e-Mobi

They used to be big, later they became redundant. As soon as smartphones were ready to offer the same features, PDAs were on the way to becoming extinct. With a device like the Samsung Galaxy Note though, one can't help but wonder if they're making a comeback.

It's got a big touchscreen for reading and entering text, with a stylus for jotting down notes and sketches, with powerful hardware that beats most phones in processing power and features. Sounds like a new-age PDA to us.

The screen is part of the new HD SuperAMOLED line and boasts the impressive 1280x800 pixel resolution. It uses a PenTile matrix, but with 285ppi you can't really tell. Stretching over a whopping 5.3 inches, it makes browsing those web pages an almost tablet-like experience.

The Samsung Galaxy Note shares the Exynos chipset with some of its Galaxy siblings, but it's the one with the 1.4GHz dual-core CPUs. We've already had a look at its performance and we can say it's blazing fast.

If it's becoming hard to keep track of all the features, here's the gist of the Galaxy Note specs in summarized form:

The Samsung Galaxy Note packs the same camera as the Galaxy S II, giving you 8MP stills and FullHD video recording. If the image quality is on par, the Note should easily beat its tablet competitors in the photography department.

One important area is portability - Samsung have made the device as small as possible (there's hardly any bezel around the screen) but 5.3" is pretty big. Figuring how to carry the Galaxy Note around will be a challenge, but if you find a way you can leave your phone at home - the Note has top of the line droid specs and full phone functionality too.

Well, we've got our cargo pants on and we'll try and find room for the Samsung Galaxy Note. But first, we'll go over the hardware, join us on the next page.
This test unit was kindly provided by CT MIAMI, a Samsung distributor for Latin America. The Galaxy Note will be available at CT MIAMI for wholesale customers on October 24 for $699.

King-size interface

The Samsung Galaxy Note runs Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread with TouchWiz on top. Unsurprisingly, the interface looks a lot like that of the Galaxy S II only bigger.
The always-visible shortcuts at the bottom of the screen are now five (instead of four) and the main menu grid has been expanded to fit a 5x5 grid of icons (vs. 4x4 in the S II). It all makes sense: the extra space was there and they used it.


Other than that, the experience is the same as the phone-based TouchWiz. We won’t cover it in detail in this preview. We'll take a look at the S Pen related apps instead.
The squares for each day are big enough to fit the first word of the title of up to two events. Subsequent events show up as "+1", "+2", etc. showing up in the upper right corner of the square.
When adding an event, you have three options: Quick add (just a quick text note), Add event (which lets you add anything from reminders and memo to photos and locations) and Add task, which handles your To-Do list (you can assign each task a priority, due date, group and so on).
The S Planner can seamlessly sync with multiple calendars.

The S Memo is very similar to the Memo app we're used to seeing in TouchWiz. The difference is that S Memo has extensive support for scribbling down notes and quick sketches using the S Pen.
The app opens upon an empty canvas (with a square grid like notepaper) and lets you draw with the S Pen, enter text with the keyboard, add images (which can be scaled for fit) and voice notes .
You can choose between a pen, a brush, a pencil and a marker, each of which leaves a slightly different mark. You can adjust the thickness and the color. Other tools that might come in handy are the eraser, Undo and Redo buttons a Lock button to prevent accidental edits and the Favorite button to mark important notes.

The S Memo app supports pinch zoom, so if you zoom in you have plenty of room to work with and then you can zoom out to get an overview. Panning around isn't very convenient as you have to manually enable pan mode and disable it after. Two finger panning or something would have been easier.
The S Memo lets you easily keep notes visible: you can put them on the homescreen as a widget, set them as lockscreen or homescreen wallpaper or even as a contact's photo to remind you next time you call (or get called by) that person.

Text input - handwriting or QWERTY

With the Samsung Galaxy Note you have two options for text entry – the on-screen QWERTY and the handwriting recognition keyboard.
The standard method, QWERTY, is probably our favorite. The Galaxy Note is sized exactly right for holding it with two hands in portrait orientation and typing with both thumbs.

Other apps (like S Memo) present you with a dedicated writing area at the bottom half of the screen.

Top-notch 8MP camera with FullHD video capture

It's no surprise that the Samsung Galaxy Note uses the same camera interface as the Galaxy S II - it probably uses the same camera module too.
The interface is one of the most comfortable ones we’ve seen - the left column can be customized with your choice of shortcuts, while the right column holds the essentials (still/video switch, shutter key and preview of the last snapped photo).

The Galaxy Note features a pretty full set of options - face, smile and blink detection, image stabilization, geo-tagging, scenes and more.
As for the image quality, it's very similar to that of the Galaxy S II but the software could use a bit more tuning (the Galaxy Note we're testing isn't a final retail unit). Still, noise levels are kept low and the amount of captured detail is very good.
We spotted some issues but we'll wait for the final version of the software before we pass our judgment. Still, the Samsung Galaxy Note is shaping up as one of the best 8MP cameraphones around.

Browser is a near tablet-like experience

The two key determining factors for browsing are screen size and resolution and the Samsung Galaxy Note excels at both - with a screen like that, it will put in a lot of hours of web browsing.
The UI follows the minimalist ethos of the vanilla Android browser but it has been slightly tweaked to make better use of the screen.
The URL bar at the top of the screen is flanked by the Back/Forward buttons on one side and the Tab and Bookmarks buttons on the other. Inside the URL bar itself are the RSS and Refresh buttons.
It sounds like it's going to get cramped with all these buttons, but they're all big and easy to hit. The Menu key reveals more options and also makes the URL bar visible (it auto-hides once you start panning around the page).
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