Galaxy Note10

EDIT AUGUST 24, 2022: two years later and this phone is still going strong! Even when I use the phone throughout the day, it only needs to be charged every 24 hours. My phone case has kept it protected, it still looks brand new. Still runs like new. Even though this phone is “renewed” I’ve never had an issue that required it to be troubleshooted or repaired. If I ever replace the phone, I’m buying it renewed!

Original review 2020:
This is a product review, but first I wanna discuss my satisfaction with the fact that this is a renewed item.

The phone arrived in a neat little box with generic brand charge cable and adapter, neither of these items are suited for the fast-charging capabilities of the phone, but I bought this item for the phone, so I’m not gonna knock them on a cord and adapter. The phone looked brand new, no scratches or damage of any kind, not even so much as a fingerprint on it.

The phone powered up just fine and I was able to get it setup without a hitch, as far as I’m concerned they did an excellent job with the renewal, there’s no way I can tell that it was even renewed except for the generic box, cable and charger. BTW, this product does not come with earbuds or anything, you only get the phone, the generic cord and generic adapter. Overall, I’m happy buying this renewed, saved myself 50% of the brand new price.

As for reviewing the phone itself, this is my first Samsung phone, I’ve never so much as seen a Galaxy Note with my own eyes, and therefore I’m still learning things about it. But I can say I love the stereo speakers, it’s great when playing music or gaming, the sound has a nice punch to it, better than any phone speakers I’ve ever heard. I was worried I wouldn’t get used to the lack of a headphone jack, but I don’t actually need it, I bought myself a nice pair of Bluetooth headphones, and I can’t think of any other reason I would need the headphone jack.

The screen is really nice, it’s amazing how the fingerprint scanner is INSIDE the screen, makes for unlocking the phone quite easy and free of having to hold the phone awkwardly like with other phones. The hole punch for the camera in the screen is much less distracting than I thought it would be, and in the end, I hardly notice it. Since the fingerprint scanner is located inside the screen, you can’t just get a traditional otterbox case for this phone, the heavy duty screen protector doesn’t allow fingerprint scanning, so you have to buy a specific stick-on screen protector. As for the phone case, I bought myself a ArmadilloTek case, and I love it…

I like having all the extra storage on the phone, in the past I always felt like my phone filled up with stuff too quickly. Also all my previous phones were prone to becoming slow after filling it up with apps, photos and music, but this phone…I’ve given it everything I have, only used up like 75 gigs, and have plenty more space, as well as the fast chip set in the phone makes the phone lightning fast.

As for battery life, it lasts a long time! If you’re just texting, listening to music, or periodically surfing the web, this phone lasts approximately 40-48 hours on a single charge. If you’re playing games and other power-consuming things, I believe this phone might get you through a pretty rigorous 24 hours.

This phone came pre-loaded with a few useless apps, but didn’t come pre-loaded with all the other useful apps that generally come on androids like a music player, Amazon, and other such…loaded it myself. I ended up loading Samsung Music…which I already love way more than iTunes or Apple Music.

I’m still learning how to use the stylus pen, believe me, there is a TON of ways to use the pen, but from what I’ve tried so far, it’s great! I especially like being able to hand-write notes and convert them to text. I wish I could say more about the phone, but again, I’m still learning. Overall, I’m happy with this purchase, it was well worth the money, I highly recommend it!

Only thing my Spen doesn’t connect but they are sending me another one ay no charge. So that’s AWESOME

Okay so, it seems like a lot of people don’t really understand how Amazon product selling works and tend to give negative reviews and don’t recognize that the sellers of products are all different but sit on the same listing so although you can buy from one which is the default lowest price usually there are other sellers selling the same thing that may not be locked or misrepresented products.

Now that being said, the person I bought mine from provided accurate information and that product came in a secure box and was in excellent condition. Sad it didn’t come with an original box oh, but it being renewed I can’t hit the seller for that.

On to the phone itself, it’s a really good phone in general the specs are good 256gb at storage and the ram is 8GB and I’ve never seen it get anywhere near running all the way or even much over halfway of capacity. Now here comes the surprise there is no SD card slot so if you buy a regular note 10, there will not be the option to extend any storage. The other thing I don’t much care for is the fingerprint reader. Although it is innovative I would much rather prefer a physical dedicated location that is not part of the screen because it makes it very difficult to use and if you have a screen protector you might as well just forget the option exists. Another thing is I don’t really care for the way that Samsung has restricted the phones there’s a lot of useless and unnecessary apps I can’t get rid of and everything involving the Samsung and Google competition on the phone is relatively annoying and it makes it more confusing because I don’t want 2 separate stores sending me notifications to update things and Samsung seems to have taken the ability to silence those notifications away from their Galaxy store. But those are just personal annoyances that aren’t all that important other than the fingerprint reader and SD card slot which is relatively significant. I’m also not overly impressed with the battery. It seems that it’s not as good as the 2017 Huawei Mate SE I replaced. Although the camera is EXTREMELY good in quality.

Finally, for those of you interested in rooting, as you may know United States versions of Samsung phones tend to be restricted in the ability to be rooted by any simple method. I received a SM-N970U1 which seems to be a Verizon specific model. In the short answer is no for most people there will not be a free or simple way to root the phone. I did manage to accomplish reading it, but it cost 65 bucks and I had to locate someone who either does or has worked for Samsung who was able to generate a unlock script to remove the bootloader lock from the phone and it is now rooted. They have to generate a script for your specific device ID to remove the lock from the phone. Which can only be done up to a certain update point no higher than Samsung one UI 3.0 and no higher than a Android 11 5th bootloader update.

I now have an unlocked rooted Verizon Samsung Note 10 on Verizon. And overall I’m happy with it but in general I probably will not buy another Samsung phone with options like plus one and various other models that are just as good or in reality better. And generally cheaper. I would say I would prefer Huawei or Motorola over Samsung. I hope this has been helpful to Anyone who reads it.

As stated this phone is supposed to be 4g mine is LTE and I’ve tried a million ways to try to fix this. Also my sim card holder is broken and didnt want to come out. This is my second purchase because the first one was perfect. Kinda disappointed this time….

this thing does everything except fix m meals. Refurbished so I got it at a great price. not a mark on it but I do think the battery may not las t as long as it should still pretty good. One of the things I hate most about a phone is not being able to find the brightness button because you are in the sun and cant see the screen. BUT you have an assistant named Bixby and all you have to do is ask. Bixby will also do a LOT of other things including turn the phone off. Thats important because in order to doit manually you have to hold down power and down volume at the same time. I’d def buy this phone again.