At Samsung Unpacked in New York, the company launched the latest edition to its Note device series, the Galaxy Note 10. I had a chance to speak with Taher Behbehani, GM & SVP, Samsung Electronics, about some of the features that Samsung hopes make the Note 10 a hit with enterprise IT and business users. You can watch the interview above or read an edited transcript of our conversation below.

Bill Detwiler: Samsung just announced the new Galaxy Note 10, the Note 10+ and the Note 10+ 5G. Give me a rundown on the features that the device has that, continuing with the Galaxy Note series, make it a great mobile device for business users, for enterprise users.

Taher Behbehani: I think what businesses should take note of is the processing power is fantastic in this device. You have a long battery life. The display, the hardware is excellent for the usage, sort of the power user in an enterprise environment. Then, the camera and the software that runs the camera I think is quite interesting. We saw a lot of the use cases around the features and functions that are fun. But actually if you think about it, you can apply all of those for the business environment–if you are a designer or if you take a picture of an environment that you want to somehow customize, if you are a public safety officer, all of these are quite interesting in terms of the features and functionality.

Bill Detwiler: Expand on that a little bit. What are some of those real world scenarios?

Taher Behbehani: Absolutely. You have a camera which is very powerful. You take a picture, a height HDR 10+ 122 degree field of view picture. Imagine if you’re an architect and you walk into a building environment, and you essentially want to take a view of the environment to doodle on it to make a recommendation. Or if you’re an engineer or if you are running a shop. Let’s say you’re at HVAC specialist and you walk into an office space or a building, you can take your picture, write notes, annotate, send it. I think it becomes really powerful. You can share it, actually–it can become interactive. These are all features, which I think are heavy duty B2B use cases.

Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ in Aura Glow
Bill Detwiler/TechRepublic

SEE: Samsung Galaxy S10: An insider’s guide (free PDF) (TechRepublic download)

Bill Detwiler: Talk a little bit about the new app integration that we have with the Note. A lot was made and unpacked here with a partnership between Samsung and Microsoft. You even had Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, here at Unpacked. Talk a little bit about how Microsoft applications are being integrated into the features on the Note 10.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at Samsung Unpacked
Bill Detwiler/TechRepublic

Taher Behbehani: In a business environment, applications are absolutely essential. It’s not only the device; we actually call these a mobility platform, which is the hardware, the software that runs on it, the various features, functions and, of course, the application layer. Microsoft is a key pillar for any enterprise running their businesses. This integration is quite tight.

What it means and the features that we show that you can now essentially share and backup information to the Microsoft cloud, to OneDrive. You can then display, monitor, manage, edit these different files on any device that you are connected to. I think the Microsoft apps that run on the Note 10 look good, they feel good, they are extremely well customized and adjusted for the business user. The message, and the idea here, and the practicality of it is the Microsoft integration is a very powerful tool for a business.

Now, it’s all available on the device. I think that’s really important for us. Now, of course, we are quite delighted with Satya being on the stage. This underscored the whole partnership that is now being launched, and it underscores the long-term future and the commitment that we have to make our customers successful.

Bill Detwiler: Let’s build on that a little bit beyond the apps and talk about the new DeX experience. You’re showing off here the integration with both Mac and Windows 10 machines. You have something we’ve seen before in other Galaxy devices. Talk a little bit about DeX, as it relates to the Note 10.

Taher Behbehani: DeX, on its own, is a very powerful tool. It’s quite unique to us, and what it underscores is that you can essentially take your mobile device to the Galaxy Note 10 and make it your office space. I don’t need to essentially have a PC on the go. I can walk into a different office space and if there’s a display or if there’s a PC, I can connect to it, drag and drop files between it and use that as my office space on the move.

The other aspect of it is to be open to the Mac and PCs, which is the whole philosophy of the company of being open, innovative, and secure. It’s a very powerful feature set, especially as we look at the new ways of how enterprises are working these days, much of the workspace transformation, digital transformation. DeX is a very powerful tool because it really lets an enterprise think differently about how they design the workspace and the office space, especially for mobile workers.

Samsung Note 10 running DeX on a Windows 10 laptop
Bill Detwiler/TechRepublic

Bill Detwiler: Also, one of the new hardware innovations was the upgraded S Pen–it’s a unibody design. Built in with that are support for air gestures or motion gestures. One of the most interesting features to me is being able to use that to flip through slides in a PowerPoint presentation. Talk a little bit about how the S Pen plays into a B2B consumer, a B2B buyer.

Taher Behbehani: The S Pen is one of the absolute killer features of this device. I’m addicted to the Pen, I use it all the time in my meetings and I take notes. What’s amazing and delightful about it is now you can take handwriting and transcribe it into text. I share that file, save it, attach it to a Microsoft email, so it’s really powerful. The Pen is incredible, but imagine the gestures now, just let’s focus on that.

The idea is that you can use a Pen to be sort of hands free, to invoke an app that runs for a certain application to let it do different things. Let’s imagine I’m a dentist and I’m trying to take a picture of a patient. I don’t need to touch the device anymore–I can use the Pen with my gloves on remotely, use the gestures to zoom in, zoom out, and take the right feature.

If you’re an architect, or if you’re a student, or if you’re a professor, the Pen is really a powerful tool. The very important aspect of this was what we mentioned–the SDKs are now open. If you’re a developer–and we invite the developer community to take a look at this–you can imagine the different applications that already exist or new applications that you want to develop and essentially customize around the Pen.

S Pen Air actions controlling the camera zoom on the Samsung Note 10
Bill Detwiler/TechRepublic

Bill Detwiler: The last thing I really want to talk about is security and Knox. Talk a little bit about how that is a cornerstone of what business users are looking for.

Taher Behbehani: Remember our philosophy is open, innovative, and secure. That’s what we emphasize as we talk to business customers. Knox is a very powerful software layer that we use to manage the device, configure the device, and to make it secure. That security and manageability of the device is extremely important for a business environment.

We have spent many years in creating this solution and making sure that we focus on basically making it easy to use in a business environment. We focus on the security aspect for the enterprise and we emphasize it as we roll out–whether it’s SMB or a larger enterprise. I think it’s very important for us to highlight the fact that security and manageability of device remains a very important feature.

Bill Detwiler: Now, I can’t let you go without asking you about 5G. That’s the technology that enterprises see as an enabler, they see it as a way to sort of enable more remote workers. Talk a little bit about the Note and 5G. We’ve got three versions of the Note, we’ve got the 5G coming out later this year–talk a little bit about how that is part of Samsung’s strategy with the Note.

Taher Behbehani: Just imagine for a second what can happen. You have a device that’s extremely powerful. Now you have a network that has absolutely very minimal latency, lots of throughput, which means that you can conduct and sort of run applications in different settings, which you were not able to do before. Take the old fashioned video conferencing as an example–you can use a device with a powerful camera, and essentially start an application in remote locations and be able to have a video conference that actually feels alive, and feels real, and the experience is superior.

These are some of what I call the fundamental applications, which I think 5G will change fundamentally. They are new ones that are coming on the horizon, applications that require real time management of information, sharing information. The combination makes it very powerful for all of us. I think adding all this together: Good 5G developers, SDKs, the features of the device, the number of applications in the business environment is going to explode. We, as a company, are focused on making it happen, being in the middle of all of this enablement essentially so that our enterprise customers, our business users are absolutely thrilled, and our developers are happy and satisfied with what we offer to them, and of course our partners in industry are also successful.