-and that’s the one I've decided to call ‘Goldfish’ because see, it's got a tail and fins and it’s round.” Lance explained motioning with his hands to one very particular constellation on Arusia. Keith chuckled, wrapping his arm around Lance as they both stared up at the sky, trying to decide on names for constellations.
“You can’t call it ‘Goldfish’ Lance, that’s stupid. No one other than us even knows what a goldfish is!” Lance interjected with a “You’re stupid.” Keith decided to ignore that comment for now. “How about if we connect it to these two stars over here with your goldfish constellation or whatever” Keith drew with his hand “and call it Mermadia as an homage to those mermaids you met?” Keith suggested.
Lance playfully smacked Keith, moving in closer to him. “What kind of a name is Mermadia, honestly Keith, you have no imagination.”
“Says the one who wanted to name it “Goldfish’!” Keith fired back, pushing Lance back so he was laying flat on the ground. He straddled Lance with only minor objections in confusion. Keith leaned over Lance and intertwined their hands while smiling down at him. Lance’s hair was a messy brown halo, his eyes wide and face flushed, mouth slightly parted in surprise.
“It’s not too bad.” Lance said softly, squeezing Keith’s hand. Pressing his forehead to Lance’s Keith boasted. “I knew you’d come to see things my way.”
“I meant this, you dummy.” Exclaimed Lance, freeing his hand from Keith’s in order to wrap them both around Keith’s neck, pulling. “This was a good idea.” Whether Lance meant the stargazing idea Keith had come up with, or their relationship in general Keith didn’t know or even have time to worry about before his lips met Lance’s and he felt Lance smile into the kiss.
“The constellation’s name is ‘Goldfish’.
______________________________________________________________
#voltron valentines#voltron#klance#keith (voltron)#lance (voltron)#voltron legacy defender#stargazing#constellation#naming constellations#arusia#Shiro was there for a bit too#shiro#shiro (voltron)#where are Hunk and Pidge?#Pidge is in her room protesting Valentines day since Lance won't stop talking about it#Hunk is cheering Keith and Lance on but is taking it easy#Hunk is hanging out with pidge watching movies#Shiro joins too after his run in with Keith#coran coran the gorgeous man#coran may be a gorgeous man but you're my gorgeous man
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It’s true, you’ve got the Galaxy Note to thank for your big phone. When the device hit the scene at IFA 2011, large screens were still a punchline. That same year, Steve Jobs famously joked about phones with screens larger than four inches, telling a crowd of reporters, “nobody’s going to buy that.”
In 2019, the average screen size hovers around 5.5 inches. That’s a touch larger than the original Note’s 5.3 inches — a size that was pretty widely mocked by much of the industry press at the time. Of course, much of the mainstreaming of larger phones comes courtesy of a much improved screen to body ratio, another place where Samsung has continued to lead the way.
In some sense, the Note has been doomed by its own success. As the rest of the industry caught up, the line blended into the background. Samsung didn’t do the product any favors by dropping the pretense of distinction between the Note and its Galaxy S line.
Ultimately, the two products served as an opportunity to have a six-month refresh cycle for its flagships. Samsung, of course, has been hit with the same sort of malaise as the rest of the industry. The smartphone market isn’t the unstoppable machine it appeared to be two or three years back.
Like the rest of the industry, the company painted itself into a corner with the smartphone race, creating flagships good enough to convince users to hold onto them for an extra year or two, greatly slowing the upgrade cycle in the process. Ever-inflating prices have also been a part of smartphone sales stagnation — something Samsung and the Note are as guilty of as any.
Samsung’s Galaxy Note gets even larger (and smaller)
So what’s a poor smartphone manufacturer to do? The Note 10 represents baby steps. As it did with the S line recently, Samsung is now offering two models. The base Note 10 represents a rare step backward in terms of screen size, shrinking down slightly from 6.4 to 6.3 inches, while reducing resolution from Quad HD to Full HD.
The seemingly regressive step lets Samsung come in a bit under last year’s jaw dropping $1,000. The new Note is only $50 cheaper, but moving from four to three figures may have a positive psychological effect for wary buyers. While the slightly smaller screen coupled with a better screen to body ratio means a device that’s surprisingly slim.
If anything, the Note 10+ feels like the true successor to the Note line. The baseline device could have just as well been labeled the Note 10 Lite. That’s something Samsung is keenly aware of, as it targets first-time Note users with the 10 and true believers with the 10+. In both cases, Samsung is faced with the same task as the rest of the industry: offering a compelling reason for users to upgrade.
Earlier this week, a Note 9 owner asked me whether the new device warrants an upgrade. The answer is, of course, no. The pace of smartphone innovation has slowed, even as prices have risen. Honestly, the 10 doesn’t really offer that many compelling reasons to upgrade from the Note 8.
That’s not a slight against Samsung or the Note, per se. If anything, it’s a reflection on the fact that these phones are quite good — and have been for a while. Anecdotally, industry excitement around these devices has been tapering for a while now, and the device’s launch in the midst of the doldrums of August likely didn’t help much.
[gallery ids="1865978,1865980,1865979,1865983,1865982,1865990,1866000,1866005,1866004"]
The past few years have seen smartphones transform from coveted, bleeding-edge luxury to necessity. The good news to that end, however, is that the Note continues to be among the best devices out there.
The common refrain in the earliest days of the phablet was the inability to wrap one’s fingers around the device. It’s a pragmatic issue. Certainly you don’t want to use a phone day to day that’s impossible to hold. But Samsung’s remarkable job of improving screen to body ratio continues here. In fact, the 6.8-inch Note 10+ has roughly the same footprint as the 6.4-inch Note 9.
The issue will still persist for those with smaller hands — though thankfully Samsung’s got a solution for them in the Note 10. For the rest of us, the Note 10+ is easily held in one hand and slipped in and out of pants pockets. I realize these seem like weird things to say at this point, but I assure you they were legitimate concerns in the earliest days of the phablet, when these things were giant hunks of plastic and glass.
Samsung’s curved display once again does much of the heavy lifting here, allowing the screen to stretch nearly from side to side with only a little bezel at the edge. Up top is a hole-punch camera — that’s “Infinity O” to you. Those with keen eyes no doubt immediately noticed that Samsung has dropped the dual selfie camera here, moving toward the more popular hole-punch camera.
The company’s reasoning for this was both aesthetic and, apparently, practical. The company moved back down to a single camera for the front (10 megapixel), using similar reasoning as Google’s single rear-facing camera on the Pixel: software has greatly improved what companies can do with a single lens. That’s certainly the case to a degree, and a strong case can be made for the selfie camera, which we generally require less of than the rear-facing array.
The company’s gone increasingly minimalist with the design language — something I appreciate. Over the years, as the smartphone has increasingly become a day to day utility, the product’s design has increasingly gotten out of its own way. The front and back are both made of a curved Gorilla Glass that butts up against a thin metal form with a total thickness of 7.9 millimeters.
On certain smooth surfaces like glass, you’ll occasionally find the device gliding slightly. I’d say the chances of dropping it are pretty decent with its frictionless design language, so you’re going to want to get a case for your $1,000 phone. Before you do, admire that color scheme on the back. There are four choices in all. Like the rest of the press, we ended up with Aura Glow.
It features a lovely, prismatic effect when light hits it. It’s proven a bit tricky to photograph, honestly. It’s also a fingerprint magnet, but these are the prices we pay to have the prettiest phone on the block.
One of the interesting footnotes here is how much the design of the 10 will be defined by what the device lost. There are two missing pieces here — both of which are a kind of concession from Samsung for different reasons. And for different reasons, both feel inevitable.
The headphone jack is, of course, the biggie. Samsung kicked and screamed on that one, holding onto the 3.5mm with dear life and roundly mocking the competition (read: Apple) at every turn. The company must have known it was a matter of time, even before the iPhone dropped the port three years ago.
Courage.
Samsung glossed over the end of the jack (and apparently unlisted its Apple-mocking ads in the process) during the Note’s launch event. It was a stark contrast from a briefing we got around the device’s announcement, where the company’s reps spent significantly more time justifying the move. They know us well enough to know that we’d spend a little time taking the piss out of the company after three years of it making the once ubiquitous port a feature. All’s fair in love and port. And honestly, it was mostly just some good-natured ribbing. Welcome to the club, Samsung.
The headphone jack dies not with a bang, but a Note
As for why Samsung did it now, the answer seems to be two-fold. The first is a kind of critical mass in Bluetooth headset usage. Allow me to quote myself from a few weeks back:
The tipping point, it says, came when its internal metrics showed that a majority of users on its flagship devices (the S and Note lines) moved to Bluetooth streaming. The company says the number is now in excess of 70% of users.
Also, as we’re all abundantly aware, the company put its big battery ambitions on hold for a bit, as it dealt with…more burning problems. A couple of recalls, a humble press release and an eight-point battery check later, and batteries are getting bigger again. There’s a 3,500mAh on the Note 10 and a 4,300mAh on the 10+. I’m happy to report that the latter got me through a full day plus three hours on a charge. Not bad, given all of the music and videos I subjected it to in that time.
There’s no USB-C dongle in-box. The rumors got that one wrong. You can pick up a Samsung-branded adapter for $15, or get one for much cheaper elsewhere. There is, however, a pair of AKG USB-C headphones in-box. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: Samsung doesn’t get enough credit for its free headphones. I’ve been known to use the pairs with other devices. They’re not the greatest the world, but they’re better sounding and more comfortable than what a lot of other companies offer in-box.
Obviously the standard no headphone jack things apply here. You can’t use the wired headphones and charge at the same time (unless you go wireless). You know the deal.
The other missing piece here is the Bixby button. I’m sure there are a handful of folks out there who will bemoan its loss, but that’s almost certainly a minority of the minority here. Since the button was first introduced, folks were asking for the ability to remap it. Samsung finally relented on that front, and with the Note 10, it drops the button altogether.
Thus far the smart assistant has been a disappointment. That’s due in no small part to a late launch compared to the likes of Siri, Alexa and Assistant, coupled with a general lack of capability at launch. In Samsung’s defense, the company’s been working to fix that with some pretty massive investment and a big push to court developers. There’s hope for Bixby yet, but a majority of users weren’t eager to have the assistant thrust upon them.
Instead, the power button has been shifted to the left of the device, just under the volume rocker. I preferred having it on the other side, especially for certain functions like screenshotting (something, granted, I do much more than the average user when reviewing a phone). That’s a pretty small quibble, of course.
Bixby can now be quickly accessed by holding down the power button. Handily, Samsung still lets you reassign the function there, if you really want Bixby out of your life. You can also hold down to get the power off menu or double press to launch Bixby or a third-party app (I opted for Spotify, probably my most used these days), though not a different assistant.
Imaging, meanwhile, is something Samsung’s been doing for a long time. The past several generations of S and Note devices have had great camera systems, and it continues to be the main point of improvement. It’s also one of few points of distinction between the 10 and 10+, aside from size.
The Note 10+ has four, count ’em, four rear-facing cameras. They are as follows:
Ultra Wide: 16 megapixel
Wide: 12 megapixel
Telephoto: 12 megapixel
DepthVision
That last one is only on the plus. It’s comprised of two little circles to the right of the primary camera array and just below the flash. We’ll get to that in a second.
The main camera array continues to be one of the best in mobile. The inclusion of telephoto and ultra-wide lenses allow for a wide range of different shots, and the hardware coupled with machine learning makes it a lot more difficult to take a bad photo (though believe me, it’s still possible).
[gallery ids="1869716,1869715,1869720,1869718,1869719"]
The live focus feature (Portrait mode, essentially) comes to video, with four different filters, including Color Point, which makes everything but the subject black and white.
Samsung’s also brought a very simple video editor into the mix here, which is nice on the fly. You can edit the length of clips, splice in other clips, add subtitles and captions and add filters and music. It’s pretty beefy for something baked directly into the camera app, and one of the better uses I’ve found for the S Pen.
Note 10+ with Super Steady (left), iPhone XS (right)
Ditto for the improved Super Steady offering, which smooths out shaky video, including Hyperlapse mode, where handshakes are a big issue. It works well, but you do lose access to other features, including zoom. For that reason, it’s off by default and should be used relatively sparingly.
Note 10+ (left), iPhone XS (right)
Zoom-on Mic is a clever addition, as well. While shooting video, pinch-zooming on something will amplify the noise from that area. I’ve been playing around with it in this cafe. It’s interesting, but less than perfect.
[gallery ids="1869186,1869980,1869975,1869974,1869973,1869725,1869322,1869185,1869184,1869190"]
Zooming into something doesn’t exactly cancel out ambient noise from outside of the frame. Everything still gets amplified in the process and, like digital picture zoom, a lot of noise gets added in the process. Those hoping for a kind of spy microphone, I’m sorry/happy to report that this definitely is not that.
The DepthVision Camera is also pretty limited as I write this. If anything, it’s Samsung’s attempt to brace for a future when things like augmented reality will (theoretically) play a much larger role in our mobile computing. In a conversation I had with the company ahead of launch, they suggested that a lot of the camera’s AR functions will fall in the hands of developers.
For now, Quick Measure is the one practical use. The app is a lot like Apple’s more simply titled Measure. Fire it up, move the camera around to get a lay of the land and it will measure nearby objects for you. An interesting showcase for AR potential? Sure. Earth shattering? Naw. It also seems to be a bit of a battery drain, sucking up the last few bits of juice as I was running it down.
3D Scanner, on the other hand, got by far the biggest applause line of the Note event. And, indeed, it’s impressive. In the stage demo, a Samsung employee scanned a stuffed pink beaver (I’m not making this up), created a 3D image and animated it using an associate’ movements. Practical? Not really. Cool? Definitely.
It was, however, not available at press time. Hopefully it proves to be more than vaporware, especially if that demo helped push some viewers over to the 10+. Without it, there’s just not a lot of use for the depth camera at the moment.
There’s also AR Doodle, which fills a similar spot as much of the company’s AR offerings. It’s kind of fun, but again, not particularly useful. You’ll likely end up playing with it for a few minutes and forget about it entirely. Such is life.
The feature is built into the camera app, using depth sensing to orient live drawings. With the stylus you can draw in space or doodle on people’s faces. It’s neat, the AR works okay and I was bored with it in about three minutes. Like Quick Measure, the feature is as much a proof of concept as anything. But that’s always been a part of Samsung’s kitchen-sink approach — some combination of useful and silly.
That said, points to Samsung for continuing to de-creepify AR Emojis. Those have moved firmly away from the uncanny valley into something more cartoony/adorable. Less ironic usage will surely follow.
Asked about the key differences between the S and Note lines, Samsung’s response was simple: the S Pen. Otherwise, the lines are relatively interchangeable.
Samsung’s return of the stylus didn’t catch on for handsets quite like the phablet form factor. They’ve made a pretty significant comeback for tablets, but the Note remains fairly singular when it comes to the S Pen. I’ve never been a big user myself, but those who like it swear by it. It’s one of those things like the ThinkPad pointing stick or BlackBerry scroll wheel.
Like the phone itself, the peripheral has been streamlined with a unibody design. Samsung also continues to add capabilities. It can be used to control music, advance slideshows and snap photos. None of that is likely to convince S Pen skeptics (I prefer using the buttons on the included headphones for music control, for example), but more versatility is generally a good thing.
If anything is going to convince people to pick up the S Pen this time out, it’s the improved handwriting recognition. That’s pretty impressive. It was even able to decipher my awful chicken scratch.
You get the same sort of bleeding-edge specs here you’ve come to expect from Samsung’s flagships. The 10+ gets you a baseline 256GB of storage (upgradable to 512), coupled with a beefy 12GB of RAM (the regular Note is a still good 8GB/256GB). The 5G version sports the same numbers and battery (likely making its total life a bit shorter per charge). That’s a shift from the S10, whose 5G version was specced out like crazy. Likely Samsung is bracing for 5G to become less of a novelty in the next year or so.
The new Note also benefits from other recent additions, like the in-display fingerprint reader and wireless power sharing. Both are nice additions, but neither is likely enough to warrant an immediate upgrade.
Once again, that’s not an indictment of Samsung, so much as a reflection of where we are in the life cycle of a mature smartphone industry. The Note 10+ is another good addition to one of the leading smartphone lines. It succeeds as both a productivity device (thanks to additions like DeX and added cross-platform functionality with Windows 10) and an everyday handset.
There’s not enough on-board to really recommend an upgrade from the Note 8 or 9 — especially at that $1,099 price. People are holding onto their devices for longer, and for good reason (as detailed above). But if you need a new phone, are looking for something big and flashy and are willing to splurge, the Note continues to be the one to beat.
[gallery ids="1869169,1869168,1869167,1869166,1869165,1869164,1869163,1869162,1869161,1869160,1869159,1869158,1869157,1869156,1869155,1869154,1869153,1869152"]
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ORIGINAL CONTENT FROM: https://techcrunch.com/
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Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ review
It’s true, you’ve got the Galaxy Note to thank for your big phone. When the device hit the scene at IFA 2011, large screens were still a punchline. That same year, Steve Jobs famously joked about phones with screens larger than four inches, telling a crowd of reporters, “nobody’s going to buy that.”
In 2019, the average screen size hovers around 5.5 inches. That’s a touch larger than the original Note’s 5.3 inches — a size that was pretty widely mocked by much of the industry press at the time. Of course, much of the mainstreaming of larger phones comes courtesy of a much improved screen to body ratio, another place where Samsung has continued to lead the way.
In some sense, the Note has been doomed by its own success. As the rest of the industry caught up, the line blended into the background. Samsung didn’t do the product any favors by dropping the pretense of distinction between the Note and its Galaxy S line.
Ultimately, the two products served as an opportunity to have a six-month refresh cycle for its flagships. Samsung, of course, has been hit with the same sort of malaise as the rest of the industry. The smartphone market isn’t the unstoppable machine it appeared to be two or three years back.
youtube
Like the rest of the industry, the company painted itself into a corner with the smartphone race, creating flagships good enough to convince users to hold onto them for an extra year or two, greatly slowing the upgrade cycle in the process. Ever-inflating prices have also been a part of smartphone sales stagnation — something Samsung and the Note are as guilty of as any.
Samsung’s Galaxy Note gets even larger (and smaller)
So what’s a poor smartphone manufacturer to do? The Note 10 represents baby steps. As it did with the S line recently, Samsung is now offering two models. The base Note 10 represents a rare step backward in terms of screen size, shrinking down slightly from 6.4 to 6.3 inches, while reducing resolution from Quad HD to Full HD.
The seemingly regressive step lets Samsung come in a bit under last year’s jaw dropping $1,000. The new Note is only $50 cheaper, but moving from four to three figures may have a positive psychological effect for wary buyers. While the slightly smaller screen coupled with a better screen to body ratio means a device that’s surprisingly slim.
If anything, the Note 10+ feels like the true successor to the Note line. The baseline device could have just as well been labeled the Note 10 Lite. That’s something Samsung is keenly aware of, as it targets first-time Note users with the 10 and true believers with the 10+. In both cases, Samsung is faced with the same task as the rest of the industry: offering a compelling reason for users to upgrade.
Earlier this week, a Note 9 owner asked me whether the new device warrants an upgrade. The answer is, of course, no. The pace of smartphone innovation has slowed, even as prices have risen. Honestly, the 10 doesn’t really offer that many compelling reasons to upgrade from the Note 8.
That’s not a slight against Samsung or the Note, per se. If anything, it’s a reflection on the fact that these phones are quite good — and have been for a while. Anecdotally, industry excitement around these devices has been tapering for a while now, and the device’s launch in the midst of the doldrums of August likely didn’t help much.
[gallery ids="1865978,1865980,1865979,1865983,1865982,1865990,1866000,1866005,1866004"]
The past few years have seen smartphones transform from coveted, bleeding-edge luxury to necessity. The good news to that end, however, is that the Note continues to be among the best devices out there.
The common refrain in the earliest days of the phablet was the inability to wrap one’s fingers around the device. It’s a pragmatic issue. Certainly you don’t want to use a phone day to day that’s impossible to hold. But Samsung’s remarkable job of improving screen to body ratio continues here. In fact, the 6.8-inch Note 10+ has roughly the same footprint as the 6.4-inch Note 9.
The issue will still persist for those with smaller hands — though thankfully Samsung’s got a solution for them in the Note 10. For the rest of us, the Note 10+ is easily held in one hand and slipped in and out of pants pockets. I realize these seem like weird things to say at this point, but I assure you they were legitimate concerns in the earliest days of the phablet, when these things were giant hunks of plastic and glass.
Samsung’s curved display once again does much of the heavy lifting here, allowing the screen to stretch nearly from side to side with only a little bezel at the edge. Up top is a hole-punch camera — that’s “Infinity O” to you. Those with keen eyes no doubt immediately noticed that Samsung has dropped the dual selfie camera here, moving toward the more popular hole-punch camera.
The company’s reasoning for this was both aesthetic and, apparently, practical. The company moved back down to a single camera for the front (10 megapixel), using similar reasoning as Google’s single rear-facing camera on the Pixel: software has greatly improved what companies can do with a single lens. That’s certainly the case to a degree, and a strong case can be made for the selfie camera, which we generally require less of than the rear-facing array.
The company’s gone increasingly minimalist with the design language — something I appreciate. Over the years, as the smartphone has increasingly become a day to day utility, the product’s design has increasingly gotten out of its own way. The front and back are both made of a curved Gorilla Glass that butts up against a thin metal form with a total thickness of 7.9 millimeters.
On certain smooth surfaces like glass, you’ll occasionally find the device gliding slightly. I’d say the chances of dropping it are pretty decent with its frictionless design language, so you’re going to want to get a case for your $1,000 phone. Before you do, admire that color scheme on the back. There are four choices in all. Like the rest of the press, we ended up with Aura Glow.
It features a lovely, prismatic effect when light hits it. It’s proven a bit tricky to photograph, honestly. It’s also a fingerprint magnet, but these are the prices we pay to have the prettiest phone on the block.
One of the interesting footnotes here is how much the design of the 10 will be defined by what the device lost. There are two missing pieces here — both of which are a kind of concession from Samsung for different reasons. And for different reasons, both feel inevitable.
The headphone jack is, of course, the biggie. Samsung kicked and screamed on that one, holding onto the 3.5mm with dear life and roundly mocking the competition (read: Apple) at every turn. The company must have known it was a matter of time, even before the iPhone dropped the port three years ago.
Courage.
Samsung glossed over the end of the jack (and apparently unlisted its Apple-mocking ads in the process) during the Note’s launch event. It was a stark contrast from a briefing we got around the device’s announcement, where the company’s reps spent significantly more time justifying the move. They know us well enough to know that we’d spend a little time taking the piss out of the company after three years of it making the once ubiquitous port a feature. All’s fair in love and port. And honestly, it was mostly just some good-natured ribbing. Welcome to the club, Samsung.
The headphone jack dies not with a bang, but a Note
As for why Samsung did it now, the answer seems to be two-fold. The first is a kind of critical mass in Bluetooth headset usage. Allow me to quote myself from a few weeks back:
The tipping point, it says, came when its internal metrics showed that a majority of users on its flagship devices (the S and Note lines) moved to Bluetooth streaming. The company says the number is now in excess of 70% of users.
Also, as we’re all abundantly aware, the company put its big battery ambitions on hold for a bit, as it dealt with…more burning problems. A couple of recalls, a humble press release and an eight-point battery check later, and batteries are getting bigger again. There’s a 3,500mAh on the Note 10 and a 4,300mAh on the 10+. I’m happy to report that the latter got me through a full day plus three hours on a charge. Not bad, given all of the music and videos I subjected it to in that time.
There’s no USB-C dongle in-box. The rumors got that one wrong. You can pick up a Samsung-branded adapter for $15, or get one for much cheaper elsewhere. There is, however, a pair of AKG USB-C headphones in-box. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: Samsung doesn’t get enough credit for its free headphones. I’ve been known to use the pairs with other devices. They’re not the greatest the world, but they’re better sounding and more comfortable than what a lot of other companies offer in-box.
Obviously the standard no headphone jack things apply here. You can’t use the wired headphones and charge at the same time (unless you go wireless). You know the deal.
The other missing piece here is the Bixby button. I’m sure there are a handful of folks out there who will bemoan its loss, but that’s almost certainly a minority of the minority here. Since the button was first introduced, folks were asking for the ability to remap it. Samsung finally relented on that front, and with the Note 10, it drops the button altogether.
Thus far the smart assistant has been a disappointment. That’s due in no small part to a late launch compared to the likes of Siri, Alexa and Assistant, coupled with a general lack of capability at launch. In Samsung’s defense, the company’s been working to fix that with some pretty massive investment and a big push to court developers. There’s hope for Bixby yet, but a majority of users weren’t eager to have the assistant thrust upon them.
Instead, the power button has been shifted to the left of the device, just under the volume rocker. I preferred having it on the other side, especially for certain functions like screenshotting (something, granted, I do much more than the average user when reviewing a phone). That’s a pretty small quibble, of course.
Bixby can now be quickly accessed by holding down the power button. Handily, Samsung still lets you reassign the function there, if you really want Bixby out of your life. You can also hold down to get the power off menu or double press to launch Bixby or a third-party app (I opted for Spotify, probably my most used these days), though not a different assistant.
Imaging, meanwhile, is something Samsung’s been doing for a long time. The past several generations of S and Note devices have had great camera systems, and it continues to be the main point of improvement. It’s also one of few points of distinction between the 10 and 10+, aside from size.
The Note 10+ has four, count ’em, four rear-facing cameras. They are as follows:
Ultra Wide: 16 megapixel
Wide: 12 megapixel
Telephoto: 12 megapixel
DepthVision
That last one is only on the plus. It’s comprised of two little circles to the right of the primary camera array and just below the flash. We’ll get to that in a second.
The main camera array continues to be one of the best in mobile. The inclusion of telephoto and ultra-wide lenses allow for a wide range of different shots, and the hardware coupled with machine learning makes it a lot more difficult to take a bad photo (though believe me, it’s still possible).
[gallery ids="1869716,1869715,1869720,1869718,1869719"]
The live focus feature (Portrait mode, essentially) comes to video, with four different filters, including Color Point, which makes everything but the subject black and white.
Samsung’s also brought a very simple video editor into the mix here, which is nice on the fly. You can edit the length of clips, splice in other clips, add subtitles and captions and add filters and music. It’s pretty beefy for something baked directly into the camera app, and one of the better uses I’ve found for the S Pen.
Note 10+ with Super Steady (left), iPhone XS (right)
Ditto for the improved Super Steady offering, which smooths out shaky video, including Hyperlapse mode, where handshakes are a big issue. It works well, but you do lose access to other features, including zoom. For that reason, it’s off by default and should be used relatively sparingly.
Note 10+ (left), iPhone XS (right)
Zoom-on Mic is a clever addition, as well. While shooting video, pinch-zooming on something will amplify the noise from that area. I’ve been playing around with it in this cafe. It’s interesting, but less than perfect.
[gallery ids="1869186,1869980,1869975,1869974,1869973,1869725,1869322,1869185,1869184,1869190"]
Zooming into something doesn’t exactly cancel out ambient noise from outside of the frame. Everything still gets amplified in the process and, like digital picture zoom, a lot of noise gets added in the process. Those hoping for a kind of spy microphone, I’m sorry/happy to report that this definitely is not that.
The DepthVision Camera is also pretty limited as I write this. If anything, it’s Samsung’s attempt to brace for a future when things like augmented reality will (theoretically) play a much larger role in our mobile computing. In a conversation I had with the company ahead of launch, they suggested that a lot of the camera’s AR functions will fall in the hands of developers.
For now, Quick Measure is the one practical use. The app is a lot like Apple’s more simply titled Measure. Fire it up, move the camera around to get a lay of the land and it will measure nearby objects for you. An interesting showcase for AR potential? Sure. Earth shattering? Naw. It also seems to be a bit of a battery drain, sucking up the last few bits of juice as I was running it down.
youtube
3D Scanner, on the other hand, got by far the biggest applause line of the Note event. And, indeed, it’s impressive. In the stage demo, a Samsung employee scanned a stuffed pink beaver (I’m not making this up), created a 3D image and animated it using an associate’ movements. Practical? Not really. Cool? Definitely.
It was, however, not available at press time. Hopefully it proves to be more than vaporware, especially if that demo helped push some viewers over to the 10+. Without it, there’s just not a lot of use for the depth camera at the moment.
There’s also AR Doodle, which fills a similar spot as much of the company’s AR offerings. It’s kind of fun, but again, not particularly useful. You’ll likely end up playing with it for a few minutes and forget about it entirely. Such is life.
The feature is built into the camera app, using depth sensing to orient live drawings. With the stylus you can draw in space or doodle on people’s faces. It’s neat, the AR works okay and I was bored with it in about three minutes. Like Quick Measure, the feature is as much a proof of concept as anything. But that’s always been a part of Samsung’s kitchen-sink approach — some combination of useful and silly.
That said, points to Samsung for continuing to de-creepify AR Emojis. Those have moved firmly away from the uncanny valley into something more cartoony/adorable. Less ironic usage will surely follow.
Asked about the key differences between the S and Note lines, Samsung’s response was simple: the S Pen. Otherwise, the lines are relatively interchangeable.
Samsung’s return of the stylus didn’t catch on for handsets quite like the phablet form factor. They’ve made a pretty significant comeback for tablets, but the Note remains fairly singular when it comes to the S Pen. I’ve never been a big user myself, but those who like it swear by it. It’s one of those things like the ThinkPad pointing stick or BlackBerry scroll wheel.
Like the phone itself, the peripheral has been streamlined with a unibody design. Samsung also continues to add capabilities. It can be used to control music, advance slideshows and snap photos. None of that is likely to convince S Pen skeptics (I prefer using the buttons on the included headphones for music control, for example), but more versatility is generally a good thing.
If anything is going to convince people to pick up the S Pen this time out, it’s the improved handwriting recognition. That’s pretty impressive. It was even able to decipher my awful chicken scratch.
You get the same sort of bleeding-edge specs here you’ve come to expect from Samsung’s flagships. The 10+ gets you a baseline 256GB of storage (upgradable to 512), coupled with a beefy 12GB of RAM (the regular Note is a still good 8GB/256GB). The 5G version sports the same numbers and battery (likely making its total life a bit shorter per charge). That’s a shift from the S10, whose 5G version was specced out like crazy. Likely Samsung is bracing for 5G to become less of a novelty in the next year or so.
The new Note also benefits from other recent additions, like the in-display fingerprint reader and wireless power sharing. Both are nice additions, but neither is likely enough to warrant an immediate upgrade.
Once again, that’s not an indictment of Samsung, so much as a reflection of where we are in the life cycle of a mature smartphone industry. The Note 10+ is another good addition to one of the leading smartphone lines. It succeeds as both a productivity device (thanks to additions like DeX and added cross-platform functionality with Windows 10) and an everyday handset.
There’s not enough on-board to really recommend an upgrade from the Note 8 or 9 — especially at that $1,099 price. People are holding onto their devices for longer, and for good reason (as detailed above). But if you need a new phone, are looking for something big and flashy and are willing to splurge, the Note continues to be the one to beat.
[gallery ids="1869169,1869168,1869167,1869166,1869165,1869164,1869163,1869162,1869161,1869160,1869159,1869158,1869157,1869156,1869155,1869154,1869153,1869152"]
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It’s true, you’ve got the Galaxy Note to thank for your big phone. When the device hit the scene at IFA 2011, large screens were still a punchline. That same year, Steve Jobs famously joked about phones with screens larger than four inches, telling a crowd of reporters, “nobody’s going to buy that.”
In 2019, the average screen size hovers around 5.5 inches. That’s a touch larger than the original Note’s 5.3 inches — a size that was pretty widely mocked by much of the industry press at the time. Of course, much of the mainstreaming of larger phones comes courtesy of a much improved screen to body ratio, another place where Samsung has continued to lead the way.
In some sense, the Note has been doomed by its own success. As the rest of the industry caught up, the line blended into the background. Samsung didn’t do the product any favors by dropping the pretense of distinction between the Note and its Galaxy S line.
Ultimately, the two products served as an opportunity to have a six-month refresh cycle for its flagships. Samsung, of course, has been hit with the same sort of malaise as the rest of the industry. The smartphone market isn’t the unstoppable machine it appeared to be two or three years back.
[embedded content]
Like the rest of the industry, the company painted itself into a corner with the smartphone race, creating flagships good enough to convince users to hold onto them for an extra year or two, greatly slowing the upgrade cycle in the process. Ever-inflating prices have also been a part of smartphone sales stagnation — something Samsung and the Note are as guilty of as any.
So what’s a poor smartphone manufacturer to do? The Note 10 represents baby steps. As it did with the S line recently, Samsung is now offering two models. The base Note 10 represents a rare step backward in terms of screen size, shrinking down slightly from 6.4 to 6.3 inches, while reducing resolution from Quad HD to Full HD.
The seemingly regressive step lets Samsung come in a bit under last year’s jaw dropping $1,000. The new Note is only $50 cheaper, but moving from four to three figures may have a positive psychological effect for wary buyers. While the slightly smaller screen coupled with a better screen to body ratio means a device that’s surprisingly slim.
If anything, the Note 10+ feels like the true successor to the Note line. The baseline device could have just as well been labeled the Note 10 Lite. That’s something Samsung is keenly aware of, as it targets first-time Note users with the 10 and true believers with the 10+. In both cases, Samsung is faced with the same task as the rest of the industry: offering a compelling reason for users to upgrade.
Earlier this week, a Note 9 owner asked me whether the new device warrants an upgrade. The answer is, of course, no. The pace of smartphone innovation has slowed, even as prices have risen. Honestly, the 10 doesn’t really offer that many compelling reasons to upgrade from the Note 8.
That’s not a slight against Samsung or the Note, per se. If anything, it’s a reflection on the fact that these phones are quite good — and have been for a while. Anecdotally, industry excitement around these devices has been tapering for a while now, and the device’s launch in the midst of the doldrums of August likely didn’t help much.
The past few years have seen smartphones transform from coveted, bleeding-edge luxury to necessity. The good news to that end, however, is that the Note continues to be among the best devices out there.
The common refrain in the earliest days of the phablet was the inability to wrap one’s fingers around the device. It’s a pragmatic issue. Certainly you don’t want to use a phone day to day that’s impossible to hold. But Samsung’s remarkable job of improving screen to body ratio continues here. In fact, the 6.8-inch Note 10+ has roughly the same footprint as the 6.4-inch Note 9.
The issue will still persist for those with smaller hands — though thankfully Samsung’s got a solution for them in the Note 10. For the rest of us, the Note 10+ is easily held in one hand and slipped in and out of pants pockets. I realize these seem like weird things to say at this point, but I assure you they were legitimate concerns in the earliest days of the phablet, when these things were giant hunks of plastic and glass.
Samsung’s curved display once again does much of the heavy lifting here, allowing the screen to stretch nearly from side to side with only a little bezel at the edge. Up top is a hole-punch camera — that’s “Infinity O” to you. Those with keen eyes no doubt immediately noticed that Samsung has dropped the dual selfie camera here, moving toward the more popular hole-punch camera.
The company’s reasoning for this was both aesthetic and, apparently, practical. The company moved back down to a single camera for the front (10 megapixel), using similar reasoning as Google’s single rear-facing camera on the Pixel: software has greatly improved what companies can do with a single lens. That’s certainly the case to a degree, and a strong case can be made for the selfie camera, which we generally require less of than the rear-facing array.
The company’s gone increasingly minimalist with the design language — something I appreciate. Over the years, as the smartphone has increasingly become a day to day utility, the product’s design has increasingly gotten out of its own way. The front and back are both made of a curved Gorilla Glass that butts up against a thin metal form with a total thickness of 7.9 millimeters.
On certain smooth surfaces like glass, you’ll occasionally find the device gliding slightly. I’d say the chances of dropping it are pretty decent with its frictionless design language, so you’re going to want to get a case for your $1,000 phone. Before you do, admire that color scheme on the back. There are four choices in all. Like the rest of the press, we ended up with Aura Glow.
It features a lovely, prismatic effect when light hits it. It’s proven a bit tricky to photograph, honestly. It’s also a fingerprint magnet, but these are the prices we pay to have the prettiest phone on the block.
One of the interesting footnotes here is how much the design of the 10 will be defined by what the device lost. There are two missing pieces here — both of which are a kind of concession from Samsung for different reasons. And for different reasons, both feel inevitable.
The headphone jack is, of course, the biggie. Samsung kicked and screamed on that one, holding onto the 3.5mm with dear life and roundly mocking the competition (read: Apple) at every turn. The company must have known it was a matter of time, even before the iPhone dropped the port three years ago.
Courage.
Samsung glossed over the end of the jack (and apparently unlisted its Apple-mocking ads in the process) during the Note’s launch event. It was a stark contrast from a briefing we got around the device’s announcement, where the company’s reps spent significantly more time justifying the move. They know us well enough to know that we’d spend a little time taking the piss out of the company after three years of it making the once ubiquitous port a feature. All’s fair in love and port. And honestly, it was mostly just some good-natured ribbing. Welcome to the club, Samsung.
As for why Samsung did it now, the answer seems to be two-fold. The first is a kind of critical mass in Bluetooth headset usage. Allow me to quote myself from a few weeks back:
The tipping point, it says, came when its internal metrics showed that a majority of users on its flagship devices (the S and Note lines) moved to Bluetooth streaming. The company says the number is now in excess of 70% of users.
Also, as we’re all abundantly aware, the company put its big battery ambitions on hold for a bit, as it dealt with…more burning problems. A couple of recalls, a humble press release and an eight-point battery check later, and batteries are getting bigger again. There’s a 3,500mAh on the Note 10 and a 4,300mAh on the 10+. I’m happy to report that the latter got me through a full day plus three hours on a charge. Not bad, given all of the music and videos I subjected it to in that time.
There’s no USB-C dongle in-box. The rumors got that one wrong. You can pick up a Samsung-branded adapter for $15, or get one for much cheaper elsewhere. There is, however, a pair of AKG USB-C headphones in-box. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: Samsung doesn’t get enough credit for its free headphones. I’ve been known to use the pairs with other devices. They’re not the greatest the world, but they’re better sounding and more comfortable than what a lot of other companies offer in-box.
Obviously the standard no headphone jack things apply here. You can’t use the wired headphones and charge at the same time (unless you go wireless). You know the deal.
The other missing piece here is the Bixby button. I’m sure there are a handful of folks out there who will bemoan its loss, but that’s almost certainly a minority of the minority here. Since the button was first introduced, folks were asking for the ability to remap it. Samsung finally relented on that front, and with the Note 10, it drops the button altogether.
Thus far the smart assistant has been a disappointment. That’s due in no small part to a late launch compared to the likes of Siri, Alexa and Assistant, coupled with a general lack of capability at launch. In Samsung’s defense, the company’s been working to fix that with some pretty massive investment and a big push to court developers. There’s hope for Bixby yet, but a majority of users weren’t eager to have the assistant thrust upon them.
Instead, the power button has been shifted to the left of the device, just under the volume rocker. I preferred having it on the other side, especially for certain functions like screenshotting (something, granted, I do much more than the average user when reviewing a phone). That’s a pretty small quibble, of course.
Bixby can now be quickly accessed by holding down the power button. Handily, Samsung still lets you reassign the function there, if you really want Bixby out of your life. You can also hold down to get the power off menu or double press to launch Bixby or a third-party app (I opted for Spotify, probably my most used these days), though not a different assistant.
Imaging, meanwhile, is something Samsung’s been doing for a long time. The past several generations of S and Note devices have had great camera systems, and it continues to be the main point of improvement. It’s also one of few points of distinction between the 10 and 10+, aside from size.
The Note 10+ has four, count ’em, four rear-facing cameras. They are as follows:
Ultra Wide: 16 megapixel
Wide: 12 megapixel
Telephoto: 12 megapixel
DepthVision
That last one is only on the plus. It’s comprised of two little circles to the right of the primary camera array and just below the flash. We’ll get to that in a second.
The main camera array continues to be one of the best in mobile. The inclusion of telephoto and ultra-wide lenses allow for a wide range of different shots, and the hardware coupled with machine learning makes it a lot more difficult to take a bad photo (though believe me, it’s still possible).
The live focus feature (Portrait mode, essentially) comes to video, with four different filters, including Color Point, which makes everything but the subject black and white.
Samsung’s also brought a very simple video editor into the mix here, which is nice on the fly. You can edit the length of clips, splice in other clips, add subtitles and captions and add filters and music. It’s pretty beefy for something baked directly into the camera app, and one of the better uses I’ve found for the S Pen.
Note 10+ with Super Steady (left), iPhone XS (right)
Ditto for the improved Super Steady offering, which smooths out shaky video, including Hyperlapse mode, where handshakes are a big issue. It works well, but you do lose access to other features, including zoom. For that reason, it’s off by default and should be used relatively sparingly.
Note 10+ (left), iPhone XS (right)
Zoom-on Mic is a clever addition, as well. While shooting video, pinch-zooming on something will amplify the noise from that area. I’ve been playing around with it in this cafe. It’s interesting, but less than perfect.
Zooming into something doesn’t exactly cancel out ambient noise from outside of the frame. Everything still gets amplified in the process and, like digital picture zoom, a lot of noise gets added in the process. Those hoping for a kind of spy microphone, I’m sorry/happy to report that this definitely is not that.
The DepthVision Camera is also pretty limited as I write this. If anything, it’s Samsung’s attempt to brace for a future when things like augmented reality will (theoretically) play a much larger role in our mobile computing. In a conversation I had with the company ahead of launch, they suggested that a lot of the camera’s AR functions will fall in the hands of developers.
For now, Quick Measure is the one practical use. The app is a lot like Apple’s more simply titled Measure. Fire it up, move the camera around to get a lay of the land and it will measure nearby objects for you. An interesting showcase for AR potential? Sure. Earth shattering? Naw. It also seems to be a bit of a battery drain, sucking up the last few bits of juice as I was running it down.
[embedded content]
3D Scanner, on the other hand, got by far the biggest applause line of the Note event. And, indeed, it’s impressive. In the stage demo, a Samsung employee scanned a stuffed pink beaver (I’m not making this up), created a 3D image and animated it using an associate’ movements. Practical? Not really. Cool? Definitely.
It was, however, not available at press time. Hopefully it proves to be more than vaporware, especially if that demo helped push some viewers over to the 10+. Without it, there’s just not a lot of use for the depth camera at the moment.
There’s also AR Doodle, which fills a similar spot as much of the company’s AR offerings. It’s kind of fun, but again, not particularly useful. You’ll likely end up playing with it for a few minutes and forget about it entirely. Such is life.
The feature is built into the camera app, using depth sensing to orient live drawings. With the stylus you can draw in space or doodle on people’s faces. It’s neat, the AR works okay and I was bored with it in about three minutes. Like Quick Measure, the feature is as much a proof of concept as anything. But that’s always been a part of Samsung’s kitchen-sink approach — some combination of useful and silly.
That said, points to Samsung for continuing to de-creepify AR Emojis. Those have moved firmly away from the uncanny valley into something more cartoony/adorable. Less ironic usage will surely follow.
Asked about the key differences between the S and Note lines, Samsung’s response was simple: the S Pen. Otherwise, the lines are relatively interchangeable.
Samsung’s return of the stylus didn’t catch on for handsets quite like the phablet form factor. They’ve made a pretty significant comeback for tablets, but the Note remains fairly singular when it comes to the S Pen. I’ve never been a big user myself, but those who like it swear by it. It’s one of those things like the ThinkPad pointing stick or BlackBerry scroll wheel.
Like the phone itself, the peripheral has been streamlined with a unibody design. Samsung also continues to add capabilities. It can be used to control music, advance slideshows and snap photos. None of that is likely to convince S Pen skeptics (I prefer using the buttons on the included headphones for music control, for example), but more versatility is generally a good thing.
If anything is going to convince people to pick up the S Pen this time out, it’s the improved handwriting recognition. That’s pretty impressive. It was even able to decipher my awful chicken scratch.
You get the same sort of bleeding-edge specs here you’ve come to expect from Samsung’s flagships. The 10+ gets you a baseline 256GB of storage (upgradable to 512), coupled with a beefy 12GB of RAM (the regular Note is a still good 8GB/256GB). The 5G version sports the same numbers and battery (likely making its total life a bit shorter per charge). That’s a shift from the S10, whose 5G version was specced out like crazy. Likely Samsung is bracing for 5G to become less of a novelty in the next year or so.
The new Note also benefits from other recent additions, like the in-display fingerprint reader and wireless power sharing. Both are nice additions, but neither is likely enough to warrant an immediate upgrade.
Once again, that’s not an indictment of Samsung, so much as a reflection of where we are in the life cycle of a mature smartphone industry. The Note 10+ is another good addition to one of the leading smartphone lines. It succeeds as both a productivity device (thanks to additions like DeX and added cross-platform functionality with Windows 10) and an everyday handset.
There’s not enough on-board to really recommend an upgrade from the Note 8 or 9 — especially at that $1,099 price. People are holding onto their devices for longer, and for good reason (as detailed above). But if you need a new phone, are looking for something big and flashy and are willing to splurge, the Note continues to be the one to beat.
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TechCrunch: Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ review It’s true, you’ve got the Galaxy Note to thank for your big phone. When the device hit the scene at IFA 2011, large screens were still a punchline.
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Text
It’s true, you’vegot the Galaxy Note to thank for your big phone. When the device hit the scene at IFA 2011, large screens were still a punchline. That same year, Steve Jobs famously joked about phones with screens larger than four inches, telling a crowd of reporters, “nobody’s going to buy that.”
In 2019, the average screen size hovers around 5.5 inches. That’s a touch larger than the original Note’s 5.3 inches — a size that was pretty widely mocked by much of the industry press at the time. Of course, much of the mainstreaming of larger phones comes courtesy of a much improved screen to body ratio, another place where Samsung has continued to lead the way.
In some sense, the Note has been doomed by its own success. As the rest of the industry caught up, the line blended into the background. Samsung didn’t do the product any favors by dropping the pretense of distinction between the Note and its Galaxy S line.
Ultimately, the two products served as an opportunity to have a six-month refresh cycle for its flagships. Samsung, of course, has been hit with the same sort of malaise as the rest of the industry. The smartphone market isn’t the unstoppable machine it appeared to be two or three years back.
Like the rest of the industry, the company painted itself into a corner with the smartphone race, creating flagships good enough to convince users to hold onto them for an extra year or two, greatly slowing the upgrade cycle in the process. Ever-inflating prices have also been a part of smartphone sales stagnation — something Samsung and the Note are as guilty of as any.
So what’s a poor smartphone manufacturer to do? The Note 10 represents baby steps. As it did with the S line recently, Samsung is now offering two models. The base Note 10 represents a rare step backward in terms of screen size, shrinking down slightly from 6.4 to 6.3 inches, while reducing resolution from Quad HD to Full HD.
The seemingly regressive step lets Samsung come in a bit under last year’s jaw dropping $1,000. The new Note is only $50 cheaper, but moving from four to three figures may have a positive psychological effect for wary buyers. While the slightly smaller screen coupled with a better screen to body ratio means a device that’s surprisingly slim.
If anything, the Note 10 feels like the true successor to the Note line. The baseline device could have just as well been labeled the Note 10 Lite. That’s something Samsung is keenly aware of, as it targets first-time Note users with the 10 and true believers with the 10 . In both cases, Samsung is faced with the same task as the rest of the industry: offering a compelling reason for users to upgrade.
Earlier this week, a Note 9 owner asked me whether the new device warrants an upgrade. The answer is, of course, no. The pace of smartphone innovation has slowed, even as prices have risen. Honestly, the 10 doesn’t really offer that many compelling reasons to upgrade from the Note 8.
That’s not a slight against Samsung or the Note, per se. If anything, it’s a reflection on the fact that these phones are quite good — and have been for a while. Anecdotally, industry excitement around these devices has been tapering for a while now, and the device’s launch in the midst of the doldrums of August likely didn’t help much.
The past few years have seen smartphones transform from coveted, bleeding-edge luxury to necessity. The good news to that end, however, is that the Note continues to be among the best devices out there.
The common refrain in the earliest days of the phablet was the inability to wrap one’s fingers around the device. It’s a pragmatic issue. Certainly you don’t want to use a phone day to day that’s impossible to hold. But Samsung’s remarkable job of improving screen to body ratio continues here. In fact, the 6.8-inch Note 10 has roughly the same footprint as the 6.4-inch Note 9.
The issue will still persist for those with smaller hands — though thankfully Samsung’s got a solution for them in the Note 10. For the rest of us, the Note 10 is easily held in one hand and slipped in and out of pants pockets. I realize these seem like weird things to say at this point, but I assure you they were legitimate concerns in the earliest days of the phablet, when these things were giant hunks of plastic and glass.
Samsung’s curved display once again does much of the heavy lifting here, allowing the screen to stretch nearly from side to side with only a little bezel at the edge. Up top is a hole-punch camera — that’s “Infinity O” to you. Those with keen eyes no doubt immediately noticed that Samsung has dropped the dual selfie camera here, moving toward the more popular hole-punch camera.
The company’s reasoning for this was both aesthetic and, apparently, practical. The company moved back down to a single camera for the front (10 megapixel), using similar reasoning as Google’s single rear-facing camera on the Pixel: software has greatly improved what companies can do with a single lens. That’s certainly the case to a degree, and a strong case can be made for the selfie camera, which we generally require less of than the rear-facing array.
The company’s gone increasingly minimalist with the design language — something I appreciate. Over the years, as the smartphone has increasingly become a day to day utility, the product’s design has increasingly gotten out of its own way. The front and back are both made of a curved Gorilla Glass that butts up against a thin metal form with a total thickness of 7.9 millimeters.
On certain smooth surfaces like glass, you’ll occasionally find the device gliding slightly. I’d say the chances of dropping it are pretty decent with its frictionless design language, so you’re going to want to get a case for your $1,000 phone. Before you do, admire that color scheme on the back. There are four choices in all. Like the rest of the press, we ended up with Aura Glow.
It features a lovely, prismatic effect when light hits it. It’s proven a bit tricky to photograph, honestly. It’s also a fingerprint magnet, but these are the prices we pay to have the prettiest phone on the block.
One of the interesting footnotes here is how much the design of the 10 will be defined by what the device lost. There are two missing pieces here — both of which are a kind of concession from Samsung for different reasons. And for different reasons, both feel inevitable.
The headphone jack is, of course, the biggie. Samsung kicked and screamed on that one, holding onto the 3.5mm with dear life and roundly mocking the competition (read: Apple) at every turn. The company must have known it was a matter of time, even before the iPhone dropped the port three years ago.
Courage.
Samsung glossed over the end of the jack (and apparently unlisted its Apple-mocking ads in the process) during the Note’s launch event. It was a stark contrast from a briefing we got around the device’s announcement, where the company’s reps spent significantly more time justifying the move. They know us well enough to know that we’d spend a little time taking the piss out of the company after three years of it making the once ubiquitous port a feature. All’s fair in love and port. And honestly, it was mostly just some good-natured ribbing. Welcome to the club, Samsung.
As for why Samsung did it now, the answer seems to be two-fold. The first is a kind of critical mass in Bluetooth headset usage. Allow me to quote myself from a few weeks back:
The tipping point, it says, came when its internal metrics showed that a majority of users on its flagship devices (the S and Note lines) moved to Bluetooth streaming. The company says the number is now in excess of 70% of users.
Also, as we’re all abundantly aware, the company put its big battery ambitions on hold for a bit, as it dealt with…more burning problems. A couple of recalls, a humble press release and an eight-point battery check later, and batteries are getting bigger again. There’s a 3,500mAh on the Note 10 and a 4,300mAh on the 10 . I’m happy to report that the latter got me through a full day plus three hours on a charge. Not bad, given all of the music and videos I subjected it to in that time.
There’s no USB-C dongle in-box. The rumors got that one wrong. You can pick up a Samsung-branded adapter for $15, or get one for much cheaper elsewhere. There is, however, a pair of AKG USB-C headphones in-box. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: Samsung doesn’t get enough credit for its free headphones. I’ve been known to use the pairs with other devices. They’re not the greatest the world, but they’re better sounding and more comfortable than what a lot of other companies offer in-box.
Obviously the standard no headphone jack things apply here. You can’t use the wired headphones and charge at the same time (unless you go wireless). You know the deal.
The other missing piece here is theBixbybutton. I’m sure there are a handful of folks out there who will bemoan its loss, but that’s almost certainly a minority of the minority here. Since the button was first introduced, folks were asking for the ability to remap it. Samsung finally relented on that front, and with the Note 10, it drops the button altogether.
Thus far the smart assistant has been a disappointment. That’s due in no small part to a late launch compared to the likes of Siri, Alexa and Assistant, coupled with a general lack of capability at launch. In Samsung’s defense, the company’s been working to fix that with some pretty massive investment and a big push to court developers. There’s hope for Bixby yet, but a majority of users weren’t eager to have the assistant thrust upon them.
Instead, the power button has been shifted to the left of the device, just under the volume rocker. I preferred having it on the other side, especially for certain functions like screenshotting (something, granted, I do much more than the average user when reviewing a phone). That’s a pretty small quibble, of course.
Bixby can now be quickly accessed by holding down the power button. Handily, Samsung still lets you reassign the function there, if you really want Bixby out of your life. You can also hold down to get the power off menu or double press to launch Bixby or a third-party app (I opted for Spotify, probably my most used these days), though not a different assistant.
Imaging, meanwhile, is something Samsung’s been doing for a long time. The past several generations of S and Note devices have had great camera systems, and it continues to be the main point of improvement. It’s also one of few points of distinction between the 10 and 10 , aside from size.
The Note 10 has four, count ’em, four rear-facing cameras. They are as follows:
Ultra Wide:16 megapixel
Wide:12 megapixel
Telephoto:12 megapixel
DepthVision
That last one is only on the plus. It’s comprised of two little circles to the right of the primary camera array and just below the flash. We’ll get to that in a second.
The main camera array continues to be one of the best in mobile. The inclusion of telephoto and ultra-wide lenses allow for a wide range of different shots, and the hardware coupled with machine learning makes it a lot more difficult to take a bad photo (though believe me, it’s still possible).
The live focus feature (Portrait mode, essentially) comes to video, with four different filters, including Color Point, which makes everything but the subject black and white.
Samsung’s also brought a very simple video editor into the mix here, which is nice on the fly. You can edit the length of clips, splice in other clips, add subtitles and captions and add filters and music. It’s pretty beefy for something baked directly into the camera app, and one of the better uses I’ve found for the S Pen.
Note 10 with Super Steady (left), iPhone XS (right)
Ditto for the improved Super Steady offering, which smooths out shaky video, including Hyperlapse mode, where handshakes are a big issue. It works well, but you do lose access to other features, including zoom. For that reason, it’s off by default and should be used relatively sparingly.
Note 10 (left), iPhone XS (right)
Zoom-on Mic is a clever addition, as well. While shooting video, pinch-zooming on something will amplify the noise from that area. I’ve been playing around with it in this cafe. It’s interesting, but less than perfect.
Zooming into something doesn’t exactly cancel out ambient noise from outside of the frame. Everything still gets amplified in the process and, like digital picture zoom, a lot of noise gets added in the process. Those hoping for a kind of spy microphone, I’m sorry/happy to report that this definitely is not that.
The DepthVision Camera is also pretty limited as I write this. If anything, it’s Samsung’s attempt to brace for a future when things like augmented reality will (theoretically) play a much larger role in our mobile computing. In a conversation I had with the company ahead of launch, they suggested that a lot of the camera’s AR functions will fall in the hands of developers.
For now, Quick Measure is the one practical use. The app is a lot like Apple’s more simply titled Measure. Fire it up, move the camera around to get a lay of the land and it will measure nearby objects for you. An interesting showcase for AR potential? Sure. Earth shattering? Naw. It also seems to be a bit of a battery drain, sucking up the last few bits of juice as I was running it down.
3D Scanner, on the other hand, got by far the biggest applause line of the Note event. And, indeed, it’s impressive. In the stage demo, a Samsung employee scanned a stuffed pink beaver (I’m not making this up), created a 3D image and animated it using an associate’ movements. Practical? Not really. Cool? Definitely.
It was, however, not available at press time. Hopefully it proves to be more than vaporware, especially if that demo helped push some viewers over to the 10 . Without it, there’s just not a lot of use for the depth camera at the moment.
There’s also AR Doodle, which fills a similar spot as much of the company’s AR offerings. It’s kind of fun, but again, not particularly useful. You’ll likely end up playing with it for a few minutes and forget about it entirely. Such is life.
The feature is built into the camera app, using depth sensing to orient live drawings. With the stylus you can draw in space or doodle on people’s faces. It’s neat, the AR works okay and I was bored with it in about three minutes. Like Quick Measure, the feature is as much a proof of concept as anything. But that’s always been a part of Samsung’s kitchen-sink approach — some combination of useful and silly.
That said, points to Samsung for continuing to de-creepify AR Emojis. Those have moved firmly away from the uncanny valley into something more cartoony/adorable. Less ironic usage will surely follow.
Asked about the key differences between the S and Note lines, Samsung’s response was simple: the S Pen. Otherwise, the lines are relatively interchangeable.
Samsung’s return of the stylus didn’t catch on for handsets quite like the phablet form factor. They’ve made a pretty significant comeback for tablets, but the Note remains fairly singular when it comes to the S Pen. I’ve never been a big user myself, but those who like it swear by it. It’s one of those things like the ThinkPad pointing stick or BlackBerry scroll wheel.
Like the phone itself, the peripheral has been streamlined with a unibody design. Samsung also continues to add capabilities. It can be used to control music, advance slideshows and snap photos. None of that is likely to convince S Pen skeptics (I prefer using the buttons on the included headphones for music control, for example), but more versatility is generally a good thing.
If anything is going to convince people to pick up the S Pen this time out, it’s the improved handwriting recognition. That’s pretty impressive. It was even able to decipher my awful chicken scratch.
You get the same sort of bleeding-edge specs here you’ve come to expect from Samsung’s flagships. The 10 gets you a baseline 256GB of storage (upgradable to 512), coupled with a beefy 12GB of RAM (the regular Note is a still good 8GB/256GB). The 5G version sports the same numbers and battery (likely making its total life a bit shorter per charge). That’s a shift from the S10, whose 5G version was specced out like crazy. Likely Samsung is bracing for 5G to become less of a novelty in the next year or so.
The new Note also benefits from other recent additions, like the in-display fingerprint reader and wireless power sharing. Both are nice additions, but neither is likely enough to warrant an immediate upgrade.
Once again, that’s not an indictment of Samsung, so much as a reflection of where we are in the life cycle of a mature smartphone industry. The Note 10 is another good addition to one of the leading smartphone lines. It succeeds as both a productivity device (thanks to additions like DeX and added cross-platform functionality with Windows 10) and an everyday handset.
There’s not enough on-board to really recommend an upgrade from the Note 8 or 9 — especially at that $1,099 price. People are holding onto their devices for longer, and for good reason (as detailed above). But if you need a new phone, are looking for something big and flashy and are willing to splurge, the Note continues to be the one to beat.
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Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ review It’s true, you’vegot the Galaxy Note to thank for your big phone. When the device hit the scene at IFA 2011, large screens were still a punchline.
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It’s true, you’ve got the Galaxy Note to thank for your big phone. When the device hit the scene at IFA 2011, large screens were still a punchline. That same year, Steve Jobs famously joked about phones with screens larger than four inches, telling a crowd of reporters, “nobody’s going to buy that.”
In 2019, the average screen size hovers around 5.5 inches. That’s a touch larger than the original Note’s 5.3 inches — a size that was pretty widely mocked by much of the industry press at the time. Of course, much of the mainstreaming of larger phones comes courtesy of a much improved screen to body ratio, another place where Samsung has continued to lead the way.
In some sense, the Note has been doomed by its own success. As the rest of the industry caught up, the line blended into the background. Samsung didn’t do the product any favors by dropping the pretense of distinction between the Note and its Galaxy S line.
Ultimately, the two products served as an opportunity to have a six-month refresh cycle for its flagships. Samsung, of course, has been hit with the same sort of malaise as the rest of the industry. The smartphone market isn’t the unstoppable machine it appeared to be two or three years back.
Like the rest of the industry, the company painted itself into a corner with the smartphone race, creating flagships good enough to convince users to hold onto them for an extra year or two, greatly slowing the upgrade cycle in the process. Ever-inflating prices have also been a part of smartphone sales stagnation — something Samsung and the Note are as guilty of as any.
So what’s a poor smartphone manufacturer to do? The Note 10 represents baby steps. As it did with the S line recently, Samsung is now offering two models. The base Note 10 represents a rare step backward in terms of screen size, shrinking down slightly from 6.4 to 6.3 inches, while reducing resolution from Quad HD to Full HD.
The seemingly regressive step lets Samsung come in a bit under last year’s jaw dropping $1,000. The new Note is only $50 cheaper, but moving from four to three figures may have a positive psychological effect for wary buyers. While the slightly smaller screen coupled with a better screen to body ratio means a device that’s surprisingly slim.
If anything, the Note 10+ feels like the true successor to the Note line. The baseline device could have just as well been labeled the Note 10 Lite. That’s something Samsung is keenly aware of, as it targets first-time Note users with the 10 and true believers with the 10+. In both cases, Samsung is faced with the same task as the rest of the industry: offering a compelling reason for users to upgrade.
Earlier this week, a Note 9 owner asked me whether the new device warrants an upgrade. The answer is, of course, no. The pace of smartphone innovation has slowed, even as prices have risen. Honestly, the 10 doesn’t really offer that many compelling reasons to upgrade from the Note 8.
That’s not a slight against Samsung or the Note, per se. If anything, it’s a reflection on the fact that these phones are quite good — and have been for a while. Anecdotally, industry excitement around these devices has been tapering for a while now, and the device’s launch in the midst of the doldrums of August likely didn’t help much.
The past few years have seen smartphones transform from coveted, bleeding-edge luxury to necessity. The good news to that end, however, is that the Note continues to be among the best devices out there.
The common refrain in the earliest days of the phablet was the inability to wrap one’s fingers around the device. It’s a pragmatic issue. Certainly you don’t want to use a phone day to day that’s impossible to hold. But Samsung’s remarkable job of improving screen to body ratio continues here. In fact, the 6.8-inch Note 10+ has roughly the same footprint as the 6.4-inch Note 9.
The issue will still persist for those with smaller hands — though thankfully Samsung’s got a solution for them in the Note 10. For the rest of us, the Note 10+ is easily held in one hand and slipped in and out of pants pockets. I realize these seem like weird things to say at this point, but I assure you they were legitimate concerns in the earliest days of the phablet, when these things were giant hunks of plastic and glass.
Samsung’s curved display once again does much of the heavy lifting here, allowing the screen to stretch nearly from side to side with only a little bezel at the edge. Up top is a hole-punch camera — that’s “Infinity O” to you. Those with keen eyes no doubt immediately noticed that Samsung has dropped the dual selfie camera here, moving toward the more popular hole-punch camera.
The company’s reasoning for this was both aesthetic and, apparently, practical. The company moved back down to a single camera for the front (10 megapixel), using similar reasoning as Google’s single rear-facing camera on the Pixel: software has greatly improved what companies can do with a single lens. That’s certainly the case to a degree, and a strong case can be made for the selfie camera, which we generally require less of than the rear-facing array.
The company’s gone increasingly minimalist with the design language — something I appreciate. Over the years, as the smartphone has increasingly become a day to day utility, the product’s design has increasingly gotten out of its own way. The front and back are both made of a curved Gorilla Glass that butts up against a thin metal form with a total thickness of 7.9 millimeters.
On certain smooth surfaces like glass, you’ll occasionally find the device gliding slightly. I’d say the chances of dropping it are pretty decent with its frictionless design language, so you’re going to want to get a case for your $1,000 phone. Before you do, admire that color scheme on the back. There are four choices in all. Like the rest of the press, we ended up with Aura Glow.
It features a lovely, prismatic effect when light hits it. It’s proven a bit tricky to photograph, honestly. It’s also a fingerprint magnet, but these are the prices we pay to have the prettiest phone on the block.
One of the interesting footnotes here is how much the design of the 10 will be defined by what the device lost. There are two missing pieces here — both of which are a kind of concession from Samsung for different reasons. And for different reasons, both feel inevitable.
The headphone jack is, of course, the biggie. Samsung kicked and screamed on that one, holding onto the 3.5mm with dear life and roundly mocking the competition (read: Apple) at every turn. The company must have known it was a matter of time, even before the iPhone dropped the port three years ago.
Courage.
Samsung glossed over the end of the jack (and apparently unlisted its Apple-mocking ads in the process) during the Note’s launch event. It was a stark contrast from a briefing we got around the device’s announcement, where the company’s reps spent significantly more time justifying the move. They know us well enough to know that we’d spend a little time taking the piss out of the company after three years of it making the once ubiquitous port a feature. All’s fair in love and port. And honestly, it was mostly just some good-natured ribbing. Welcome to the club, Samsung.
As for why Samsung did it now, the answer seems to be two-fold. The first is a kind of critical mass in Bluetooth headset usage. Allow me to quote myself from a few weeks back:
The tipping point, it says, came when its internal metrics showed that a majority of users on its flagship devices (the S and Note lines) moved to Bluetooth streaming. The company says the number is now in excess of 70% of users.
Also, as we’re all abundantly aware, the company put its big battery ambitions on hold for a bit, as it dealt with…more burning problems. A couple of recalls, a humble press release and an eight-point battery check later, and batteries are getting bigger again. There’s a 3,500mAh on the Note 10 and a 4,300mAh on the 10+. I’m happy to report that the latter got me through a full day plus three hours on a charge. Not bad, given all of the music and videos I subjected it to in that time.
There’s no USB-C dongle in-box. The rumors got that one wrong. You can pick up a Samsung-branded adapter for $15, or get one for much cheaper elsewhere. There is, however, a pair of AKG USB-C headphones in-box. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: Samsung doesn’t get enough credit for its free headphones. I’ve been known to use the pairs with other devices. They’re not the greatest the world, but they’re better sounding and more comfortable than what a lot of other companies offer in-box.
Obviously the standard no headphone jack things apply here. You can’t use the wired headphones and charge at the same time (unless you go wireless). You know the deal.
The other missing piece here is the Bixby button. I’m sure there are a handful of folks out there who will bemoan its loss, but that’s almost certainly a minority of the minority here. Since the button was first introduced, folks were asking for the ability to remap it. Samsung finally relented on that front, and with the Note 10, it drops the button altogether.
Thus far the smart assistant has been a disappointment. That’s due in no small part to a late launch compared to the likes of Siri, Alexa and Assistant, coupled with a general lack of capability at launch. In Samsung’s defense, the company’s been working to fix that with some pretty massive investment and a big push to court developers. There’s hope for Bixby yet, but a majority of users weren’t eager to have the assistant thrust upon them.
Instead, the power button has been shifted to the left of the device, just under the volume rocker. I preferred having it on the other side, especially for certain functions like screenshotting (something, granted, I do much more than the average user when reviewing a phone). That’s a pretty small quibble, of course.
Bixby can now be quickly accessed by holding down the power button. Handily, Samsung still lets you reassign the function there, if you really want Bixby out of your life. You can also hold down to get the power off menu or double press to launch Bixby or a third-party app (I opted for Spotify, probably my most used these days), though not a different assistant.
Imaging, meanwhile, is something Samsung’s been doing for a long time. The past several generations of S and Note devices have had great camera systems, and it continues to be the main point of improvement. It’s also one of few points of distinction between the 10 and 10+, aside from size.
The Note 10+ has four, count ’em, four rear-facing cameras. They are as follows:
Ultra Wide: 16 megapixel
Wide: 12 megapixel
Telephoto: 12 megapixel
DepthVision
That last one is only on the plus. It’s comprised of two little circles to the right of the primary camera array and just below the flash. We’ll get to that in a second.
The main camera array continues to be one of the best in mobile. The inclusion of telephoto and ultra-wide lenses allow for a wide range of different shots, and the hardware coupled with machine learning makes it a lot more difficult to take a bad photo (though believe me, it’s still possible).
The live focus feature (Portrait mode, essentially) comes to video, with four different filters, including Color Point, which makes everything but the subject black and white.
Samsung’s also brought a very simple video editor into the mix here, which is nice on the fly. You can edit the length of clips, splice in other clips, add subtitles and captions and add filters and music. It’s pretty beefy for something baked directly into the camera app, and one of the better uses I’ve found for the S Pen.
Note 10+ with Super Steady (left), iPhone XS (right)
Ditto for the improved Super Steady offering, which smooths out shaky video, including Hyperlapse mode, where handshakes are a big issue. It works well, but you do lose access to other features, including zoom. For that reason, it’s off by default and should be used relatively sparingly.
Note 10+ (left), iPhone XS (right)
Zoom-on Mic is a clever addition, as well. While shooting video, pinch-zooming on something will amplify the noise from that area. I’ve been playing around with it in this cafe. It’s interesting, but less than perfect.
Zooming into something doesn’t exactly cancel out ambient noise from outside of the frame. Everything still gets amplified in the process and, like digital picture zoom, a lot of noise gets added in the process. Those hoping for a kind of spy microphone, I’m sorry/happy to report that this definitely is not that.
The DepthVision Camera is also pretty limited as I write this. If anything, it’s Samsung’s attempt to brace for a future when things like augmented reality will (theoretically) play a much larger role in our mobile computing. In a conversation I had with the company ahead of launch, they suggested that a lot of the camera’s AR functions will fall in the hands of developers.
For now, Quick Measure is the one practical use. The app is a lot like Apple’s more simply titled Measure. Fire it up, move the camera around to get a lay of the land and it will measure nearby objects for you. An interesting showcase for AR potential? Sure. Earth shattering? Naw. It also seems to be a bit of a battery drain, sucking up the last few bits of juice as I was running it down.
3D Scanner, on the other hand, got by far the biggest applause line of the Note event. And, indeed, it’s impressive. In the stage demo, a Samsung employee scanned a stuffed pink beaver (I’m not making this up), created a 3D image and animated it using an associate’ movements. Practical? Not really. Cool? Definitely.
It was, however, not available at press time. Hopefully it proves to be more than vaporware, especially if that demo helped push some viewers over to the 10+. Without it, there’s just not a lot of use for the depth camera at the moment.
There’s also AR Doodle, which fills a similar spot as much of the company’s AR offerings. It’s kind of fun, but again, not particularly useful. You’ll likely end up playing with it for a few minutes and forget about it entirely. Such is life.
The feature is built into the camera app, using depth sensing to orient live drawings. With the stylus you can draw in space or doodle on people’s faces. It’s neat, the AR works okay and I was bored with it in about three minutes. Like Quick Measure, the feature is as much a proof of concept as anything. But that’s always been a part of Samsung’s kitchen-sink approach — some combination of useful and silly.
That said, points to Samsung for continuing to de-creepify AR Emojis. Those have moved firmly away from the uncanny valley into something more cartoony/adorable. Less ironic usage will surely follow.
Asked about the key differences between the S and Note lines, Samsung’s response was simple: the S Pen. Otherwise, the lines are relatively interchangeable.
Samsung’s return of the stylus didn’t catch on for handsets quite like the phablet form factor. They’ve made a pretty significant comeback for tablets, but the Note remains fairly singular when it comes to the S Pen. I’ve never been a big user myself, but those who like it swear by it. It’s one of those things like the ThinkPad pointing stick or BlackBerry scroll wheel.
Like the phone itself, the peripheral has been streamlined with a unibody design. Samsung also continues to add capabilities. It can be used to control music, advance slideshows and snap photos. None of that is likely to convince S Pen skeptics (I prefer using the buttons on the included headphones for music control, for example), but more versatility is generally a good thing.
If anything is going to convince people to pick up the S Pen this time out, it’s the improved handwriting recognition. That’s pretty impressive. It was even able to decipher my awful chicken scratch.
You get the same sort of bleeding-edge specs here you’ve come to expect from Samsung’s flagships. The 10+ gets you a baseline 256GB of storage (upgradable to 512), coupled with a beefy 12GB of RAM (the regular Note is a still good 8GB/256GB). The 5G version sports the same numbers and battery (likely making its total life a bit shorter per charge). That’s a shift from the S10, whose 5G version was specced out like crazy. Likely Samsung is bracing for 5G to become less of a novelty in the next year or so.
The new Note also benefits from other recent additions, like the in-display fingerprint reader and wireless power sharing. Both are nice additions, but neither is likely enough to warrant an immediate upgrade.
Once again, that’s not an indictment of Samsung, so much as a reflection of where we are in the life cycle of a mature smartphone industry. The Note 10+ is another good addition to one of the leading smartphone lines. It succeeds as both a productivity device (thanks to additions like DeX and added cross-platform functionality with Windows 10) and an everyday handset.
There’s not enough on-board to really recommend an upgrade from the Note 8 or 9 — especially at that $1,099 price. People are holding onto their devices for longer, and for good reason (as detailed above). But if you need a new phone, are looking for something big and flashy and are willing to splurge, the Note continues to be the one to beat.
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Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ review –��TechCrunch It’s true, you’ve got the Galaxy Note to thank for your big phone. When the device hit the scene at IFA 2011, large screens were still a punchline.
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Text
It’s true, you’ve got the Galaxy Note to thank for your big phone. When the device hit the scene at IFA 2011, large screens were still a punchline. That same year, Steve Jobs famously joked about phones with screens larger than four inches, telling a crowd of reporters, “nobody’s going to buy that.”
In 2019, the average screen size hovers around 5.5 inches. That’s a touch larger than the original Note’s 5.3 inches — a size that was pretty widely mocked by much of the industry press at the time. Of course, much of the mainstreaming of larger phones comes courtesy of a much improved screen to body ratio, another place where Samsung has continued to lead the way.
In some sense, the Note has been doomed by its own success. As the rest of the industry caught up, the line blended into the background. Samsung didn’t do the product any favors by dropping the pretense of distinction between the Note and its Galaxy S line.
Ultimately, the two products served as an opportunity to have a six-month refresh cycle for its flagships. Samsung, of course, has been hit with the same sort of malaise as the rest of the industry. The smartphone market isn’t the unstoppable machine it appeared to be two or three years back.
Like the rest of the industry, the company painted itself into a corner with the smartphone race, creating flagships good enough to convince users to hold onto them for an extra year or two, greatly slowing the upgrade cycle in the process. Ever-inflating prices have also been a part of smartphone sales stagnation — something Samsung and the Note are as guilty of as any.
Samsung’s Galaxy Note gets even larger (and smaller)
So what’s a poor smartphone manufacturer to do? The Note 10 represents baby steps. As it did with the S line recently, Samsung is now offering two models. The base Note 10 represents a rare step backward in terms of screen size, shrinking down slightly from 6.4 to 6.3 inches, while reducing resolution from Quad HD to Full HD.
The seemingly regressive step lets Samsung come in a bit under last year’s jaw dropping $1,000. The new Note is only $50 cheaper, but moving from four to three figures may have a positive psychological effect for wary buyers. While the slightly smaller screen coupled with a better screen to body ratio means a device that’s surprisingly slim.
If anything, the Note 10+ feels like the true successor to the Note line. The baseline device could have just as well been labeled the Note 10 Lite. That’s something Samsung is keenly aware of, as it targets first-time Note users with the 10 and true believers with the 10+. In both cases, Samsung is faced with the same task as the rest of the industry: offering a compelling reason for users to upgrade.
Earlier this week, a Note 9 owner asked me whether the new device warrants an upgrade. The answer is, of course, no. The pace of smartphone innovation has slowed, even as prices have risen. Honestly, the 10 doesn’t really offer that many compelling reasons to upgrade from the Note 8.
That’s not a slight against Samsung or the Note, per se. If anything, it’s a reflection on the fact that these phones are quite good — and have been for a while. Anecdotally, industry excitement around these devices has been tapering for a while now, and the device’s launch in the midst of the doldrums of August likely didn’t help much.
The past few years have seen smartphones transform from coveted, bleeding-edge luxury to necessity. The good news to that end, however, is that the Note continues to be among the best devices out there.
The common refrain in the earliest days of the phablet was the inability to wrap one’s fingers around the device. It’s a pragmatic issue. Certainly you don’t want to use a phone day to day that’s impossible to hold. But Samsung’s remarkable job of improving screen to body ratio continues here. In fact, the 6.8-inch Note 10+ has roughly the same footprint as the 6.4-inch Note 9.
The issue will still persist for those with smaller hands — though thankfully Samsung’s got a solution for them in the Note 10. For the rest of us, the Note 10+ is easily held in one hand and slipped in and out of pants pockets. I realize these seem like weird things to say at this point, but I assure you they were legitimate concerns in the earliest days of the phablet, when these things were giant hunks of plastic and glass.
Samsung’s curved display once again does much of the heavy lifting here, allowing the screen to stretch nearly from side to side with only a little bezel at the edge. Up top is a hole-punch camera — that’s “Infinity O” to you. Those with keen eyes no doubt immediately noticed that Samsung has dropped the dual selfie camera here, moving toward the more popular hole-punch camera.
The company’s reasoning for this was both aesthetic and, apparently, practical. The company moved back down to a single camera for the front (10 megapixel), using similar reasoning as Google’s single rear-facing camera on the Pixel: software has greatly improved what companies can do with a single lens. That’s certainly the case to a degree, and a strong case can be made for the selfie camera, which we generally require less of than the rear-facing array.
The company’s gone increasingly minimalist with the design language — something I appreciate. Over the years, as the smartphone has increasingly become a day to day utility, the product’s design has increasingly gotten out of its own way. The front and back are both made of a curved Gorilla Glass that butts up against a thin metal form with a total thickness of 7.9 millimeters.
On certain smooth surfaces like glass, you’ll occasionally find the device gliding slightly. I’d say the chances of dropping it are pretty decent with its frictionless design language, so you’re going to want to get a case for your $1,000 phone. Before you do, admire that color scheme on the back. There are four choices in all. Like the rest of the press, we ended up with Aura Glow.
It features a lovely, prismatic effect when light hits it. It’s proven a bit tricky to photograph, honestly. It’s also a fingerprint magnet, but these are the prices we pay to have the prettiest phone on the block.
One of the interesting footnotes here is how much the design of the 10 will be defined by what the device lost. There are two missing pieces here — both of which are a kind of concession from Samsung for different reasons. And for different reasons, both feel inevitable.
The headphone jack is, of course, the biggie. Samsung kicked and screamed on that one, holding onto the 3.5mm with dear life and roundly mocking the competition (read: Apple) at every turn. The company must have known it was a matter of time, even before the iPhone dropped the port three years ago.
Courage.
Samsung glossed over the end of the jack (and apparently unlisted its Apple-mocking ads in the process) during the Note’s launch event. It was a stark contrast from a briefing we got around the device’s announcement, where the company’s reps spent significantly more time justifying the move. They know us well enough to know that we’d spend a little time taking the piss out of the company after three years of it making the once ubiquitous port a feature. All’s fair in love and port. And honestly, it was mostly just some good-natured ribbing. Welcome to the club, Samsung.
The headphone jack dies not with a bang, but a Note
As for why Samsung did it now, the answer seems to be two-fold. The first is a kind of critical mass in Bluetooth headset usage. Allow me to quote myself from a few weeks back:
The tipping point, it says, came when its internal metrics showed that a majority of users on its flagship devices (the S and Note lines) moved to Bluetooth streaming. The company says the number is now in excess of 70% of users.
Also, as we’re all abundantly aware, the company put its big battery ambitions on hold for a bit, as it dealt with…more burning problems. A couple of recalls, a humble press release and an eight-point battery check later, and batteries are getting bigger again. There’s a 3,500mAh on the Note 10 and a 4,300mAh on the 10+. I’m happy to report that the latter got me through a full day plus three hours on a charge. Not bad, given all of the music and videos I subjected it to in that time.
There’s no USB-C dongle in-box. The rumors got that one wrong. You can pick up a Samsung-branded adapter for $15, or get one for much cheaper elsewhere. There is, however, a pair of AKG USB-C headphones in-box. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: Samsung doesn’t get enough credit for its free headphones. I’ve been known to use the pairs with other devices. They’re not the greatest the world, but they’re better sounding and more comfortable than what a lot of other companies offer in-box.
Obviously the standard no headphone jack things apply here. You can’t use the wired headphones and charge at the same time (unless you go wireless). You know the deal.
The other missing piece here is the Bixby button. I’m sure there are a handful of folks out there who will bemoan its loss, but that’s almost certainly a minority of the minority here. Since the button was first introduced, folks were asking for the ability to remap it. Samsung finally relented on that front, and with the Note 10, it drops the button altogether.
Thus far the smart assistant has been a disappointment. That’s due in no small part to a late launch compared to the likes of Siri, Alexa and Assistant, coupled with a general lack of capability at launch. In Samsung’s defense, the company’s been working to fix that with some pretty massive investment and a big push to court developers. There’s hope for Bixby yet, but a majority of users weren’t eager to have the assistant thrust upon them.
Instead, the power button has been shifted to the left of the device, just under the volume rocker. I preferred having it on the other side, especially for certain functions like screenshotting (something, granted, I do much more than the average user when reviewing a phone). That’s a pretty small quibble, of course.
Bixby can now be quickly accessed by holding down the power button. Handily, Samsung still lets you reassign the function there, if you really want Bixby out of your life. You can also hold down to get the power off menu or double press to launch Bixby or a third-party app (I opted for Spotify, probably my most used these days), though not a different assistant.
Imaging, meanwhile, is something Samsung’s been doing for a long time. The past several generations of S and Note devices have had great camera systems, and it continues to be the main point of improvement. It’s also one of few points of distinction between the 10 and 10+, aside from size.
The Note 10+ has four, count ’em, four rear-facing cameras. They are as follows:
Ultra Wide: 16 megapixel
Wide: 12 megapixel
Telephoto: 12 megapixel
DepthVision
That last one is only on the plus. It’s comprised of two little circles to the right of the primary camera array and just below the flash. We’ll get to that in a second.
The main camera array continues to be one of the best in mobile. The inclusion of telephoto and ultra-wide lenses allow for a wide range of different shots, and the hardware coupled with machine learning makes it a lot more difficult to take a bad photo (though believe me, it’s still possible).
The live focus feature (Portrait mode, essentially) comes to video, with four different filters, including Color Point, which makes everything but the subject black and white.
Samsung’s also brought a very simple video editor into the mix here, which is nice on the fly. You can edit the length of clips, splice in other clips, add subtitles and captions and add filters and music. It’s pretty beefy for something baked directly into the camera app, and one of the better uses I’ve found for the S Pen.
Note 10+ with Super Steady (left), iPhone XS (right)
Ditto for the improved Super Steady offering, which smooths out shaky video, including Hyperlapse mode, where handshakes are a big issue. It works well, but you do lose access to other features, including zoom. For that reason, it’s off by default and should be used relatively sparingly.
Note 10+ (left), iPhone XS (right)
Zoom-on Mic is a clever addition, as well. While shooting video, pinch-zooming on something will amplify the noise from that area. I’ve been playing around with it in this cafe. It’s interesting, but less than perfect.
Zooming into something doesn’t exactly cancel out ambient noise from outside of the frame. Everything still gets amplified in the process and, like digital picture zoom, a lot of noise gets added in the process. Those hoping for a kind of spy microphone, I’m sorry/happy to report that this definitely is not that.
The DepthVision Camera is also pretty limited as I write this. If anything, it’s Samsung’s attempt to brace for a future when things like augmented reality will (theoretically) play a much larger role in our mobile computing. In a conversation I had with the company ahead of launch, they suggested that a lot of the camera’s AR functions will fall in the hands of developers.
For now, Quick Measure is the one practical use. The app is a lot like Apple’s more simply titled Measure. Fire it up, move the camera around to get a lay of the land and it will measure nearby objects for you. An interesting showcase for AR potential? Sure. Earth shattering? Naw. It also seems to be a bit of a battery drain, sucking up the last few bits of juice as I was running it down.
3D Scanner, on the other hand, got by far the biggest applause line of the Note event. And, indeed, it’s impressive. In the stage demo, a Samsung employee scanned a stuffed pink beaver (I’m not making this up), created a 3D image and animated it using an associate’ movements. Practical? Not really. Cool? Definitely.
It was, however, not available at press time. Hopefully it proves to be more than vaporware, especially if that demo helped push some viewers over to the 10+. Without it, there’s just not a lot of use for the depth camera at the moment.
There’s also AR Doodle, which fills a similar spot as much of the company’s AR offerings. It’s kind of fun, but again, not particularly useful. You’ll likely end up playing with it for a few minutes and forget about it entirely. Such is life.
The feature is built into the camera app, using depth sensing to orient live drawings. With the stylus you can draw in space or doodle on people’s faces. It’s neat, the AR works okay and I was bored with it in about three minutes. Like Quick Measure, the feature is as much a proof of concept as anything. But that’s always been a part of Samsung’s kitchen-sink approach — some combination of useful and silly.
That said, points to Samsung for continuing to de-creepify AR Emojis. Those have moved firmly away from the uncanny valley into something more cartoony/adorable. Less ironic usage will surely follow.
Asked about the key differences between the S and Note lines, Samsung’s response was simple: the S Pen. Otherwise, the lines are relatively interchangeable.
Samsung’s return of the stylus didn’t catch on for handsets quite like the phablet form factor. They’ve made a pretty significant comeback for tablets, but the Note remains fairly singular when it comes to the S Pen. I’ve never been a big user myself, but those who like it swear by it. It’s one of those things like the ThinkPad pointing stick or BlackBerry scroll wheel.
Like the phone itself, the peripheral has been streamlined with a unibody design. Samsung also continues to add capabilities. It can be used to control music, advance slideshows and snap photos. None of that is likely to convince S Pen skeptics (I prefer using the buttons on the included headphones for music control, for example), but more versatility is generally a good thing.
If anything is going to convince people to pick up the S Pen this time out, it’s the improved handwriting recognition. That’s pretty impressive. It was even able to decipher my awful chicken scratch.
You get the same sort of bleeding-edge specs here you’ve come to expect from Samsung’s flagships. The 10+ gets you a baseline 256GB of storage (upgradable to 512), coupled with a beefy 12GB of RAM (the regular Note is a still good 8GB/256GB). The 5G version sports the same numbers and battery (likely making its total life a bit shorter per charge). That’s a shift from the S10, whose 5G version was specced out like crazy. Likely Samsung is bracing for 5G to become less of a novelty in the next year or so.
The new Note also benefits from other recent additions, like the in-display fingerprint reader and wireless power sharing. Both are nice additions, but neither is likely enough to warrant an immediate upgrade.
Once again, that’s not an indictment of Samsung, so much as a reflection of where we are in the life cycle of a mature smartphone industry. The Note 10+ is another good addition to one of the leading smartphone lines. It succeeds as both a productivity device (thanks to additions like DeX and added cross-platform functionality with Windows 10) and an everyday handset.
There’s not enough on-board to really recommend an upgrade from the Note 8 or 9 — especially at that $1,099 price. People are holding onto their devices for longer, and for good reason (as detailed above). But if you need a new phone, are looking for something big and flashy and are willing to splurge, the Note continues to be the one to beat.
Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ review It’s true, you’ve got the Galaxy Note to thank for your big phone. When the device hit the scene at IFA 2011, large screens were still a punchline.
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It’s true, you’ve got the Galaxy Note to thank for your big phone. When the device hit the scene at IFA 2011, large screens were still a punchline. That same year, Steve Jobs famously joked about phones with screens larger than four inches, telling a crowd of reporters, “nobody’s going to buy that.”
In 2019, the average screen size hovers around 5.5 inches. That’s a touch larger than the original Note’s 5.3 inches — a size that was pretty widely mocked by much of the industry press at the time. Of course, much of the mainstreaming of larger phones comes courtesy of a much improved screen to body ratio, another place where Samsung has continued to lead the way.
In some sense, the Note has been doomed by its own success. As the rest of the industry caught up, the line blended into the background. Samsung didn’t do the product any favors by dropping the pretense of distinction between the Note and its Galaxy S line.
Ultimately, the two products served as an opportunity to have a six-month refresh cycle for its flagships. Samsung, of course, has been hit with the same sort of malaise as the rest of the industry. The smartphone market isn’t the unstoppable machine it appeared to be two or three years back.
Like the rest of the industry, the company painted itself into a corner with the smartphone race, creating flagships good enough to convince users to hold onto them for an extra year or two, greatly slowing the upgrade cycle in the process. Ever-inflating prices have also been a part of smartphone sales stagnation — something Samsung and the Note are as guilty of as any.
So what’s a poor smartphone manufacturer to do? The Note 10 represents baby steps. As it did with the S line recently, Samsung is now offering two models. The base Note 10 represents a rare step backward in terms of screen size, shrinking down slightly from 6.4 to 6.3 inches, while reducing resolution from Quad HD to Full HD.
The seemingly regressive step lets Samsung come in a bit under last year’s jaw dropping $1,000. The new Note is only $50 cheaper, but moving from four to three figures may have a positive psychological effect for wary buyers. While the slightly smaller screen coupled with a better screen to body ratio means a device that’s surprisingly slim.
If anything, the Note 10+ feels like the true successor to the Note line. The baseline device could have just as well been labeled the Note 10 Lite. That’s something Samsung is keenly aware of, as it targets first-time Note users with the 10 and true believers with the 10+. In both cases, Samsung is faced with the same task as the rest of the industry: offering a compelling reason for users to upgrade.
Earlier this week, a Note 9 owner asked me whether the new device warrants an upgrade. The answer is, of course, no. The pace of smartphone innovation has slowed, even as prices have risen. Honestly, the 10 doesn’t really offer that many compelling reasons to upgrade from the Note 8.
That’s not a slight against Samsung or the Note, per se. If anything, it’s a reflection on the fact that these phones are quite good — and have been for a while. Anecdotally, industry excitement around these devices has been tapering for a while now, and the device’s launch in the midst of the doldrums of August likely didn’t help much.
The past few years have seen smartphones transform from coveted, bleeding-edge luxury to necessity. The good news to that end, however, is that the Note continues to be among the best devices out there.
The common refrain in the earliest days of the phablet was the inability to wrap one’s fingers around the device. It’s a pragmatic issue. Certainly you don’t want to use a phone day to day that’s impossible to hold. But Samsung’s remarkable job of improving screen to body ratio continues here. In fact, the 6.8-inch Note 10+ has roughly the same footprint as the 6.4-inch Note 9.
The issue will still persist for those with smaller hands — though thankfully Samsung’s got a solution for them in the Note 10. For the rest of us, the Note 10+ is easily held in one hand and slipped in and out of pants pockets. I realize these seem like weird things to say at this point, but I assure you they were legitimate concerns in the earliest days of the phablet, when these things were giant hunks of plastic and glass.
Samsung’s curved display once again does much of the heavy lifting here, allowing the screen to stretch nearly from side to side with only a little bezel at the edge. Up top is a hole-punch camera — that’s “Infinity O” to you. Those with keen eyes no doubt immediately noticed that Samsung has dropped the dual selfie camera here, moving toward the more popular hole-punch camera.
The company’s reasoning for this was both aesthetic and, apparently, practical. The company moved back down to a single camera for the front (10 megapixel), using similar reasoning as Google’s single rear-facing camera on the Pixel: software has greatly improved what companies can do with a single lens. That’s certainly the case to a degree, and a strong case can be made for the selfie camera, which we generally require less of than the rear-facing array.
The company’s gone increasingly minimalist with the design language — something I appreciate. Over the years, as the smartphone has increasingly become a day to day utility, the product’s design has increasingly gotten out of its own way. The front and back are both made of a curved Gorilla Glass that butts up against a thin metal form with a total thickness of 7.9 millimeters.
On certain smooth surfaces like glass, you’ll occasionally find the device gliding slightly. I’d say the chances of dropping it are pretty decent with its frictionless design language, so you’re going to want to get a case for your $1,000 phone. Before you do, admire that color scheme on the back. There are four choices in all. Like the rest of the press, we ended up with Aura Glow.
It features a lovely, prismatic effect when light hits it. It’s proven a bit tricky to photograph, honestly. It’s also a fingerprint magnet, but these are the prices we pay to have the prettiest phone on the block.
One of the interesting footnotes here is how much the design of the 10 will be defined by what the device lost. There are two missing pieces here — both of which are a kind of concession from Samsung for different reasons. And for different reasons, both feel inevitable.
The headphone jack is, of course, the biggie. Samsung kicked and screamed on that one, holding onto the 3.5mm with dear life and roundly mocking the competition (read: Apple) at every turn. The company must have known it was a matter of time, even before the iPhone dropped the port three years ago.
Courage.
Samsung glossed over the end of the jack (and apparently unlisted its Apple-mocking ads in the process) during the Note’s launch event. It was a stark contrast from a briefing we got around the device’s announcement, where the company’s reps spent significantly more time justifying the move. They know us well enough to know that we’d spend a little time taking the piss out of the company after three years of it making the once ubiquitous port a feature. All’s fair in love and port. And honestly, it was mostly just some good-natured ribbing. Welcome to the club, Samsung.
As for why Samsung did it now, the answer seems to be two-fold. The first is a kind of critical mass in Bluetooth headset usage. Allow me to quote myself from a few weeks back:
The tipping point, it says, came when its internal metrics showed that a majority of users on its flagship devices (the S and Note lines) moved to Bluetooth streaming. The company says the number is now in excess of 70% of users.
Also, as we’re all abundantly aware, the company put its big battery ambitions on hold for a bit, as it dealt with…more burning problems. A couple of recalls, a humble press release and an eight-point battery check later, and batteries are getting bigger again. There’s a 3,500mAh on the Note 10 and a 4,300mAh on the 10+. I’m happy to report that the latter got me through a full day plus three hours on a charge. Not bad, given all of the music and videos I subjected it to in that time.
There’s no USB-C dongle in-box. The rumors got that one wrong. You can pick up a Samsung-branded adapter for $15, or get one for much cheaper elsewhere. There is, however, a pair of AKG USB-C headphones in-box. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: Samsung doesn’t get enough credit for its free headphones. I’ve been known to use the pairs with other devices. They’re not the greatest the world, but they’re better sounding and more comfortable than what a lot of other companies offer in-box.
Obviously the standard no headphone jack things apply here. You can’t use the wired headphones and charge at the same time (unless you go wireless). You know the deal.
The other missing piece here is the Bixby button. I’m sure there are a handful of folks out there who will bemoan its loss, but that’s almost certainly a minority of the minority here. Since the button was first introduced, folks were asking for the ability to remap it. Samsung finally relented on that front, and with the Note 10, it drops the button altogether.
Thus far the smart assistant has been a disappointment. That’s due in no small part to a late launch compared to the likes of Siri, Alexa and Assistant, coupled with a general lack of capability at launch. In Samsung’s defense, the company’s been working to fix that with some pretty massive investment and a big push to court developers. There’s hope for Bixby yet, but a majority of users weren’t eager to have the assistant thrust upon them.
Instead, the power button has been shifted to the left of the device, just under the volume rocker. I preferred having it on the other side, especially for certain functions like screenshotting (something, granted, I do much more than the average user when reviewing a phone). That’s a pretty small quibble, of course.
Bixby can now be quickly accessed by holding down the power button. Handily, Samsung still lets you reassign the function there, if you really want Bixby out of your life. You can also hold down to get the power off menu or double press to launch Bixby or a third-party app (I opted for Spotify, probably my most used these days), though not a different assistant.
Imaging, meanwhile, is something Samsung’s been doing for a long time. The past several generations of S and Note devices have had great camera systems, and it continues to be the main point of improvement. It’s also one of few points of distinction between the 10 and 10+, aside from size.
The Note 10+ has four, count ’em, four rear-facing cameras. They are as follows:
Ultra Wide: 16 megapixel
Wide: 12 megapixel
Telephoto: 12 megapixel
DepthVision
That last one is only on the plus. It’s comprised of two little circles to the right of the primary camera array and just below the flash. We’ll get to that in a second.
The main camera array continues to be one of the best in mobile. The inclusion of telephoto and ultra-wide lenses allow for a wide range of different shots, and the hardware coupled with machine learning makes it a lot more difficult to take a bad photo (though believe me, it’s still possible).
The live focus feature (Portrait mode, essentially) comes to video, with four different filters, including Color Point, which makes everything but the subject black and white.
Samsung’s also brought a very simple video editor into the mix here, which is nice on the fly. You can edit the length of clips, splice in other clips, add subtitles and captions and add filters and music. It’s pretty beefy for something baked directly into the camera app, and one of the better uses I’ve found for the S Pen.
Note 10+ with Super Steady (left), iPhone XS (right)
Ditto for the improved Super Steady offering, which smooths out shaky video, including Hyperlapse mode, where handshakes are a big issue. It works well, but you do lose access to other features, including zoom. For that reason, it’s off by default and should be used relatively sparingly.
Note 10+ (left), iPhone XS (right)
Zoom-on Mic is a clever addition, as well. While shooting video, pinch-zooming on something will amplify the noise from that area. I’ve been playing around with it in this cafe. It’s interesting, but less than perfect.
Zooming into something doesn’t exactly cancel out ambient noise from outside of the frame. Everything still gets amplified in the process and, like digital picture zoom, a lot of noise gets added in the process. Those hoping for a kind of spy microphone, I’m sorry/happy to report that this definitely is not that.
The DepthVision Camera is also pretty limited as I write this. If anything, it’s Samsung’s attempt to brace for a future when things like augmented reality will (theoretically) play a much larger role in our mobile computing. In a conversation I had with the company ahead of launch, they suggested that a lot of the camera’s AR functions will fall in the hands of developers.
For now, Quick Measure is the one practical use. The app is a lot like Apple’s more simply titled Measure. Fire it up, move the camera around to get a lay of the land and it will measure nearby objects for you. An interesting showcase for AR potential? Sure. Earth shattering? Naw. It also seems to be a bit of a battery drain, sucking up the last few bits of juice as I was running it down.
3D Scanner, on the other hand, got by far the biggest applause line of the Note event. And, indeed, it’s impressive. In the stage demo, a Samsung employee scanned a stuffed pink beaver (I’m not making this up), created a 3D image and animated it using an associate’ movements. Practical? Not really. Cool? Definitely.
It was, however, not available at press time. Hopefully it proves to be more than vaporware, especially if that demo helped push some viewers over to the 10+. Without it, there’s just not a lot of use for the depth camera at the moment.
There’s also AR Doodle, which fills a similar spot as much of the company’s AR offerings. It’s kind of fun, but again, not particularly useful. You’ll likely end up playing with it for a few minutes and forget about it entirely. Such is life.
The feature is built into the camera app, using depth sensing to orient live drawings. With the stylus you can draw in space or doodle on people’s faces. It’s neat, the AR works okay and I was bored with it in about three minutes. Like Quick Measure, the feature is as much a proof of concept as anything. But that’s always been a part of Samsung’s kitchen-sink approach — some combination of useful and silly.
That said, points to Samsung for continuing to de-creepify AR Emojis. Those have moved firmly away from the uncanny valley into something more cartoony/adorable. Less ironic usage will surely follow.
Asked about the key differences between the S and Note lines, Samsung’s response was simple: the S Pen. Otherwise, the lines are relatively interchangeable.
Samsung’s return of the stylus didn’t catch on for handsets quite like the phablet form factor. They’ve made a pretty significant comeback for tablets, but the Note remains fairly singular when it comes to the S Pen. I’ve never been a big user myself, but those who like it swear by it. It’s one of those things like the ThinkPad pointing stick or BlackBerry scroll wheel.
Like the phone itself, the peripheral has been streamlined with a unibody design. Samsung also continues to add capabilities. It can be used to control music, advance slideshows and snap photos. None of that is likely to convince S Pen skeptics (I prefer using the buttons on the included headphones for music control, for example), but more versatility is generally a good thing.
If anything is going to convince people to pick up the S Pen this time out, it’s the improved handwriting recognition. That’s pretty impressive. It was even able to decipher my awful chicken scratch.
You get the same sort of bleeding-edge specs here you’ve come to expect from Samsung’s flagships. The 10+ gets you a baseline 256GB of storage (upgradable to 512), coupled with a beefy 12GB of RAM (the regular Note is a still good 8GB/256GB). The 5G version sports the same numbers and battery (likely making its total life a bit shorter per charge). That’s a shift from the S10, whose 5G version was specced out like crazy. Likely Samsung is bracing for 5G to become less of a novelty in the next year or so.
The new Note also benefits from other recent additions, like the in-display fingerprint reader and wireless power sharing. Both are nice additions, but neither is likely enough to warrant an immediate upgrade.
Once again, that’s not an indictment of Samsung, so much as a reflection of where we are in the life cycle of a mature smartphone industry. The Note 10+ is another good addition to one of the leading smartphone lines. It succeeds as both a productivity device (thanks to additions like DeX and added cross-platform functionality with Windows 10) and an everyday handset.
There’s not enough on-board to really recommend an upgrade from the Note 8 or 9 — especially at that $1,099 price. People are holding onto their devices for longer, and for good reason (as detailed above). But if you need a new phone, are looking for something big and flashy and are willing to splurge, the Note continues to be the one to beat.
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Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ review It’s true, you’ve got the Galaxy Note to thank for your big phone. When the device hit the scene at IFA 2011, large screens were still a punchline.
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