Do you have gargantuan mitts? Then may be a Samsung Galaxy Note, a largest phone accessible in America, is for you. This “phablet”—part phone, partial tablet—boasts a 5.3-inch, 1280-by-800 screen, creation even a gigantic Samsung Galaxy Nexus ($299, 4 stars) and Motorola Droid RAZR (4.5 stars, $299) demeanour petite.
The Galaxy Note isn’t accessible from any U.S. carrier, yet you can find it upon Amazon in an AT&T-compatible chronicle for $650. Our handling editor Wendy Sheehan Donnell had a hands-on with a Note earlier this year, and she found it usable:
I got a little short hands-on time with a Galaxy Note, and you did find it tiny and gentle sufficient to use with a singular hand. On a alternative hand, though, whilst many people substantially determine which expelling mixed mobile inclination is preferable, it’s difficult to design a rank and file upon foot a streets chatting divided with gargantuan 5-inch screens pulpy opposite their cheeks. The too-small-for-tablet, yet too-big-for-phone shade distance could be a difficult sell for Samsung. Just final month, Dell killed its 5-inch Streak tablet.
The Galaxy Note additionally acts some-more similar to a inscription than a phone. In further to multitouch pinch-to-zoom finger-based input, a aforementioned stylus, dubbed a ‘S Pen,’ tucks in to a bottom row of a phone, and can be used in a accumulation of apps. In a Messaging App, for example, you can write upon a screen, and a Galaxy Note will modify your scrawls to email or SMS messages with a assist of predictive text. In a browser, you use a coop to annotate, afterwards constraint Web pages with your notes. Input with a coop was really responsive, and as prolonged as you wrote neatly, content acclimatisation worked well. Besides formation with a local apps, Samsung skeleton to recover an SDK for a S Pen so developers can write third-party apps which use it for input.
The Galaxy Note has many of a facilities you’d design to find in a top-of-the-line Android smartphone. It runs Android Gingerbread 2.3.5 with Samsung’s TouchWiz extensions, and hooks up to AT&T’s network during HSPA+ 21Mbps speeds. There’s an 8-megapixel camera upon a behind and a 2-megapixel a single upon a front. The device zips along interjection to a dual-core, 1.4Ghz Samsung Exynos processor. There’s even an FM air wave built in.
Samsung has reliable which a Galaxy Note will get an ascent to a new chronicle of Android, 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich” in 2012.
We’re doubtful to examination a Galaxy Note as you typically hang to phones sole by U.S. carriers or without delay by their manufacturers in a U.S., yet former PCMagger Zach Honig has a great outline during Engadget if you’re deliberation shopping this beast.
tags: Amazon, Bottom Panel, Compatible Version, Droid, Galaxy, Inch Screens, Managing Editor, Mitts, Mobile Devices, Native Apps, Nexus, Party Apps, Predictive Text, Razr, Sdk, Sheehan, Text Conversion, Tough Sell, Tucks, Walking The Streets