When I first heard of the Galaxy Note, I was pretty intrigued. Combining a tablet and smartphone seemed like a good idea for someone who didn’t want to lug around an arsenal of gadgets, however, such good ideas – if not well executed – will usually end up as another flop. I decided to ask around for opinions, especially from the early adopters, to see if I should even consider this for my next phone. Amazingly enough, I got an opportunity to review the gadget soon after.
And no, this is not compensated for so it’s based on my personal experience with the gadget.
The Unboxing & Form Factor
When I first unwrapped the gadget, I expected the Samsung Galaxy Note to be rather heavy given it’s huge 5.3-inch screen but was pleasantly surprised to find that the smartphone was really light (178g) and packed a beautifully slim design.
+1.
However, I do feel that there was a slight letdown for the back cover. It seems like the plastic material was flimsy and would not stand up too well to rough handling. -1
Display
There are no words to aptly describe the awesome display. Boasting a HD SUPER AMOLED Display, this is no doubt the best smartphone touchscreen display that I’ve seen. Colours were wildly vibrant and vivid, images and text were highly defined and crystal clear. Reading emails, texts, and watching videos suddenly became a luxury on the Galaxy Note. It was beautiful.
Major plus. +5
Battery Life, Software
While I was reveling in the brilliant display, a small nagging thought popped up. Will the awesome display compromise the device’s battery life? There’s no point having a great gadget/phone if it’s going to run out of juice quickly, leaving me stranded without connectivity.
Fortunately, it seems like the 2,500mAh battery is more than capable of powering through at least 1.5 days per charge (based on my usage and that’s pretty heavy given my love for all things social + emails on the go). +1
The Galaxy Note operates on the Android™ 2.3.5 (Gingerbread) Platform. This was actually abit of a drawback for me given that I’ve been using the iOS for a long, long time. However, Android does provide a little more freedom for users to customise their phones, and buyers would already know about this prior purchase – hence, no issue here.
Another thing worth highlighting here: The 1.4GHz Dual Core Application Processor also made multi-tasking on the smartphone alot less painful with minimum lagging.
S Pen, S Memo
Another unique feature of the Galaxy Note is that it came with a stylus. My god, how long was it when we were using one of those things? And they don’t even work well half the time.
The S-Pen, however, gave me a run for money. I was rather impressed with the sensitivity of the S-Pen stylus and it proved to be a great productivity feature when jotting down notes during a meeting.
What’s more (and even better) is that users can use the S-Pen to select and outline an object in a picture to crop it directly!
No additional photo editing software required. This was easily one of my favourite feature. Photo-editing made easy. +1
I’m not going to go into technical specs – you can easily google that if you need those details.
All in all, I felt that the Galaxy Note performed well in all aspects and the display, in particular, was outstanding. Users, however, will need to consider if the size is something that they can get used to and fit into their lifestyle. If it’s yes on both counts, I say the Galaxy Note would be an attractive option to consider in your next smartphone purchase.
*All pictures from http://www.samsung.com/sg.
absolutely missy 