The Samsung Galaxy Note is now available in the market. This article will tell you about the Samsung Galaxy Note review.
There have been quite a lot of speculations round the world about the ideal size of a Smartphone. But the barrier has been constantly broken by one Smartphone or the other. This time it’s the Galaxy Note from Samsung which has an enormous 5.3 inch screen, yet it is still a phone and not a tablet.
Design
The Galaxy Note is the big brother to the Samsung‘s Galaxy Smartphone line-up. The phone is pretty big and will be appealing to only a small lot of users. With dimensions of at 146.85 x 82.95 x 9.65mm it is only 178g heavy which is pretty less compared to how heavy another phone of this size would have been.
The front of the phone has the Samsung logo and a single hardware button for accessing the menu. The 2MP front camera and the light sensor are impossible to spot. The rear of the phone has an 8MP camera in the middle of the phone (just like the S2) and the rear bottom portion has the speaker. The Note’s one more specialty is its stylus called the “S-Pen” which is contained along the height of the phone and can be easily pulled out of the bottom part of the phone.
Display
The best thing about the phone is obviously its screen and the display quality. The 5.3 inch HD Super AMOLED screen has a WXGA resolution (1280×800) which makes the display the best of all phones. The screen is also protected by Corning Gorilla Glass. The color vibrancy and the sharpness of the screen are much better than S2 or even the Apple’s Retina displays. This amazing display quality coupled with enormous screen size makes it a perfect phone for watching movies and surfing the web.
Hardware
The Note is powered by a 1.4GHz dual core Cortex –A9 CPU on an Exynos Chipset. Just like the S2, the Mali-400MP GPU is used on the Note. IT has 1GB of RAM and comes with internal memory options of 16 and 32GB. Apart from this internal memory you can also expand the memory of 32GB by using the external MicroSD card.
Connectivity
The phone support Quad Band (GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900) 2G, Quad Band 3G (HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100) and has 4G LTE support(region specific). It has 21 Mbps HSDPA 5.76Mbps HSUPA data support. Apart from this, basic connectivity features like Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0 with A2Dp and EDR are present. The phone is DLNA enabled which allows you to stream media content to other DLNA enabled devices. Optional NFC is also available.
User Interface
The Galaxy Note comes with Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread which is another fact that proves that it is a phone and not a tablet. The OS is customized by Samsung’s latest TouchWiz 4.0 out of the box. The UI is pretty much similar to what we saw in the Galaxy S2 but is a bit customized for the big screen. The lock screen and the notifications are a bit different. One major difference is the inclusion of some widgets which are specific to the Galaxy Note. These are mostly the applications or shortcuts to application that make use of the S- Pen.
The S Pen
The S Pen is one of the most exciting features of the Note. It is a passive device and does not have any battery, but it provides a lot of functionality. It has a few keys on it which allows you to do simple tasks like taking screenshots of the screen. The S Pen helps you in tasks ranging from taking notes to navigating the full interface without even touching any hardware key. There are a lot of gestures which enable you to navigate through the phone very easily. A touch on the screen and then swipe left means back.
Thought the S Pen provides a lot of features there are a few glitches. Handwriting recognition is horrible compared to what we’ve seen on other phones. Other major problem is that the S Pen does not work instantaneously and there is quite a noticeable lag between the time you touch the screen and the phone actually responds to the touch. There is a lot of scope of improvement and we also hope to see a lot of development in this platform as Samsung has released the S Pen SDK for developers. This means that we might see a lot of new apps specially developed for use with S pen. One more possibility is that Samsung might launch a lot of other devices featuring the S Pen.
Camera
The Samsung Galaxy Note comes with an 8MP camera with 22mm wide angle lens and LED flash. With the Note Samsung has also decided to avoid the shutter key. The camera performs pretty much similar to the camera of the S2 but the photos appear to be crisp and more vibrant mostly due to the better screen quality. It also allows you to capture full HD (1080p) videos at 30FPS with continuous autofocus.
Price
The Samsung Galaxy Note N-7000 is available for Rs. 32,700/- on Flipkart in India. The US version which is a bit different from this one is available on contract with AT&T for $300.
Conclusion
The Samsung Galaxy Note is a phone with monstrous capabilities. Be it the design or the hardware, the phone easily beats all other Android flagships. The phone’s hugeness might be a problem for some and at the same time do wonders for others. The 2500mAH battery of the phone provides enough juice for the phone, but still, 5.3-inch display might bring it down very easily. If you comfortable with the big size and want one of the most powerful smartphones of the world you should definitely go for it.