Galaxy Note’s a Handy Not-So-Little Hybrid
Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012It’s a tablet. It’s a smartphone. It’s a phablet. Samsung’s new Galaxy Note is hard to pigeonhole. It resembles an oversize smartphone or an undersized tablet. Now throw in the fact that a key feature is a stylus-like pen — Palm Pilot redux? — and you’re left wondering what gives.
For the record, Samsung positions Galaxy Note as a “super phone,” one that goes beyond the usual multimedia and smartphoning capabilities and will also let you write and sketch as if you were using pen and paper.
The South Korean electronics giant insists Galaxy Note is a “mainstream product.” To help get that message across, Samsung ran a commercial for Galaxy Note during the Super Bowl. My take, though, after a few days of testing, is that it will likely have more niche appeal than anything, especially at $299.99 with a two-year AT&T contract. The handset, already available overseas, hits AT&T, Best Buy and other stores Sunday.
Hybrid devices haven’t exactly fared well in the U.S., as Dell found out with the ill-fated Dell Streak, a small Android tablet. Despite the odds against Galaxy Note, much of what you find in the device is quite sweet. Its 5.3-inch display (measured diagonally) is gargantuan in comparison with most smartphones, yet the device is thin, good-looking and well-proportioned.
It runs on AT&T’s fastest 4G LTE network — now in 28 markets but clearly not in parts of northern New Jersey, where I conducted some tests.
Inside is a powerful dual-core processor and 16 gigabytes of storage, expandable via microSD by 32 GB. It has an impressive rear-facing 8-megapixel autofocus camera that can capture stills and high-definition video, and a front-facing 2-megapixel camera for video chats.
In sizing up the smartphone market, many people already think state-of-the-art screens are plenty big enough, especially in the Android world where Galaxy…
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