A PHONE | TABLET
Samsung just sent a chill down our spine by launching the Samsung Galaxy Note- an Android Phone with a 5.3 inch display ! If you thought the Galaxy S2 had a big display ? Get ready for a bigger display. I’m not sure how many of us can grip a 5.3 inch phone in one hand ! The specs seem pretty impressive with a 1.4 GHz Dual Core Processor , 5.3 inch HD SuperAMOLED Plus display (1280×960 pixels resolution) and runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread. There is a 8MP camera on the back and a 2MP camera on the front. It weighs 100grams and is 12.3mm thick. And it comes with a pen called S Pen so that you can scribble on the mini football ground in your hands !
SPECS - GALAXY NOTE
PRELOADED SOFTWARE
Apart from the standard suite of Google apps, Samsung has loaded the Galaxy Note to the teeth with a myriad of apps. Some are handy, some border on bloatware.
To start, there are a number of 'S' apps such as the S Memo, the S Planner and S Choice apps store. All these 'S' labeled apps are designed especially for the S-Pen. While most will think the S-Pen is a glorified stylus, in truth it is a full-fledged digitizer. With the S-memo app, we can draw and sketch as if on paper. We can also take screenshots and edit them with the help of the S-Pen according to our whims and fancies. It pretty much became our personal digital notepad. We can even use handwriting recognition capabilities but these are not very accurate.
The S-Pen itself has a buttons placed which activates a variety of different features, such as taking screenshots.
The S-Planner is a calendar app optimized for the S-Pen, there is nothing revolutionary about it apart from cool quotient.
The S-choice is an apps store dedicated to apps optimized for the S-Pen. Samsung has also released a Software Developer Kit (SDK) for the S-Pen, allowing developers to build apps optimized for the S-Pen. As of now, the S-Choice store only offers 10 apps but Samsung expects the number will increase over time, but we are not entirely convinced.
Although the S-Pen is not the first of its kind in a mobile device, Samsung has definitely nailed the implementation. It is way better than the haphazard pen input on the HTC Flyer where the pen cannot be utilized throughout the OS. At the end of the day, however, it's still a novelty function - at least until the handwriting recognition algorithms are nailed because, in our opinion, only a superb handwriting experience will drive forward Pen based devices.
Besides the 'S' apps, Samsung has also loaded Polaris Office, which is a very capable office suite and also doubles as a file manager. It even supports the cloud with .Boxnet integration. It's a pity that .Boxnet does not offer the 50Gb free storage to its Android clients that it offers to iOS users, otherwise this would have been a lethal combination.
As with all Samsung devices, we get the Social Hub which is Samsung's social media aggregator. It integrates Twitter, Facebook, Email and SMS feeds in one. It's not the most intuitive way or not even the most handsome way of accessing ones personal information; frankly, we would rather use the default Facebook and Twitter apps for this.
Samsung has also loaded Kies Air Wi-Fi sync functionality, which works in tandem with a Kies Air desktop app or works directly via web browser. Definitely a handy tool, but Samsung could do a lot more to unclutter the interface especially in light of the iPhone's new found wireless capabilities thanks to iOS 5.
