The New Samsung Galaxy Note looks like a tablet not only from the outside but also internally. It has truly

been designed as a handset with massive 5.3” display screen which is considerably larger than any

smartphone’s display in the market. As a result the “Note” is nearly impossible to use one handed though you

can put it in your jeans pockets and operate quite comfortably with both the hands, we found this handset acts

much similar to its brother Galaxy S2. Most of us are familiar with the “stylus”, and we know that this feature

has had a great fame and success in the past years, but the Samsung does not want people call its new

handset a “Stylus” phone, instead it has come with a name called “S Pen input device”. Interestingly the

“pen” or the “Stylus” is the main highlight of the phone but once again the most dominant feature is its

5.3-inch Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen that packs dense 800 x 1280 pixels of image resolution and

has a Corning Gorilla Glass coating on the surface as for protection, plus, it has been loaded with the

TouchWiz UI v4.0. The biggest improvement can be seen in the ppi (pixel per inch) department, 5.3 inches

display offers superb 285 ppi pixel density which is indeed an appreciable work done by the company. Finally,

the AT&T Galaxy Note comes with 4G LTE, HSPA+, and 3G, which are enough to tell you that this phone has

a huge potential to retort the people who usually criticize phones with “stylus” or simply the Galaxy Note.

Don’t take the Galaxy Note as a tablet but treat it as a handset which is the combination of both and can be

said a "phablet"; its getting popular with the same name. The Galaxy Note is truly a hybrid that runs on

Android OS, v2.3.5 (Gingerbread) and has a Dual-core 1.4 GHz processor. Galaxy Note is not the first

giant size Smartphone; instead we have seen many big size devices, for an instance- Dell had launched the

“Streak 5” which was not only huge in size but also a big failure for the company, and as a result it was

abandoned after few months of the release. Now Samsung has come out with 5-inches Galaxy Note. Unlike

Dell, Samsung has positioned its device as a big Smartphone rather than a small tablet; moreover Samsung

has a huge fan following in the Smartphone segment, because of what the Galaxy Note seems promising.


It’s funny how mobile trends can change. Just a few years ago manufacturers like Motorola, Samsung and

many more were falling over themselves trying to provide the smallest handset in the world, and then

something happened and big became cool. The “Note” is not as big as the pictures may imply but it’s indeed

larger than your average smartphone. Surprisingly the Galaxy Note has a light personality with 146.85 x

82.95 x 9.65mm of dimensions; it holds only 178grams of weight. One can say that the light weight has

become the trademark for the Galaxy line-up, both the Galaxy S-I and S-II feel like feather in hands.



HARDWARE—the Samsung Galaxy Note looks much identical to Galaxy S II and the only noticeable

difference is the CPU; Note has a dual core 1.4GHz Cortex A9 whereas the Galaxy SII has 1.2GHz. Apart

from this, the Mali-400 GPU and 1GB of RAM are same as we found on Galaxy S-II. Undoubtedly it can be

said that the “Note” is the larger version of the Galaxy S-II.

The moment you’ll open the retail box, the first thing that surprises, is the 5.3-inches display screen, but

being big is not mean that its hazard to use. Although it’s giant in size yet the Samsung has designed it in a

certain way so that the device can be handled easily. But operating the “Note” easily with one hand is next to

impossible. Usually the Galaxy Note feels awkward at first but then you will start loving it. The back of the

phone has patterned which feels quite nice in hands, besides that there’s an 8MP camera with LED flash, the

speaker grill is embedded at bottom of the phone, and on the left of this can be seen the stylus slot which has

been provided into the phone, taking the stylus out of the slot requires some efforts because of the tight fit.


Moving on the front—most of the front is dominated by the big display screen, the secondary camera or you

can say the video chat camera and the ambient light sensor are found on the top right corner of the phone.

Beneath the display screen is the rectangular shaped home key and on its either sides are the two capacitive

buttons which are almost invisible, but they light up on a touch. Power / standby key houses on the right side

while the volume rocker is on the left side. Micro USB port which can be used as an as MHL port for HDMI

output sits on the bottom, and the 3.5mm audio jack is on the top of the device. Overall the Galaxy Note feels

nice and delicate in hands and of course has a solid built quality.

SOFTWARE AND S-PEN—the Samsung Galaxy Note runs on the Android 2.3 Gingerbread OS and

hopefully it will be upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich Android 4.0 in middle of 2012. Without wasting much

time, let’s move on the “Note’s” most popular thing-the stylus, which is also called as the S-PEN. Using the

s-pen is like having a feather in hands because its very thin at 0.2 inches and just 4.1 inches tall and side by

side its as light as air with only 0.1 ounce. Because of such aspects sometimes holding it becomes an unusual

deed but instead of that, there’s a button given on the side of the phone which serves as a shortcut to perform

a handful of tasks. If in case its lost somewhere, you don’t need to be worried because Samsung says that you

can buy an S Pen Holder Kit where you’ll get the larger and thicker S-Pen. But the kit will cost you around

$59.99; an additional S Pen is also given to you which is included in the kit itself. One of the most extolled

features of the S-PEN is its ability to tap and hold to capture an instant screenshot, which is then swiftly

opens up in an image editor. And in image editor, you can do whatever you wish to do, for example—one can

mark up the grab, circling elements, making doodles and signing documents. From there you can send it to

most social networking sites like Facebook, twitter, plus it can be sent to the e-mail addresses as well, and

if you don’t want to send it-you are also free to save it on your device itself. Screen shots can also be taken

by holding the combination of power + home (key) after that you just need to release them and the screen

shot of the desired thing will be there on you display screen. The ability to take a screenshot and edit a

website, or circle a payment on a billing statement and easily email the crop is very much useful. The best

part is, unlike the HTC Flyer you can use the S-PEN on any area of the screen you would like, plus you have

freedom to switch to hand operation. The Samsung Galaxy Note comes with hosts of preinstalled applications,

there’s also a preinstalled Samsung App store where you get several artist and sketch type apps. And

hopefully in middle of 2012 the addition of Ice Cream Sandwich will bring a whole new world of apps.

But as of now the fewer amounts of usable apps is a downer, but we can expect from the developers to bring

some interesting and unique apps to the table.



DISPLAY—the 5.3 inches Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen is surely the most interesting aspect of the

Galaxy Note. With 1280 x 800 pixels of image resolution and 16M colors, the screen looks as impressive as

it sounds. After seeing this huge display, the first question that arises in everybody’s mind is- is it too big??

But the reality is; its indeed giant in size but still its not something that we call the monster. Handling the

device with one hand becomes an uneasy task just because of the large size display screen; otherwise using it

with both the hands is a breeze. Its an HD Super AMOLED display that uses the Pen-Tile matrix layout for

the sub-pixel. And unlike the common RGB layout, the Note’s display uses a RG-BG layout; which means

that each pixel has only two sub pixels instead of the usual three. The only problem that we have noticed with

such layout is- it usually reduces the sharpness of the display screen, and the text does not look as sharp as it

seems on the traditional RGB layout display screen. But the tremendous 285 ppi pixel density of Galaxy

Note’s display heels the deficiency.


There are so many pixels per inches, making it so hard for you to notice the lack of sharpness on the display.

Images, icons, and even everything looks so perfect on this display that reminds us the Retina display on the

iPhone 4 & 4S. The 5.3-inch Super AMOLED screen is surprisingly bright, vibrant and detailed, and the

285 ppi (pixels per inch) pixel density has a big a hand behind it. It offers eye-pleasing contrast and saturation

with vivid colors. The sun light eligibility is also of top notch but sometimes a little vibrancy is lost when

viewed from the sides. As for protection the display screen has been coated with the Corning Gorilla Glass

that gives it resistant against many harmful things. One of the strongest points of this Super AMOLED display

is its wide viewing angles and perfect black levels. Watching videos, playing games, browsing internet,

everything is a great experience on such big display screen, and of course the preciseness & response are of

top quality; the touchscreen reacts accurately with every movement of your finger.

CAMERA— the Samsung Galaxy Note has an 8 MP Autofocus camera with 3264x2448 pixels of resolution

and LED flash. The stills look superb with the exact amount of details, contrast and color saturation. The

massive viewfinder is awesome in its own because it gives you an impressive view of the location you are

going to capture. It’s a same snapper that we have already seen on Galaxy S-II. Photo quality of the Note’s

rear camera is excellent with suitably low noise levels. Along with capturing great still photos the 8-megapixel

snapper can also record full HD videos (up to 1080p) at 30fps (frames per second). Low light images are

equally strong, but the single LED seems the downside of the Note’s rear camera that could have been

improved. Yet its not something to be worried about because the overall performance of the camera and the

picture quality you get, has no match at all. As for features, the Samsung Galaxy Note has given a huge

bucket of options to its 8MP rear camera; it packs Geo-tagging, touch focus, face detection, smile detection

and image stabilization. Here the Samsung has also added video and image editing software that does

their job very well, while using the S-Pen for fine tuning is another ingredient that makes the Galaxy Note

stand out. During indoor shoots, the 8MP camera performs great and is able to poise color and exposure

perfectly with most subjects in still mode. The 2- Megapixel front facing camera does great for video chats

and odd self-portrait.



BATTERY LIFE— the Galaxy Note seems to have no problem lasting through the day on a single charge of

battery, but heavy use of video playback and web browsing will drain the battery within few hours. The device

comes with a 2500 mAh battery which has the capability to last for two days on a moderate use. 5.3 inches

Super AMOLED, Dual-core processor, 4G LTE connectivity and many more big power eaters are there on the

Galaxy Note but still the device easily cope-up with the power consumption and delivers up to 960 hrs (2G) /

Up to 820 hrs (3G) on stand-by, and Up to 26 hrs 10 minutes (2G) / Up to 13 hrs 30 minutes (3G) of

talk-time. Overall the battery life on Samsung Galaxy Note is phenomenal, and it is one of the strongest sides

of the phone that makes it a superb combination not only in terms of performance but also in terms of other

aspects. It puts the Galaxy Note in a quite different territory where some competitors don’t even see in the

picture. If we have to write down about the one thing that has really exceeded our expectations, it would be

the battery life; this is what we realized during our tests.



VERDICT—we have been saying since the beginning of this review, that Galaxy Note is the device that can

replace your tablet and even your paper pad. Does it really replace them? “Note” is a great handset when it

comes to specs, performance and built quality but when you glance at the size of this tremendous device,

you come to know that its really enormous. If you are desired to buy a 5-inches Smartphone, then there’s

nothing better than Galaxy Note. But sometimes its become too big for people with small hands, you cannot

operate it one handed and even holding the Note with both the hands is a tough task, any time you can loose

the grip and the gorgeous AMOLED will be shattered like anything. But, with the unique S Pen input features

and announcement of Ice Cream Sandwich, the Galaxy Note attracts a huge crowd towards it. Note is

indeed an appealing device, and moreover its a powerhouse that has been loaded with Dual-core 1.4 GHz

ARM Cortex-A9 processor, Mali-400MP GPU, Android OS, v2.3.5 (Gingerbread), 8 MP camera, TouchWiz UI

v4.0, 4G LTE connectivity and many more interesting ingredients that makes it a perfect package, which is

capable enough to full fill all our expectations from a new generation Smartphone. One thing we should be

worried about is the skinny pen’s credibility and long-term comfort. Last but not the least is the price—around

$300 for such a great phone/fablet/hybrid sounds fair. But still, there are many good options available in

the market, those lie in the same bracket, so we would say—see over the market before you buy the Galaxy

Note.

Samsung Galaxy Note, phone or a tablet ???

wot u say guys ???

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