Samsung Galaxy Note: both fish and meat

It is difficult for me to admit my mistakes, but still I sometimes have to. Today is one of those rare occasions when it’s nice to do it, so I won’t go from a distance and I’ll be clear: I was wrong, considering the Galaxy Note to be an unnecessary intermediate between smartphones and tablets. In fact - this is the coolest gadget!

What is what?

Our acquaintance with Nout began with the photos leaked to the network, continued with the release of the press release, and then we met with him live at the IFA exhibition in Berlin. All this time, I thought that Note was too big to be considered a smartphone (although it is formally the way it is, because it knows how to call), and not large enough to call it a tablet. But now, when the Note finally got to me for a long test, it became clear that I simply did not have enough time to properly “try out” it. Get used to such an unusual size and get a buzz from all the advantages of the gadget - for this half an hour is not enough to test on a noisy stand. Correct :)

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Design

On numerous Samsung banners on the IFA it was written: “Phone? Tablet? Note! Wanting to be in several places at once at the same time, I somehow did not attach much importance to this phrase. But now I’ve almost invented it myself and only then noticed that we used it in the video from the exhibition. This gadget is really large for a normal (even the most spatulate) tube and too small for a tablet.







He is not in the best way in one hand, and with his thumb manages to reach only one third of the screen, which one depends on the grip. And if you try to act with “Nout” as with smart, there is a chance to split it on the asphalt. Well, or about the new-fashioned pavement ... It is worth noting that this is specifically about my hand, and I cannot call it big - the middle one is like that - for people with large palms, it may be more convenient ... I don’t know.







And if you look at the Note “in a vacuum” - somewhere on a white table, where it has nothing to compare with, then you get the full impression that this is a regular touchscreen mobile phone. 90% of the front panel is occupied by the screen, above it is the speaker, and from the bottom is the back button to the main menu.







On the left side is a volume control, on the right - the on / off key. On top, as always, is a 3.5mm audio jack and an extra microphone for filtering noise during a call. In the lower part there is a micro-USB port, a pin hole of the main microphone and a compartment with a stylus.







The back cover on the texture is almost the same as that of the Galaxy S II. Yes, and the thickness - too: two millimeters, if not less. At the same time, it can be bent over a wide range, so getting to the battery, for its safety, you can not worry and boldly pick up the nail.



The thickness of the case is not much more than the SGS-II, so the device quietly fits into the pocket of men's jeans and doesn’t even protrude it much. But, on the other hand, it is notable: 178 grams is quite a lot.

Display

Note screen diagonal is 5.3 inches - more than any existing smartphone. Even Acer Iconia Smart looks less due to the fact that its aspect ratio is 21: 9. This automatically makes HTC Desire HD, SGS-II and other "shovels" elegant and refined :)







At the same time, Note sets records not only in the size of the display, but also in resolution. 1280 x 800 points ... Yes, many still have monitors of this resolution, and here - a gadget that fits into your pocket. In addition, the Super AMOLED Plus matrix is ​​used here, as in the Galaxy S II, so you should not worry about the quality of the color reproduction. It is more likely to worry about how not to lose sight, if you decide to twist the brightness slider all the way to the right :). I advise you to tick Auto.

Iron

Inside, Note also has the same Exynos chipset, which still has enough power to perform any tasks, especially if both Cortex-A9 cores are overclocked to 1.4 GHz. Add to this a gigabyte of RAM, a graphics chip Mali-400 and we get the most productive mobile configuration of iron according to the Quadrant Standart. This benchmark appreciated the power of the Note at 3762 points, and believe me, I did it for a reason - the gadget does not slow down. Eats at all, anything, and does not choke.

Camera

The eight-megapixel matrix of the Galaxy Note camera delivers surprisingly good pictures even in far from ideal conditions.





Google logo in original resolution





The presentation of Android 4.0 in the original resolution





Mugs Google and WP7 in original resolution





Two IPS monitors in original resolution



In addition, the gadget can write FullHD video at 30 frames per second.

Soft

As not only the diagonal of the screen increased, but also its resolution, more information began to fit on it. I now involuntarily compare Note with S II. The fact that there is more space on the screen is immediately noticeable - even on the desktop, where there are not four labels in a row, like on all smartphones, but five. The number of rows is also greater with respect to S II - not five, but six. Thus, the user from one table has access simultaneously to 30 applications. There are seven tables altogether, but it’s not difficult to count how many in total.







Otherwise there are no special changes. All that is new in Android 2.3.5, which is installed here, concerns fixing bugs and optimization rather than adding new features to the interface. But the browser control panel has slightly changed. Well, the Plume twitter client behaves as if it is installed on a tablet - it divides the screen into three parts in landscape orientation. But this is a third-party application, I suspect that if you delve into the market, there are still programs that respond to the display resolution.

Pen

Note is not called so because someone in Samsung wanted to call the five-inch gadget "Note." Not. To a large extent, it is so called because it comes with a stylus, which can be sketched and written in a special application S Memo. When the pen is not required, it is stored in a pencil case at the bottom end and does not interfere. But if suddenly you need to make some kind of sketch, it is easily picked up with your finger (removed from the fuse, and then falls out of the niche itself). The size of the stroke, the type of brush, transparency, color - all this is customizable, so that the owner of Note has something like a Painter with a reduced functionality at hand. There are no complaints about the accuracy of drawing, but the inertia is a bit annoying: you can swipe the screen and the line appears a little later. Not critical, in principle (on weak machines, the same thing is observed when using the tablet and Photoshop), but the impression is a bit spoiled.

Battery

2500 mAh When I found out the battery capacity of this device, doubts crept into my soul. For an ordinary smartphone, this would be a really impressive figure, but for a Note with a 5.3-inch screen with a giant resolution and overclocked stuffing ... In fact, it turned out, that was also quite enough! If Galaxy S II works for me, on average, 12 hours with a bunch of background services, etc. etc., then Note is cut down only in 18 hours. Not as much as we would like, but considering that this is Android ...

Summary

Yes, like this! Despite great doubts about the viability of such a device, I have to admit that Samsung managed to make a monstrously cool gadget. When you get used to size and weight, you begin to appreciate the screen size, its resolution, and a dual-core processor with a gigabyte of RAM. Not a smartphone or a tablet - just a geek's dream. The average buyer is unlikely to want to carry such a thing in his pocket every day, and technomaniac quite. Another thing, is anyone ready to pay 35 thousand rubles for it at all? But such a price tag is next to the Note in Euroset, where it is currently exclusively sold. Again, overdo it with the price. In my opinion, this makes Samsung a niche product in general piece.

TTX

OS: Android 2.3.5

Processor: ARM Cortex-A9, two 1.4 GHz cores,

Video: Mali 400

RAM: 1 GB

Main memory: 16/32 GB + microSDHC up to 32 GB

Screen: 5.3 ", Super AMOLED, 800 x 1280

Communications: 3G, Wi-Fi 802.11 a / b / g / n, Bluetooth 3.0, USB 2.0, NFC (optional)

Connectors: USB 2.0, 3.5mm audio jack

Cameras: 8 megapixels, flash, autofocus + 2 megapixels. for video calls

Navigation: GPS, GPS

Battery: 2500 mAh

Dimensions: 146.9 x 83 x 9.7 mm

Weight: 178 grams

Price: 34990 in Euroset