With some fantastic specs and the inclusion of a PDA-alike stylus, is the gargantuan Samsung Galaxy Note the asnwer to your prayers or should it go on a diet?
By Leo Stiles
You know, there was a time not long ago, when mobile phone manufacturers fell all over themselves to make handsets as small as they could.
This dubious process continued until it seemed that the latest handsets could only be reliably operated by those whose digits resembled that of a five-year-old. If you need any proof of this just Google Nokia’s ridiculously tiny 8310.
The arrival of smartphones seems to have reversed this trend with screen space becoming a premium feature and the resulting handsets inflating to pocket-defying sizes. Samsung has been experimenting with all sorts of sizes in its Galaxy tablets range and now it has delivered the largest smartphone ever with the 5.3-inch-screen-equipped Galaxy Note.
Its thin, anorexic width is still all important to Samsung but the Note’s screen size is pushing the definition of mobile phone to breaking point and we cant imagine anyone popping this thing into their skinny jeans without risking their phone and their dignity at the same time.
Another Samsung preoccupation is power and the Note offsets its odd size with some seriously impressive internal firepower. Running the entire show is a whopping 1.4GHz dual-core processor, married to a generous 1GB of RAM which puts the Note right at the vanguard of smartphones as sheer horsepower goes.
Both of Samsung’s flagship mobile devices, the Galaxy 2 and the Galaxy Tab 10.1, fail to deliver the kind of power on offer here and it’s almost as if Samsung is trying to entice us to take a gamble on the super-sized phone by tempting us with unrivalled performance.
The screen itself is huge, a 5.3 AMLOED with a resolution of 1280×800 and a pixel density of 285ppi. That was a nasty bit of jargon that simply means we are talking iPhone 4 retina display quality here and Samsung’s best resolution for a mobile device.
The rest of the specs are probably what you expect with an 8MP camera and Android 2.3 all present and correct. However, the Note does have an unusual feature in a storable stylus for precision interaction and note taking; see what they did there?
If you ask us, the Note seems to be straying into the realm of the PDA and while we doubt that there is a massive market for stylus-equipped phones, we must confess to finding our fingers a tad imprecise for some touchscreen tasks and this development might be just what the doctor ordered for our repetitive stress blighted wrists.
When all is said and done the Samsung Galaxy Note is very ca apable phone in search of a market that we are not sure exists and while we are excited by the sheer power of the handset, we can’t help but envisage N-Gage style embarrassment when you answer a call on the gargantuan device.
The Galaxy Note goes on sale in Ireland on November 17. What do you think? Will it be the luxury sized phone of your dreams or an undersized tablet in the shadow of its elder siblings? Sound off in the comments section below.
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