Samsung Galaxy Note

Announced at the IFA keynote in Berlin in September, the Galaxy Note was remembered for its huge 5.3-inch HD Super AMOLED display. Featuring a dual-core 1.4GHz processor and a special S Pen stylus, Samsung's gadget is positioned right between the current crop of large-screen smartphones and smaller 7-inch tablets.

Design

The huge 5.3-inch Gorilla Glass display is what will catch your eye, and Samsung has squeezed in a 1,280 x 800 pixel (WXGA) resolution, too. It's the first Android phone that we know of that has a resolution higher than the iPhone 4S, though the specs seem to indicate that the Note's 285 pixels per inch (ppi) still lags slightly behind the 326ppi of Apple's handset.

Despite its size, the Galaxy Note feels quite comfortable in our hands. It does take a while to get used to its girth, however. You will need to get accustomed to the fact that the Note works best with two hands, though you should be able to get by reasonably well with one hand (unless you have really small hands).

While it's wide, the handset is actually quite slim at just 9.65mm and weighs just slightly more than the HTC Evo 3D at 178g. It also fits quite comfortably in our pockets, though if you're of a smaller stature with smaller clothes, this observation may not be applicable.

Our experience with the smartphone in our pocket also highlighted a potential shortcoming, if your pant material is thin enough, and the screen gets turned on accidentally, you may unlock the device. To prevent this, we suggest using a lock screen pattern or setting a PIN code.

As Samsung is wont to do with its Galaxy devices, there are only three buttons on the front. The physical home button and two touch-sensitive menu and back keys. Both touch-sensitive buttons are not normally visible--but will light up briefly when you interact with the handset.

Also, similar to other Samsung handsets is the placement of its power and volume buttons. You'll find them at the right and left sides respectively, while the 3.5mm audio jack is located on top. What's unusual about the Note is that it has a S Pen stylus that's stored at the bottom next to the micro-USB port. We were worried that the stylus would easily fall out, but those fears proved to be unfounded. In fact, it's actually quite hard to remove the stylus from the holder--you'll need quite a bit of force to extract it.

Located at the back is the 8-megapixel camera with an LED flash. Underneath the cover, you'll find a 2,500mAh battery and the SIM and microSD slots. You will have to remove the battery to swap microSD cards. You may need to do so if you find the 16GB onboard storage insufficient.

Features

The smartphone runs Gingerbread (Android 2.3.5) out of the box. Samsung has added its own TouchWiz interface, with some tweaks for the larger screen real estate. Also, the TouchWiz's split-panel layout for the messaging and mail apps work better on the Note's bigger screen (on the Samsung Galaxy S II, it feels a little cramped).

The UI has also gotten some improvements--with seven home screens, Samsung has tweaked it such that you can scroll continuously, allowing you to flip to the last page from the first without having to go through the other screens.

Samsung has also added apps such as S Memo that you can use with the S Pen. You can also take notes while in apps by simply holding down the S Pen's button and double tapping on the screen. A long tap with the stylus while holding down the button will take a screenshot.

Samsung has also released its first version of the SDK for the S Pen and developers should be able to use that to create apps that take advantage of the stylus.

While the iPhone 4S has Siri, the Samsung Note has Voice Talk, a voice-activated assistant similar to Siri that's powered by Vlingo. The app lets you dictate to your phone and tell it to do a bunch of things like calling a contact or opening an app for you. We note that this was already present on the Galaxy S II, but given the recent hype over Siri, we felt obliged to point out this feature.

The Galaxy Note is also one of the phones that Samsung has confirmed will have the Ice Cream Sandwich update, making this a future-proof device if you're thinking of waiting for phones with the new OS.

Connectivity-wise, the Galaxy Note comes with a wide range of options you would expect from a high-end device--Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, FM Radio and HSPA+.

The 8-megapixel camera is fast--in fact, there's barely any shutter lag. Autofocusing is speedy and you can tap on where you like the focus to be. The only issue we have is that the camera doesn't seem to automatically adjust the exposure if there are bright light sources in your picture. Image quality was generally good with low noise levels, and color reproduction was generally accurate.

Performance

With a dual-core 1.4GHz ARM Cortex-A9 Exynos processor running things, we found using the Galaxy Note to be generally zippy. The fast speeds also translate to a quick camera (as noted above) and playing games on the Mali-400MP GPU was fluid.

The battery's performance has to be the highlight of the handset. The 2,500mAh battery was more than sufficient to last us around slightly under two days with our usual review test settings where Facebook is set on a two-hour refresh interval while Twitter and two email accounts are set on push. Even with a large 5.3-inch display, the built-in battery meter showed that the main power drain came from the OS, which bodes well for the smartphone.

Lastly, call quality was generally good, though pressing our face against the large screen felt a tad silly. Speaker volume is sufficiently loud to be heard while in a pocket.

Conclusion

If you're hankering for a device that can be both a tablet and a smartphone, the Galaxy Note is probably the closest thing you can find on the market today. The large display makes it good for sharing content, but it's not too big that you'll find it uncomfortable to carry around in a pocket.

Retailing at S$988 (US$763), the smartphone may be a bit expensive, but it is cheaper than the Galaxy S II was at launch (S$998). Seeing as how the phone held up pretty well in our review, we will say that it's certainly worth every dollar and deserving of our Editors' Choice award.