It’s not hard to think of the Palm Pilot when first looking at or holding the Galaxy Note. But that’s mainly because of the S-Pen. The screen is unique for its size — so unique in fact, that you’ll look like Zack Morris with a brick 1980s Motorola phone when holding the Note to your ear.
But the comparisons between the two end there. The Note has a 1.5GHz dual-core ARM chip with LTE connectivity and Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread. The Note should be upgradeable to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich at some point this year, but Samsung hasn’t confirmed exactly when. The 16GB of internal storage can be upgraded by the microSD card slot (a 2GB card comes with the phone, but the slot supports up to 32GB). The 8-megapixel rear camera can capture video in 1080p HD, and there’s also the front-facing 2-megapixel camera for video calls. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0 and assisted GPS round out the the basic specs.
The 1280 x 800 resolution on the display looks gorgeous. Whether you’re just browsing the web, looking at photos, watching a video or playing a game, it’s not hard to appreciate how lively and vibrant it is.
The S-Pen, on the other hand, is the feature that users will either like or not care much about. Using the S-Memo app, you can write whatever you want on the blank canvas. Double-tap the pen icon and you can adjust the thickness, colour and choose between a ballpoint pen, pencil, brush or marker.
Hold down the grey button on the stylus, put it on the screen and you can take a screenshot of anything displayed. You can then write or doodle whatever you want on that screenshot. At first, you might think this a useless feature, but consider that you can grab stills of videos from YouTube, photos from Facebook, games you play, and on and on. Pretty much anything you look at can be doodled on using this method.
Samsung has even set aside an app called S Choice that lists all the apps that can work with the S-Pen. With the developer kit openly available, Samsung is hoping third-party app developers will jump on board.
Lost in the screen and stylus combo is the fact this is an LTE-enabled phone. If you’ve used an LTE device before, you know how fast the speed is. But, of course, the big screen and LTE speeds do take a bit of a toll on the battery, even though the battery itself is bigger than typical smartphones.
And that big screen is probably the biggest reason why you’d want the Note — not the stylus. The S-Pen is more of a complement because it won’t appeal to everyone like a screen can, despite the fact Samsung is pushing the pen in a big way. If you have no reason to write anything on the Note, you’re unlikely to pull the stylus out from its slot in the bottom. But then again, maybe its intuitive performance is enough to win some converts.
Either way, the Note is a standout purely because of its form factor. Does it succeed in being the cross between a smartphone and tablet? Could it be the one device you carry around, instead of both? There’s no easy answer for that, but at least it has the potential to be.
The Galaxy Note is available through Rogers, Bell and Telus for $199.99 on a three-year contract or $779.99 on no term.
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