Latest Galaxy Note 10 rumors bring the headphone jack back on the table (aaand it's gone)
UPDATE: Unfortunately, it appears we've been duped by early pre-release units of the Note 10 and Note 10 Pro that came with "fake" headphone jacks... for some reason. While it's still not 100 percent etched in stone that Samsung will indeed kill the audio connector, it's definitely not looking promising... yet again. The original story follows, with the rest of the rumored information likely to pan out, at least for the time being.
We're talking about those pressure-sensitive, invisible alternatives to the side-mounted physical buttons we never really expected to go anywhere, as well as the controversial headphone jack-killing move. Although there's no new evidence to support these claims, we're inclined to take Max Weinbach's word for it. The XDA writer and fast-rising Twitter leaker has more info than that on both the Galaxy Note 10 and Note 10 Pro, courtesy of an unnamed source who purportedly "got to play" with the two devices in their advanced pre-release form.
"Almost perfect" renders, but there's still hope for good old jack
Look closer. Closer! Even closer... Now that you see it, you can't unsee it
In addition to Weinbach, Olixar cases pictured by Mobile Fun recently seem to suggest the Note 10 and Note 10 Pro will leave a little space on the bottom for users to physically plug in their old headphones. It's subtle and you may not notice it at first, but a few of the renders definitely have a small cutout in just the right place for a jack.
Otherwise, we fully expect these bad boys to end up looking like Steve Hemmerstoffer depicted them a couple of weeks ago. We're talking insanely thin screen bezels, a centered front-facing camera housed by a "hole punch" drilled into that beautiful "Infinity-O" AMOLED display, and yes, "conventional" power and volume keys situated on the left side of both handsets.
Loads of cameras, Sound on Display technology, and a surprising omission
A lot of the purported intel provided by Weinbach's inside source today is not particularly shocking, reiterating and thus supporting the credibility of existing rumors floating around the web. That includes three vertically-aligned shooters on the back of the smaller Galaxy Note 10 variant (a la the iPhone XS, but don't call it a copycat), as well as a fourth imaging sensor separated from this module on the Pro model and located under the flash to the right of the triple lens stack.
We're also not very surprised to hear Samsung is gearing up to eliminate the top speaker grill, which most likely means the Note 10 and Note 10 Pro will use their screens to produce sound through vibration. The groundbreaking Sound on Display (SoD) technology has already been adopted by the LG G8 ThinQ, but our hope is Samsung will be able to execute it better and not cut any corners in terms of audio quality.
What's certainly unexpected is that the non-Pro Galaxy Note 10 could come without a microSD card slot, which probably means the larger variant will support external storage expansion. That would be a pretty bizarre move on Samsung's part from at least a couple of standpoints. For one thing, the company has worked this advertising angle tirelessly in the past, promoting last year's Note 9, for instance, as "terabyte ready" with the obvious help of expandable memory. At the same time, it doesn't sound like a good idea to deprive the smaller, lower-end, and lower-cost model of features taken for granted by so many users.
Interestingly, this particular rumor reminds us of something similar pulled by Huawei a couple of years ago. But even then, it was the higher-end Mate 10 Pro that ditched the microSD card slot, not the "regular" Mate 10.
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