Samsung Galaxy Note review

Remember the display for your first cellphone ? If you have been chatting at the opt for so long as we’ve got, it was probably barely large enough to suit an entire telephone number — not to mention a contact name or text message. And your first smartphone? Even displaying scaled-down, WAP versions of websites was asking a whole lot. Now, those mobile devices we couldn’t live without have screens which are much, much larger. Sometimes, though, we secretly wish they were even bigger still.

Samsung’s new GT-N7000 Galaxy Note is the handset those dreams are made from — in the event you share that dream about obnoxiously large smartphones, that’s. It’s as thin as a Galaxy S II, lightning fast and its 5.3-inch HD Super AMOLED display is as gorgeous because it is gigantic; the 1280 x 800 pixels you once could only get with an entire-size laptop (or within the Galaxy Tab 10.1) can now slide comfortably into your front pocket. Its jumbo display makes it the suitable candidate for a notepad replacement and, with the included S Pen stylus, you will have no problem taking notes at the fly, marking up screenshots or signing documents electronically. But, is that gigantic display an excessive amount of of an amazing thing? You will need to leap past the break to determine.

Hardware

In case you were holding out for a tool that bridges the space between smartphone and tablet, you need to understand. It’s a fully massive Android handset and a high-res pocketable tablet rolled into one. In case you have the hands to support it, it could just be the right thing to happen to mobile devices because the capacitive touchscreen. You’re able to take notes, doodle between (or during) meetings and place phone calls. Those calls could be placed either with the built-in earpiece and mic, or via a Bluetooth headset, which we’d recommend. Holding something this massive as much as your ear could be rather unpleasant — and unpleasant.

If you’ve used a Samsung Galaxy S II, then you’re already knowledgeable about the Note — the design is incredibly similar, though it’s significantly larger, measuring 146.85 x 82.95 x 9.65mm, in comparison to 125.3 x 66.1 x 8.49mm for the GS II. It’s significantly heavier too: 178 grams (6.3 ounces) in comparison with its 122g (4.3 ounce) predecessor. There’s an eight megapixel camera with LED flash at the back and a two megapixel snapper up front. The Note could be awkwardly large for some functions, but shooting photos feels natural enough. There’s also 1080 / 30p HD video recording, with support for MPEG-4, H.263 and H.264 codecs. You are able to store all that multimedia at the 16GB of internal memory, expandable by as much as 32GB with a microSD card — either one of which might be accessed via the micro-USB port. There’s also Bluetooth 3.0+ HS support and 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi.

With support for HSPA+, LTE, EDGE and GPRS, the Note is before everything a cellular phone. You could carry it in a single pocket along with your celly in another, but you do not need to. It’s running Android 2.3.5 (Gingerbread) powered by a 1.4GHz dual-core Samsung Exynos processor, which performed incredibly well during our benchmark tests (more on that later). The Note offers a whole suite of sensors, including an accelerometer, compass and barometer, together with proximity and lightweight. There’s also A-GPS and GLONASS for enhanced positioning — even in Russia .

There’s an earphone grill up top, slightly below the Samsung logo, followed by ambient light and proximity sensors to the best, then a front-facing cam near the sting. A single rectangular button on the bottom peeks out from beneath the display, flanked by touch-sensitive backlit return and menu controls. At the top right of the smooth silver bezel you will discover the ability button, with a three.5mm headphone jack up there too and volume slider at the left. The micro-USB connector is centered on the bottom, simply to the left of where you slide within the S Pen. That slots in flush with the Note’s flimsy plastic rear panel, as a way to only need removing after you would like to insert a SIM or microSD card — or swap out the generous 2,500mAh battery.

Display

1280 x 800 pixels in a smartphone display is kind of a feat, and it’s just as impressive to behold because it sounds. The Note’s 5.3-inch Super AMOLED screen is amazingly bright, vibrant and detailed, due to its 285ppi resolution. It doesn’t have the very best pixel density on the earth (obviously the smaller Galaxy Nexus trumps it slightly, and naturally Apple’s Retina within the 0 iPhone 4 0 and 1 4S 1 ), but it’s enough to make graphics amazingly smooth — you should have a tough time seeing individual pixels with the naked eye. Viewing photos and graphics, web sites or even newspaper articles in PressReader is rather the treat in case you have this much visual real estate to work with.

Colors at the Note pop just as they do at the GS II, that eye-pleasing contrast and saturation we’ve come to like from Samsung’s AMOLED displays, and little vibrancy is lost when viewed from the side. However, color accuracy does begin to wander a piece. Here’s indeed a PenTile display, 2 a twin of 2 the imminent Galaxy Nexus, and so there are more green sub-pixels than every other color. This provides everything an ever so slightly sickly tinge, especially when viewed off-angle. Still, you’ll need no problem watching videos or reviewing your sketches with a set of friends — assuming none of them are hue purists.

In case you fall inside the camp of smartphone users that completely swears off on-screen keyboards, the Note’s display could win you over. Larger display means larger keys, that are easier to look and simpler to tap accurately — in the event you can reach them. You may use the S Pen to interchange the keyboard entirely, letting you write in individual letters or entire words. Character and handwriting recognition isn’t perfect, but it surely is rather good. After we scribbled “hello” as you’ll find within the picture below it was recognized perfectly, though less common words (particularly web addresses) were rather less reliable.

Loudspeaker / earpiece

The Note’s speaker sure is loud, though Samsung hasn’t pulled any magic tricks out of the hat here in the case of audio quality. Do you love being attentive to music or watching movies through tinny desktop speakers? Well, then you definately may not mind the Note. There’s nothing exceptional in regards to the little tweeter inside here besides its volume, so it’s worthwhile to make the most that 3.5mm headphone jack whenever possible. The one accessory Samsung included with our review sample was a UK power cord, so we won’t speak to the pack-in headphones the corporate will provide, but unsurprisingly our own pair worked just fine.

There’s an FM radio app, just in the event you run out of stored tunes or desire to leave the playlist generation as much as knowledgeable. You will need to plug in a suite of earphones to make use of as an antenna and our generic buds naturally appeared to do the trick — though lets only pull in a half dozen stations while standing next to a window in Central London, and those that we did get were mostly static.

In case you do plan on making phone calls with the Note, you possibly can expect average performance. We placed a number of test calls — some local and a few around the Atlantic — and things sounded just fine on both ends, though not overly crisp. Callers at the other end of the road were barely capable of distinguish between calls made using the earpiece and people placed with the speakerphone, even if speaking a foot or two clear of the handset. The Note’s strengths clearly lie in what you are able to do with that generous display and S Pen, though it is a perfectly functional phone just an analogous.

Camera

It’s safe to claim that the device offered greater than acceptable performance. That’s to be expected, because it seems to be using an identical sensor and camera getup we’ve loved within the 3 other Galaxy S II iterations 3 so far. During our indoor shoot, the camera was ready to balance color and exposure properly with most subjects in still mode. The autofocus worked well on the whole and the built-in flash popped with the right amount of power — our subjects weren’t blown out. We wanted to remain a number of inches faraway from subjects so that you can get the camera to focus, even in macro mode — so don’t expect so one can snap extreme close-ups. Also, noise was an argument in darker scenes and the camera was unable to make amends for low light in some areas.

In video mode, noise was a difficulty there too, but of a unique sort: the mic seemed slightly overboosted, picking up quite a woosh with the slightest hint of a breeze. When filming, the camera had a tough time focusing and exposing from time to time, with some elements left soft or overexposed. White balance was generally acceptable, but it surely did take a number of seconds for the camera to regulate when moving quickly between scenes.

Software and S Pen

5

Don’t call it a stylus! Samsung prefers S Pen and, with features that you just won’t find on just any plastic poker, it’d even deserve the respect. Certainly one of our favorites is the facility to tap and hold to capture an instant screenshot, that is then immediately spread out in a picture editor. There you may mark up the grab, circling elements, signing documents, making doodles — whatever it is advisable to do, really. From there one could send it directly to social media sites, email addresses or put it aside at the device.

6

Next up are some gestures that may be executed by holding the button at the S Pen and swiping. It’s worth noting that button is practically microscopic. Our finely-tuned fingers often had a troublesome time finding it. But, once located, you are able to hold it down and swipe up from the lowest of the screen to emulate pressing the menu button. Swipe on from the appropriate to emulate the back button. There is no gesture replicating Home, but since it’s a real, physical button here you may always just stab at it with the stylus — or a finger, we suppose.

7 The telephone has an integrated quick note function, which helps you to pull up a sticky-size memo pad from any page at the device. Simply press the S Pen button and double tap — you can also make a note, reserve it and pull it up easily later. The pad doubles in size in the event you access if from a dedicated app, providing you with more room to make additional doodles. Like any of the drawing applications, you have got a ramification of pen styles, sizes and colours to choose between.

There are a selection of unique apps designed to exploit the S Pen, including the preloaded S Memo app, which collects your quick memos and offers a platform for creating longer form notes, and a handful of downloadable apps, available during the S Choice store. Hello Crayon is designed for kids to create colorful sketches with crayons and markers in numerous colors — it’s going to were created with kids in mind, but we still rejoiced scribbling with it. Hello Color Pencil is extremely similar but, as you’ve possibly guessed, swapping crayons for colored pencils. There’s also Hello Chalk, and you may surely infer the medium of choice there.

Rather than that we’re Android Gingerbread — just a little a shame because the on-screen buttons in Ice Cream Sandwich would work a lot more cleanly with the S Pen. The UI has certainly been Touchwiz’d, but as with the alternative recent Galaxy products we’re keen on the customizations here.

Performance and benchmarks

The Galaxy Note may slot squarely in between a phone and a tablet by way of physical dimensions, but if it involves performance we’re happy to report it leans much toward the latter than the previous — in lots of cases surpassing even that class of devices. We ran it in the course of the gamut of typical benchmarks and located nearly everything predictably out-pacing this device’s Galaxy S II predecessor.

In quadrant this husky phone threw down a three,998, in comparison to the GS II’s 3,200. Linpack single and multi found 64.30 and 95.66, in comparison to 55 and 81. Nenamark 1 and a couple of ended in 57.67 and 32.8, it hit 51.77 at Neocore, and ran through SunSpider in 2,902ms. These are very, superb scores, out-classing the Galaxy Tab 10.1 normally and actually raising the smartphone bar.

Wrap-Up

8

The Galaxy Note is a kind of devices that you will either completely love, or totally hate — its sheer size alone will definitely be a barrier for people with smaller hands (or pockets). With the Note, Samsung has managed to create one of many world’s largest smartphones, but cunningly additionally it is an exceedingly compact tablet with a high-resolution display — just like the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet — without the high-resolution footprint. It’s compact enough to slide to your pocket and robust enough to interchange either one of your portable devices. Still, it won’t be for everybody. It truly is one case where you’ll definitely wish to get your personal hands on one before signing as much as any two-year commitments, if only to determine if it might slot in your hands in addition to your budget.

James Trew, Sharif Sakr and Myriam Joire contributed to this review.

Source

This post is tagged: bluetooth headset, capacitive touchscreen, contact name, mobile phone, mobile-devices-, notepad replacement, perfect candidate