What’s so great about the Galaxy S devices? It really depends on preference, but apparently a lot of people have found lots of things to like about the line of smartphones from Samsung as it has catapulted Samsung’s sales past Apple globally. In Samsung’s latest release, the Galaxy Note 4G, consumers are once again scrambling to find out where to buy the Samsung Galaxy Note 4G at the best possible bargain.
Though some people seem to be trimming the fat from their smartphones, in an attempt to catch up to the likes of Apple and Samsung, Samsung has decided to release a phone that while thin, is no pansy. Featuring almost the exact same internals as the Galaxy S line of which it is related to, the Galaxy Note carries one of the largest displays seen on a cellphone, 5.3-inches to be exact.
So is it a good phone, and better yet, should you buy it? Read on to find out.
Design and Features
Looking at this phone, it is clear to see that this is a bigger Galaxy S. Samsung is marketing this as the perfect device for those who want a phone and tablet but do not want to carry both around, or don’t have money for both. According to them, it is the best of both worlds.
With a body dimension 5.78 x 3.27 x 0.38 inches, the Galaxy Note is quite big. Moving onto the display, we are greeted by 5.30-inches of screen real estate packing 800 x 1280 pixels with a 285ppi density. Technology is Super AMOLED (No Plus here), Corning Gorilla Glass and capacitive touch. The chipset is an Exynos dual-core 1400 MHz, Cortex-A9 with Mali-400MP GPU for graphics. 1GB of RAM, 32GB of built-in storage and a microSD slot that supports cards up to 32GB round out the main internals.
The rear facing camera is 8MP, with supper for 1080p video recording as well as a secondary front facing camera that sports 2MP and also supports video recording. Both cameras come with geo-tagging, touch focus, face and smile detection and image stabilization.
Moving along to the connectivity front, we have Quad-band GSM radios on the 850 / 900 / 1800 /1900 spectrums, LTE on the 700 MHz spectrum and support for EDGE, GPRS, HSUPA and HSDPA data. WiFi is on board thanks to an 802.11a/b/g/n module. WiFi Direct and hotspot is supported. Bluetooth v3.0 plus A2DP, EDR is included, NFC and micro USB 2.0. More excellent reasons to discover where to purchase the Samsung Galaxy Note 4G.
Rounding up the features includes Stereo FM, A-GPS, GLONASS support, pen stylus and a 2500 mAh battery.
Performance
If you read our review on the Galaxy S II smartphones, you’re well aware that we loved them. That has not changed with the Galaxy Note. Not only is it a beautiful looking device, it performs lovely thanks to that 1.4GHz dual-core chip. There was hardly a thing that we threw at it that it could not handle. Multitasking was beautiful and even when we bogged it down with downloading from LTE while playing Angry Birds or watching 1080p Flash clips, it didn’t choke. Impressive always, and equally impressive enough to influence you to buy the Samsung Galaxy Note 4G.
What is different with this device and most other current smartphones is the return of the stylus. Apple famously took credit a few years ago from killing the stylus, but it appears to have either went into hiding or was on life support as it is back. Just don’t call this one a stylus as Samsung would rather use the name S Pen. The S Pen allows you to write, select text, screen capture and add annotations to documents and much more. Overall we found it to be very useful. Of course, you will always have the possibility of losing it, but then again it’s a lot bigger than previous stylus we have seen.
Battery life is great. In fact it is one of the best we have seen even besting the iPhone 4S. We recorded a full 9 and ½ hours with video playback and gaming (continuously). If you use this phone heavily or even moderately throughout the day, it will hold up well into day two and possibly into day three.
Call quality was good, but thanks to AT&T’s network we had a few minor issues. On the other hand LTE worked beautiful with speeds of 20Mbps. Unfortunately, AT&T’s LTE footprint is a lot smaller than Verizon or even Sprint’s WiMAX service.
Conclusion
In the end our only major issue lies in the size of the Galaxy Note. At over 5 inches it is not a phone for everyone and those with small hands will find this out quickly. However, if you have the hands to handle this thing, it is a solid investment. Just don’t get offended if you get a few stairs when you answer a call on this bad boy. Review the features and specs sheet we’ve included to determine if you want to purchase the Samsung Galaxy Note 4G.