I think you should ask that yourself because end of the day, you are the one who use that phone.
As you written, 'is the S Pen useful in daily life'? The question is do you need a S Pen for your daily use? Like if you do have the S Pen, what are you going to do with it?
For 120Hz, this is surely a good boost because it can help your browsing and scrolling become smooth. So the question back to you is, do you need 120Hz feature on your phone?
Remember, you are the one who use the phone and not the phone who use you. So think what you need from the phone and will the phone help you on that or not. Always compare your needs vs the phone.
* If possible, try to avoid S20 series because of some screen display issue (you can google it for the news). S20 series for long run will ruin your time.
Well both are great, with S pen, you can do a lot of things, like maybe editing pictures and videos is indeed extremely useful, with s pen you can easily circle an object or highlight something more precisely compare to your fingers. There's much more benefits of using s pen but S20 plus is also a great phone too, but for me I do not recommend taking S20 plus as it doesn't change much from previous model, but honestly S21 plus is a better choice. Of course there's some pro and cons choosing both of them, one you get to have S pen while the other you get to enjoy the buttery smooth refresh rate. Both are great, but why buy an old smartphone? Their battery might not as good as before (I bought my Note 9 in 2019 and turns out the battery is so worst) I do recommend you buy latest one, at least S21 series.
I'm still a student and on a tight budget. I heard that buying old flagship is better than buying a midrange phone. What do you think. Should I just get a midrange phone?
Same goes to me, I'm a student too. Bought Note 9 at an offer price. But Note 9 is still pretty good in terms of performance. But battery life is so bad. But of course there will be some draw backs when buying an old device. Talking about midrange, I do recommend you to get flagship device as the performance and stability is good on flagship devices, you can go for Note 10 for my choice, midrange device nowadays are strong and more affordable, but there's always some drawbacks when it come to affordable device, I have tried 2022 A Series device, their performance are pretty good, especially the A73 5G performance already better compared to my Note 9, according to the statistics provided on the Internet. But bare in mind, the drawbacks might be the "feel of premium" . My Note 9 haptic feedback is much more better than A Series, which makes me feel more premium using my Note 9. But the cons is, I stuck at old One UI 2.5. Newer smartphone nowadays get better software updates with smoother UI and better privacy. These are some of the drawbacks using old devices which in future you will not benefited by the latest One UI. Well, I do recommend u go flagship but not midrange, if you want premium feel, you can go for flagship devices, if you want latest One UI, you can go for midrange devices, but I do recommend you go for A73 5G, or at least A53 5G.
And the good thing is, this year A Series (A33, A53, and A73) has the Samsung Pay feature, which is useful as a student haha, which mean u pay at an affordable price also get to enjoy the Samsung Pay feature which usually for Flagship devices only.
1) budget 2) what is your top 5 priority/ features you want (other than social media, messenger). Example, you need high performance phone gaming purpose. Lol 3) any special application you need the most. Example you need to use a lot on ms office or Samsung pay
Once you know your need, then start to search and compare.
For older phone, you need to know that the security update won't go far compare with newer version.
Like in other users have pointed out, which is better ultimately depends on you but I’ll share my thoughts as well. Oh so better context, could you mention your current device that you are upgrading from?
If you ask me, I do not use the S-Pen at all. It’s nice to have, but I rarely use it as I prefer typing notes instead of writing them on my phone, screen is still too small. Writing is a lot better on tablets though which I still do to jot down my lessons. So for me, this is not an important factor. Kalau ada, bagus, xde pun xpe.
The 120Hz is a seriously nice feature to have. Like they say, once you go high refresh, you wouldn’t want to go low. One big downside is that, 120Hz takes a serious toll on your battery life especially the on the S20 Plus as it is not dynamic (even though its name include Dynamic, it only has two refresh rates, 120Hz or 60Hz). Unlike current flagships, it does not adjust to your contents (current flagship can adjust refresh rate between 1-120Hz). The 120Hz on the S20 Plus stays constantly at 120Hz even if it is just showing a static image which is not battery efficient. So for me, I would go for the Note 10 Plus as the S20 Plus’ 120Hz is just going to be an energy waster. Article for more context. https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s22_refresh_rate_explained-news-53216.php
Something that I could not see from your post is storage and RAM which are more important in the long run. Looking at GSMArena, it seems that the base Note 10 Plus has 12/256GB while S20 Plus base is 8/128GB so I assume this is the case for yours too. Then I highly suggest the Note 10 Plus.
For differences between the processors, it is quite negligible. For cameras, I’m still seeing reviewers praising the Note 10 Plus while not many people talk about the cameras on the S20 Plus. Battery wise, not much to differentiate them (S20P: 4500mAh vs N10P: 4300mAh) and like I said, if you turn on 120Hz on the S20P, expect lower battery life than N10P.
For me, I’ll go with the Note 10 Plus, but ultimately the decision is yours.
