Samsung Galaxy Note 3

Back in 2011 when the Note first made it’s debut, most of us were pretty skeptical. Samsung made something that is like a phone and like a tablet. Thus the term ‘Phablet‘. In 2011, having such a huge phone was not something that many of us wanted.

But we don’t know what we want unless it’s given to us, right?

Eventually people found the Note getting increasingly productive and really good for consuming media without the need to carry a separate phone or a tablet. After the immense success of the Note and Note II, Samsung hasn’t stopped and they’ve come out with yet another marvel of a phone, the Galaxy Note III. Let’s see why is this phone buzzing right now.

Design & Feel

This device is reminiscent of Galaxy S4, from the fake metal bands running along the side till the more squared off look but with a fake leather back. Samsung has finally replaced the slippery glossy plastic of which we were all getting tired.

The plastic was a major turn down for people looking to switch over to Samsung devices. The back feels like plastic itself but I wouldn’t be surprised if you actually mistook it for leather especially with the stitches around the border to give it a finishing which gives it the look of a leather notebook.

The leather on the back doesn’t feel as slippery as the glossy plastic in the other models, it may not feel as good as the HTC One or an iPhone either, but it’s a much better option than the plastic. It is also not-so-difficult to handle considering it’s giant form factor.

Samsung decides to stick with the capacitive home and menu button joined by the physical home button instead of shifting to the software buttons as seen in LG’s G2, all Nexus variants, Moto X, etc. This version of Note has grown up to a 5.7″ display compared to Note 2’s 5.5″ display but yet Samsung managed to keep the size of the phone same while shrinking the bezels around the screen and making the phone more squarer compared to it’s predecessor.

Display

The Note III houses a 1080p Super AMOLED panel. 1080p is pretty much a pre-requisite for any high end smart phone in the current market. Honestly I would’ve liked Samsung to remove it’s physical and capacitive buttons and feature software buttons, which would just give it a better and cleaner feel, but then that’s just what I think.

Camera

The Note 3 has pretty much the same camera as the Samsung Galaxy S4, but the image processing software has been improved a bit to give more sharpened and crisp outcomes. It lacks optical image stabilisation for which Samsung compensates well with their stabilisation software to remove any irregular movements and jitters. It may not be on par with the camera of the iPhone 5S or Lumia 1020 but it is still one of the best camera phone in the market. It also comes packed with the heck load of camera modes that’ve seen in the Galaxy S4.

It also has a very unique feature, that is the ability to shoot 4K video. But right now there aren’t much devices on which you can view 4K content so you’ll be better off shooting with the 1080p HD resolution which is undoubtedly beautiful.

Software

The Note 3 is still powered by the TouchWiz interface which is visible on pretty much all it’s current smartphones. But on the Note 3, it is running TouchWiz over Android 4.3 which makes it the first Samsung device to run Android 4.3. It is also packing all those futuristic seeming features which we saw debut in the Galaxy S4 like Air Gestures, Air View, Smart scroll and lots more.

The Multi Window is one of the most useful features that Samsung offers, this allows you to run 2 apps simultaneously by splitting the screen into 2 halves. You can also resize one app to occupy more of the screen than another, you can also do cool stuff like drop images from one window to another.

e.g: Drag an image from Google images into a window which has a chat open to attach the photo to the chat.

Also Samsung has increased the usability of the S Pen, now when you pull out the S Pen out of the phone, it detects that it has been removed and presents a window known as Air Command on the the screen which displays 5 key features of the S Pen.

There are many things that you can do with the S Pen, but I wanted to keep this post short and sweet so perhaps I won’t waste time in describing those features, perhaps maybe a separate article on it. 🙂

 Samsung also introduced a feature called My Magazine, which is like a feed powered by Flipboard, it contains all news and updates from what’s happening around the world and also from your social networks, it is basically their response to HTC’s BlinkFeed. My Magazine has a layout similar to Flipboard and it is enabled by a swipe up gesture from the bottom of the screen.

 

 

Hardware and Performance

For starters, this device is a BEAST. It has 3GB of RAM, yes that’s right, 3 FREAKING GB OF RAM. 

The 4G LTE variant runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S800 CPU which is a Quad-core processor clocked at 2.3GHz which is blazing fast.

 

The Non-LTE model is powered by Samsung’s Exynos chip which is an Octa-core processor containing a quad core set of 1.9GHz and another quad core set of 1.3GHz.

This phone can handle pretty much everything like butter. You MAY face lag once in a blue moon but that would be mainly because of Samsung’s TouchWiz UI not because the processor isn’t fast enough.

The Note 3’s battery is a huge 3,200 mAh battery which has reportedly lasted for 2 days for people with average use. Even if you are a really heavy user, you can at least be sure for this device to last about 5 hours where a few other phones wouldn’t even achieve 4 hours. So the battery life shouldn’t be a concern with this device. You also have the option to carry another battery with you and remove the back of the phone and swap in a new battery.

Despite of all this going on, it manages to weigh just as much as 168 grams and has a width of just 79.2 mm which very slim and light for a phone packed this heavily.

 

Summing Up

The Note 3 is a very powerful device, I don’t see anyone going wrong by buying a Note 3, if you are a person with average use and don’t have much need for productivity, multi-tasking, stylus and a humongous screen you will be better off without the Note 3. This is for people who love getting much more out of their phone and their day consists of noting things in their phone, receiving, forwarding, lots of reading and need for a heavy processor and a battery to cope up with it. (Having huge hands helps too)

So far there hasn’t been any threatening competition to the Note lineup, there may be other phablets out there but none which provides a stylus experience and such a wide range of possibilities. Samsung keeps improving with every generation of their Note lineup and people seem to love it. Let’s see if any other company tries to step in the ring with the Note lineup.