[Full Galaxy Note Review] Equipped with a capacitive stylus, the Samsung Galaxy Note was announced at IFA 2011. The smartphone sports a large 5.3-inch Super AMOLED display with a 1280x800 resolution. Inside, it's packing a dual-core 1.4GHz Samsung Exynos processor. It comes running Google Android 2.3 with Samsung's TouchWiz UI. It also features two cameras, one front facing two-megapixel camera for video chat and a rear facing eight-megapixel camera with LED flash. Read on for the latest Samsung Galaxy Note news, reviews and videos:
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by Michael Fisher | October 11, 2012 6:38 PMRead On"Is it a phone? Is it a tablet? It's Galaxy Note!" So read the quote that kicked off the ad campaign surrounding the original Galaxy Note, the 5.3-inch hybrid device Samsung unveiled last year. Like many Samsung ad slogans, this one was a tad inaccessible, but at least the first two-thirds of it accurately stated the question a lot of us were asking: was the product a smartphone or was it a tablet? And furthermore, what place did it have in the market? What exactly did "it's Galaxy Note" mean? To the surprise of some -and the delight of Samsung, no doubt- those questions didn't keep the ...
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by Michael Fisher | October 7, 2012 1:13 PMRead OnOne of the most interesting things about category-defining devices is that they tend to polarize opinions based on one or several unique characteristics. Also, these standout features typically survive into the products' sequels, which typically launch before anyone's finished arguing about their worth. That's certainly the case with the recently-launched Galaxy Note II, bursting onto the market almost exactly a year after its predecessor, and touting the same standout features of S Pen stylus and massive display. We talked a little about the S Pen earlier this weekend with our guided tour ...
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by Michael Fisher | October 4, 2012 2:28 PMRead OnI've written about them, shot hands-on videos with them, and debated their ups and downs on the Pocketnow Weekly podcast ... but I've never had the opportunity to actually use a "phablet," a smartphone/tablet hybrid, outside of a showroom floor. That is, until now. Yesterday, a package arrived at my door containing Samsung's newest offering for the phablet market. The South Korean company created the category last year with the original 5.3-inch Galaxy Note, and it's following up that model's surprising success with the even-more-beastly 5.5-inch Galaxy Note II. The new device bears ...
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by Michael Fisher | September 27, 2012 3:28 PMRead OnHTC has been busy. The company, working hard to get its groove back and compete with supersized rival Samsung, is pressing forward on several fronts. It's working on an upgrade to its flagship One line with something we've been calling the One X+, it's prepping a device code-named "DIX" for Verizon Wireless, and it's investing in the Windows Phone ecosystem like never before with its phalanx of "Signature Edition" WP8 Devices. One thing HTC is missing, though, is any presence whatsoever in the tablet space since the abortive Flyer. And that includes anything in the sub-tablet category. ...
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by Stephen Schenck | September 26, 2012 10:11 AMRead OnJust about one year ago, Samsung introduced the world to the first Galaxy Note, the Android smartphone that dared to play with our preconceptions of how big a usable phone could really be, along with resurrecting the stylus as re-thought, relevant input device. Even the concept alone was worth getting excited over. The actual implementation wasn't half-bad, either, and the strong consumer reaction to the Note prompted Samsung to follow things up with the Note II. Better in nearly every way, the Note II took a good idea and refined it, leaving us with something that felt even more like a ...
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by Stephen Schenck | September 24, 2012 12:36 PMRead OnOvernight, we told you about reports we had heard of Jelly Bean arriving for international Galaxy S III handsets. Since then, Samsung's confirmed the start of its Android 4.1 distribution for the model, as well as offered a look at which of its other smartphones and tablets will be seeing their own Jelly Bean updates arrive in the future. The biggies like the Galaxy S II and Galaxy Note make the cut, obviously, along with the Galaxy S Advance, S II LTE, Chat, Ace 2, Ace Plus, Beam, Mini 2 and the Galaxy S Duos. On the tablet side, Samsung says to expect Jelly Bean for the Galaxy Tab 7.0 ...
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by Brandon Miniman | August 31, 2012 9:25 AMRead OnAfter giving you some commentary on what we thought about the Galaxy Note II as far as its place in the mobile landscape, we wanted to give you a more in-depth tour of Samsung's updated phablet. The Galaxy Note II has a larger screen than the original Note by 0.2", but because of a 16:9 aspect ratio, the device is less wide but taller; it's also slightly thinner, which is unexpected given the 20% increase in battery capacity. The Note II has a quad-core 1.6GHz Exynos CPU with 2GB of RAM. It'll be launching later this year across multiple carriers with either 3G or 4G LTE.
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by Brandon Miniman | August 29, 2012 3:03 PMRead OnThe Galaxy Note has been an unlikely success. What was once chastised for being an oversized phone or an undersized tablet has defined a whole new category of devices. The sales figures tell the story: with 10 million units sold so far, there's clearly a big market for a device with such a large display. But the original Note was a bit flawed. While it was a powerful device with great hardware, the software had tremendous shortcomings. The S-Pen integration with the phablet wasn't exactly natural, accurate, or useful. Even if you were willing to stay within the confines of homescreen ...
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by Anton D. Nagy | August 24, 2012 3:12 AMRead OnThe Samsung Galaxy Note was unveiled at the 2011 IFA and at next week's 2012 IFA we're expecting the follow-up, the Galaxy Note II. However, this didn't stop T-Mobile from making its Galaxy Note available on August 9, almost a year after its original launch and three weeks before the follow-up's unveiling. According to "anonymous sources", Magenta is canceling the Galaxy Note which has reportedly reached EOL (end-of-life) status. This, coupled with the fact that the phone is nowhere to be found on the carrier's website lends more credence to the rumor. We touched upon this in our Pocketnow ...
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by Michael Fisher | August 14, 2012 7:04 PMRead OnAround these parts, we're no strangers to Samsung press events. The world's leading handset vendor has been on quite the publicity streak over the past year, culminating in the high-visibility kickoff of the Galaxy S III a few months back. The South Korean giant shows no signs of resting on its laurels, however, with a big Unpacked event planned for IFA at the end of the month. Before we can even hop on a plane to Berlin to cover that one, though, Samsung is calling us to New York City for yet another announcement. It's crazy, man. It's like Samsung's in it to win it or something. So ...
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by Jaime Rivera | August 10, 2012 12:22 PMRead OnDespite Samsung's staggering success in the smartphone market, I must admit we're all begging for that same level of "wow" on their line of tablets. Devices like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 are truly beautiful works of art, but the love sadly ends once you turn it on and get a feel for how sluggish it is. The good thing is that Samsung is anything but slow at pushing newer and better hardware, and such is the case with a mysterious new Samsung tablet that just reached the FCC. Code name P10, this oddly unannounced tablet was one of the major leaks that have been roaming around the Apple vs. ...
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by Anton D. Nagy | August 9, 2012 2:31 AMRead OnThe world is preparing for the Samsung Galaxy Note II, expected to be unveiled at a pre-IFA event in Berlin at the end of this month. However, the original Galaxy Note has just become available on T-Mobile after a very long period of waiting, as implied by earlier rumors. It is be powered by Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich with Samsung’s Premium Suite bundled out of the box (aside from the T-Mobile 4G Pro App Pack, containing apps like Dropbox, Evernote, Square, TripIt, CamScanner and LinkedIn,). Those who want to have the phone with a 5.3-inch HD Super AMOLED touch screen and ...
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by Stephen Schenck | August 6, 2012 1:24 PMRead OnSince the Jelly Bean source was released, there's been no shortage of custom ROMs available for many of the popular Android handsets out there. Despite how solid many of these releases are, there are still plenty of us interested in finding out when officially-supported Jelly Bean updates may become available from manufacturers. For those of you with Samsung phones, a preliminary schedule has leaked, giving us some idea of what to expect through the end of the year. SamMobile attributes this information to Samsung insiders from which it's received news on Ice Cream Sandwich updates in the ...
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by Michael Fisher | August 6, 2012 8:01 AMRead OnIn the world of cellular phones, sequels have a spotty history. This reality has been at the forefront of my thinking recently, fueled by my two most recent reviews of the Motorola Atrix HD and HTC Droid Incredible 4G LTE. Both of those devices were the latest in their "family line," each the third iteration in a venerable legacy. And each one followed a sequel device, a number-2 release that was unimpressive. As I said in each review, I found both the Droid Incredible 2 and Motorola Atrix 2 to be very underwhelming devices compared to their forebears, watered-down and uninspired versions ...
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by Anton D. Nagy | July 31, 2012 9:03 AMRead OnAugust 8 is the date to circle in your calendar and $250 is the amount of money you should have ready 0n that date if you want to grab a Samsung Galaxy Note from T-Mobile (even if it will be a couple of weeks ahead of the rumored Galaxy Note 2 mid-August, pre-IFA launch). If you still decide to get one, prepare to update it as soon as you unbox it. T-Mobile is preparing an out-of-the-box over-the-air update for the 5.3-incher rolling out on August 8. It will pack Android 4.0.3 and naturally it will also be available via KIES, to bring you nothing major, except some bugfixes for the weather ...