Winners and Losers: Sony’s game changing camera, and Galaxy Note bites the dust

Between Sony’s latest vlogging camera and a major announcement for Samsung’s Galaxy Note range, there’s a lot of news to cover in Trusted Reviews’ Winners and Losers.

It’s been a strange week for news, and if you’ve been paying attention to the cycle then you’ll know exactly what I mean. For instance, Krispy Kreme has started selling Xbox doughnuts just as Dell has had to pull some of its gaming PCs from the market on account of them being too powerful. It all sounds a bit satirical until you look at some of the other stories to emerge this week.

After being shrouded in mystery, the curtain has been pulled back on Carl Pei’s first big product since leaving OnePlus, and you can read all about it in our Nothing Ear (1) review.

For this week’s picks however, it’s Sony’s latest vlogging camera that takes the cake for the possibilities it opens up to content creators, whilst the iconic Galaxy Note range might finally be meeting its end, killed off by foldable phones no-less.

Winner: Sony ZV-E10

Over the course of the pandemic (while many friends and colleagues were setting up podcasts and baking bread), I finally got around to setting up a YouTube channel. Around the same time, Sony launched its ZV-1 camera which was built around the vlogging experience with tools designed to make content creation as simple as possible.

I was completely blown away by the Sony ZV-1 during testing, and I was eager to see how the company might improve upon the ZV-1 in its inevitable successor. As it turns out, I didn’t have to wait too long as this week Sony unveiled the mightily impressive ZV-E10.

The biggest jump is the fact that the Sony ZV-E10 allows for interchangeable lenses, meaning that more pro level filmmakers who might have been put off by the restrictions of the fixed sensor on the ZV-1, will be able to flourish here with their existing Sony E-mount lenses.

The ZV-E10 also includes a more ergonomic grip alongside a larger 24.2MP APS-C sensor which should produce more impressive video and photo quality. In terms of software, the E10 appears to be largely similar to the ZV-1, bringing back features like the dedicated bokeh mode button and ‘Product Showcase’ for instant subject to object focus swapping.

Still, given how well these features worked before, there are no complaints here, and now that Sony’s brought interchangeable lenses into the mix, they’ll be able to operate on a level that just wasn’t achievable with the Sony ZV-1. Simply put, Sony may have just created one of the best vlogging cameras for the second time.

Loser: Samsung Galaxy Note

Oh Galaxy Note, I know that reports of your death have been greatly exaggerated but now it seems as though your time has finally come. Rumours of an end to the iconic Galaxy Note range have prevailed for quite some time, but Samsung has only just confirmed that it has no plans to launch a new Note smartphone in 2021.

Stated by none other than TM Roh himself, Samsung’s President relayed in a blog post that the plan going forward would be to implement Galaxy Note features elsewhere in the company’s portfolio. For instance, a whole new S-Pen designed specifically for foldable phones is now in development, and it makes a lot of sense.

Even though the Galaxy Note more than earned its place in a post-BlackBerry world, the concept of a powerhouse smartphone with a gigantic screen just doesn’t add up now that we have foldable phones that can cram even larger displays into a more ergonomic form factor.

After the fall of LG’s mobile division, the Galaxy Note is now the next big casualty of the modern smartphone era, and it does make us wonder which device (or company) might be next on the chopping block.