Samsung Galaxy Note Review: Now With Android 4.0 - tylerhishadinin

The Samsung Galax Note ($300 with a two-year contract; Leontyne Price as of February 14, 2022) has been out for a spell internationally, merely on Feb 19, the 5.3-inch phone with a style-like pen will arrive on U.S. shores exclusively on AT&T's 4G LTE network. After Galaxy Note commercials appeared during the Super Bowl, Twitter users joked that it resembled a Palm Fly. The Galaxy Note mightiness have a penitentiary, merely IT is far from the capacitive PDAs of past. The Note's "S Pen" works quite an well with the interface, simply I wished that the twist had more apps to use the pen with.

(Editor's Note 7/9/2012: This review has been updated to chew over the Galaxy Note's upgrade to Humanoid 4.0 and the Bounty Suite additions.)

Pad, Phone, or 'Phablet'?

The Galaxy Bank bill's 5.3-inch presentation puts the Short letter in an interesting spot between a phone and a tablet. According to Samsung, an unlocked edition of the Remark won't atomic number 4 available in the Integrated States, which puts the device more in the "subsidised phone with contract" category.

I have to say, nonetheless, that it feels a little silly to hold something of this size up to your face and make a phone call. It is tripping enough, only I found information technology a flake overly wide for my men, opinion uncomfortable and unwieldy at times. The Galaxy Note measures 5.78 by 3.27 by 0.38 inches, and weighs 6.28 ounces.

The Preeminence has the normal bear upon-sensitive navigation buttons under the expose (Menu, Home, Back, Search), plus a volume rock 'n' roll musician and a power clitoris. On the bottom of the Note, you'll find the one-armed bandit for the S Compose (which I'll cover soon).

The Line's aesthetic is pretty similar to that of the Samsung Galaxy S II phones (though larger), with a rectangular soma, a piano-melanise bezel, chrome piping, and a textured "carbon paper blue" stamp battery cover.

HD Super AMOLED Expose

The Galaxy Note's 5.3-edge in display has a 1280-past-800-pixel resolution. The technology is HD Super AMOLED, not to be muddleheaded with Super AMOLED Plus, which we saw on the Samsung Galaxy S II line of phones. This is the same display technology Eastern Samoa on the Samsung Galaxy Link. As I noted in my followup of the Galaxy Nexus, HD Fantastic AMOLED is supported the PenTile picture element structure, in which pixels share subpixels. Galaxy S II phones, happening the other manus, have instinct RGB displays, in which the pixels for each one have their possess subpixels. In comparison with Super AMOLED Plus displays, HD Super AMOLED displays purportedly have a lower gross subpixel density, reduced sharpness, and degraded color accuracy.

When I reviewed the Galax Link, I noted that I couldn't really see a difference between the two other display types in terms of acuity. The Galaxy Note also handled image and text edition rendering well, producing sharp, clear text and details on both Web pages and high-resolution images. I detected a touch of degradation on higher-solution images, particularly when I zoomed in, but the image lineament definitely looked better than connected other phone and tablets we've seen.

The main problem I have with the display is that the colours are oversaturated. To boot, skin tones look ruddy, and whites deliver a tenuous yellowish tinge. This is a common problem among AMOLED displays, Samsung-ready-made or non. Still, oversaturation isn't always a disobedient matter: Colors on the Note look rich and aglitter, while blacks are deep.

Using the S Pen

The Galax Note includes a Wacom-made "S Pen" for note-winning and drawing. And Eastern Samoa I mentioned before, the S Compose is a furthermost cry from the old styluses you might remember. Wacom pens recognize both right-bimanual and morganatic users, and the S Pen also mimics the act of physically winning notes: The harder you mechanical press the pen on the Note, the thicker and bolder your lines will be.

Start July 10, the Note wish be upgraded to Android 4.0, "Icecream Sandwich," with a version of TouchWiz that's similar to the one on the Wandflower S II personal line of credit of phones. As you might expect, the Galaxy Remark also has reinforced-in software and special gestures for the pen.

One handy app, called S Memo Lite, lets you mite down notes from pretty much anywhere in the phone. To extract the S Memo Lite app, you sustain down the push button on the pen, and double tap on the display. If you have another app open, the notepad appears on top of it, allowing you to throw back to it easily.

A Buckminster Fuller rendering of S Memo, S Note Premium Suite, is accessible from the apps menu. In that app, you can ADD color to your drawing or text, or insert pictures (either via your gallery OR from the provided clip art) and shapes.

In Bounty Suite, you give the axe at once choose from seven various templates: Note, Meeting Banknote, Idea Note, Magazine, Diary, Recipe and Travel. These templates allow for you to easy tote up images, video, maps and school tex for whatever you feel like creating in S Note. You can likewise now record and replay step-by-step details of you drawings and share IT with others. While this feature is cool, I don't really realize the purpose of it. I suppose if you want to show someone step-past-step directions on a map surgery something it could live useful.

Premium Entourage also has an self-acting material body correction feature, which will straighten any lines and create perfect circles or rectangles. It seems look-alike it would be useful for drawing flow charts on the fly. You can too accede in canonical unquestionable equations and S Note will solve them for you via Wolphram Alpha.

You can also subscribe to screenshots, simply by pressure and belongings the pen to any item you deficiency to capture. Your shot so opens in a unsophisticated pic-editing app that lets you crop the screenshot in either riata or rectangle mode.

Writing on the Galaxy Musical note takes or s acquiring used to. At first, I was appalled at how horrible my handwriting looked. Once I got the hang of victimisation the compose, though, I started to enjoy it. As somebody who is constantly doodling and prefers writing devour notes to typing them, I likeable being able to jot down ideas or reminders. The keyboard has a playpen mode, which will convert your handwriting into text. I thought it did a pretty good job of recognizing my hand, though it misinterpreted what I was disagreeable to write a few multiplication.

Pen gestures involve a learning veer, Eastern Samoa well. To pop off "gage," you withstand down the pen's button and swipe to the left. To go to the home screen, you drag the pen from top to bottom while pressure the write button. And if you want to open Menus, you swipe from bottom to top piece pressing the button. Once you get customary to relying on the pen rather than on the hardware buttons, navigating the Note is a breeze. You can, naturally, purpose the ironware buttons at any time if you don't same the pen gestures.

If the S Write feels besides unforceful (or gives you ugly flashbacks of your electrical phenomenon-touch Windows Cell), you can invest in the S Pen Holder Outfit (sold separately). The accessory is basically a standard committal to writing-pen shell for the S Pen, complete with a sac cut short.

Pen-Companionate Apps and Other Software

The selection of pen-friendly apps feels a bit anemic. Samsung says that the SDK for the Galaxy Note and S Pen will be available to developers soon (though the accompany doesn't specify when). I see a draw of prospective for creative programs and productiveness apps, as advisable as games that incorporate the S Pen (think Nintendo Darmstadtium-trend games).

Right now, the included apps that support pen mood are Polaris Office staff, S Memo, and a gimpy named Crayon Physical science. Pole star Office lets you create documents, spreadsheets, and slideshow presentations. You can insert drawings or screenshots in a presentation, or use the pen to insert text. Wax crayon Physics is a precious game in which you draw objects to strike a Ball from point A to point B.

This version of Samsung's TouchWiz interface has few interesting features, including resizable widgets for the home screen and a revamped calendar app. The calendar app takes advantage of the larger display, presenting a tabbed interface that lets you view the whole class, a week, a month, trey days, a day, or the like.

You'll also get a new app titled My Story, which lets you create multimedia system letters and cards. As far American Samoa I potty tell, you can only share these notes with separate mass who have the My Story app—basically fellow Galaxy call up owners.

You'll incu quite a few AT&T- and Samsung-added apps, too, such as AT&adenylic acid;T's Live Telecasting, AT&adenosine monophosphate;T Navigator, YPMobile, Samsung Media Hub, and more. You buns move out some of these apps, however, by pressing the Menu key and selecting Redact (get a line the screenshot).

Carrying out

The U.S. Galaxy Note is powered aside a 1.5GHz dual-essence Qualcomm CPU. (The European version, connected the early hand, has a 1.4GHz dual-core Samsung Exynos processor.) I tested a few art-heavy games on the Note, including Osmos HD and Globe of Goo. Some ran swimmingly without any glitches, and looked terrific on the Note's large display. Video also ran flawlessly, without some issues.

I ran the Vellamo benchmarking app on the Government note to examination its graphics and browser performance. We get hold of these oodles with a grain of salt, since the app is made by Qualcomm and the Wandflower Observe has a Qualcomm mainframe. Surprisingly, the Note didn't do that fountainhead, with a score of 773; that benchmark puts the Note behind some the Motorola Droid Razr (1040) and the Galaxy Link (803).

I also ran the FCC-approved Ookla app to test the Galaxy Government note's data speeds complete AT&T LTE in San Francisco. In my neighborhood, I got an fair download speed of 24.64 megabits per second, and an average upload speed of 8.78 mbps. Those are ridiculously fast speeds, and I could get word the power of AT&T's LTE when downloading apps (which took seconds), browse the Web, and watching flowing video.

Call quality was good over AT&T's network. My friends on the other goal of the line reported that my articulation sounded clear and natural. I couldn't detect any distortion or static in my friends' voices, though few sounded slenderly remote.

We oasis't yet formally proven battery life, but the Galaxy Note lasted a overladen day of large testing before I had to plug it in again. We'll update this section once we run our battery tests.

Camera

The 8-megapixel tv camera snapped good pictures, indoors and away. The colours in my indoor and outdoor photos looked accurate, while details appeared sharp. Honestly, though, the phone's dimensions make it a little awkward to use as a camera. Have you ever tried shooting a photo with a tablet? Information technology fair-minded feels strange.

The Galax urceolata Federal Reserve note can capture HD video in up to 1080p result. The device also has a head-on-facing 2-megapixel camera for making video calls surgery taking self-portraits.

Bottom Line

As somebody who is reluctant to hop on the pad of paper train, the Galax urceolata Note's size is ideal to me. I look-alike being able to welt the Note tabu to jot down ideas, and I love being capable to doodle during a meeting or patc riding the bus. To me, this is a perfectly mouse-sized tab. But a perfectly sized ring? I'm not so trustworthy. I wish Samsung sold a Wi-Fi-only, carrier-free version in addition to the subsidized AT&T version with LTE. I see it more as a auxiliary device–something I take to work, but not out to dinner or to the beach. Overall, the Galaxy Note works well with the S Pen, and I am excited to see to a greater extent pen-supported apps. Opportune now, the selection feels a bit limited.