Samsung Galaxy Note

Samsung is back with another installment of Galaxy series to take over the iOS world. This time it is in form of Galaxy Note. The trend of getting a bigger badder screen is slowly picking up, reducing the gap between a Tablet & a Phone. Nonetheless, Galaxy Note comes with much hope of success and acceptance just like its predecessor Galaxy S II. It is thin & faster like Galaxy S II but punches a 5.3″ HD Super AMOLED display which is revolutionary today. The enormous display packs a 1280 x 800 pixel, 285 ppi resolution which is equivalent to the Galaxy Tab 10.1. Samsung is promoting this device to be a notepad replacement and hence included a proprietary S Pen stylus with this.

The design of Note is similar to Galaxy S II measuring to 146 x 82.95 x  6.95 mm and weighing about 178 grams. It comes with an 8 MP rear camera with flash and 2 MP front camera. It is capable of recording HD video at 1080/30p and supports  MPEG-4, H.263 & H.264 codecs. It has an internal memory of 16GB that can be expandable to 32GB using a microSD card accessible by microUSB port. It also features Bluetooth 3.0+, 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi and 21Mbps HSPA+ (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz).

Galaxy Note is running on Android Gingerbread that is powered by a 1.4 GHz dual-core Exynos processor. Apart from other usual sensors it includes A-GPS & GLONASS for Russia. At the top it houses the  power button with the 3.5 mm jack and at the bottom there is a microUSB connector with the slide in S Stylus. The back has a flexi plastic panel which covers the SIM, microSD and 2,500mAh battery. The battery life of Samsung Note is impressive beyond comprehension giving a backup of more than 9 hours in rigorous battery tests, bringing it in the league of devices like iPad.

With a 285ppi density resolution, it makes the display extremely smooth in likeness to the iPhone 4 & 4S. Colours are vibrant and eye-pleasing like any other Samsung Super AMOLED devices. It has a PenTile display similar to upcoming Galaxy Nexus making the colours a bit less accurate with more green sub-pixels giving a very slight greenish hue. With larger display comes larger keys for keyboard making it far better typing device than any touchscreen smartphone today. Though the character and handwriting recognition is a bit buggy, it can be tolerable. Galaxy Note has an average phone call performance. Clearly the device has been built to take the best advantage of touchscreen & stylus and not making superb quality calls. Camera quality is also at par with Galaxy S II though not better. Since the mic in Galaxy Note is much more resilient than any device, it generates much of the noise in video recording. Also, the camera can’t adjust quickly to fast movements therefore resulting in delay in focus and exposure.

The proprietary stylus packed with the device is much better than the ones present in the market today. A lot of gestures have been added by Samsung for effective use of the S Pen. The gestures can be executed by holding the small button on S Pen that when swiped up, emulates pressing of Menu button and swiped right emulates the back button. The phone comes with an integrated quick note that can be pulled up to bring a Sticky memo page. By simply pressing the S Pen button and double tapping brings up the note for writing. There are lots of apps for S Pen that can be downloaded from S Choice store.

It can be considered as a Beauty and the Beast both, having the looks of classy Galaxy series and power of a beast. This device is macho & robust and due to it’s form factor will receive much more attention from the guys than the girls. Truly, Samsung has pulled it off making worlds largest as well as the slimmest smartphone and with the advent of Galaxy Tab 10.1, it is surely diminishing the Apple power rapidly.