Mobile Reviews: Samsung Galaxy Note hands-on

Introduction

The Samsung Galaxy Note is a player in a game of numbers - and it's drawing higher numbers than the competition. Starting with the 5.3" 1280x800 pixels SuperAMOLED screen on the outside and all the way to the beefed up Exynos chipset inside with two 1.4GHz cores, the Galaxy Note has +1 on all its specs.

Samsung Galaxy Note

This is hardly where the numbers end, here are a few more - 285ppi for the screen, 9.65mm thick, 8MP still camera, 1080p video camera, 2,500 mAh battery. It's either a Galaxy S II on steroids or a smaller Galaxy Tab 7.7. Whichever way you look at it, the Galaxy Note is an impressive piece of kit.

On top of that (or rather, on the bottom) we have the S Pen, an active stylus, which can be used to jot down notes, control the S Planner organizer and more. The stylus slides into the body, which means it's always around when you need it.

Samsung Galaxy Note visits our office

We haven’t had enough time with the Note - it literally arrived in our office a couple of hours ago - but enough for a quick hands-on. These are our initial impressions of the hardware and the camera. We've thrown in a bonus user interface video, so enjoy.

Hardware overview

The Samsung Galaxy Note is big, no question about that. But it's about as small as possible with a 5.3" screen. There's very little bezel on the left and right of the screen (enough to let you hold it without pressing anything) and not much above and below the screen either - enough room for buttons, earpiece and so on but no more.

It's fairly thin at 9.7mm but what surprised us the most is just how light it felt - the Galaxy Note weighs 178g, but spread over such a big device, it felt very light.

It's not the most comfortable of gadgets to hold in one hand, but it's not that bad either. And holding it with two hands is spot on for two-thumb typing. The patterned back cover and the curved edges also helped give a positive hands-on feel to the Note.

Samsung Galaxy Note in the hand • The Back of the Galaxy Note

The screen merits a deeper examination, but here are the first impressions we got from it. First off, having a 5.3" SuperAMOLED is pretty cool. Graphics are smooth and you have to look close to see the PenTile matrix.

Viewing angles and color rendering of the Samsung Galaxy Note are brilliant but the screen felt dim - noticeably dimmer than the Galaxy S II screen. We'll have to break out the measuring tools and investigate further to give a final verdict.