Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Review

In three generations, Samsung has brought the phablet domain from an experimental, trendy and niche area to a complete new domain. The Note 3, following in the footsteps of its predecessor, has a beautiful large screen, and an improved design also which points out that Samsung is taking this domain seriously. The Note 3 has also brought the stylus back in style, the S Pen, as it is called, with a button to augment the thumb-on-screen experience.

The 5.7” screen sized Note 3, with the SnapDragon 800 chipset, 2160p video recording, USB 3.0 and a whole bunch of software features from Samsung, has entered the segment with a whirlwind of market campaigning, speculation and interest, and has come out with a major player against the likes of Sony Xperia Z Ultra and the likes.

While unboxing the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, you will get everything inside the retail box that you need to get started with this phone.

• Samsung Galaxy Note 3 handset
• 2A A/C adapter (will use the USB cable for charging)
• MicroUSB 3.0 cable connector for A/C adapter for charging
• Headset with volume and answer controls
• S Pen

The prime highlights of the Galaxy Note 3 are the display and the S Pen support. The diagonal of the screen has been raised to 5.7” from 5.5", with the resolution being doubled the original to 1080 x 1920, which in turn enhances to 386ppi, surpassing the Retina 300ppi barrier.

Samsung has worked hard on the screen and it is rated amongst the best in the business. It has nearly limitless contrast, flawless angles of view and colors that dazzle. Samsung tried to ensure the wallpapers enhance the colors in the best way possible.

Samsung has come to realize that although there are some excellent LCD’s available these days in different premium range smartphones, it's very difficult to match the astounding imagery of the Super AMOLED display. Although the Super AMOLED on the Note 3 is second to the Galaxy S4, you won't be able to point this out except when you put both the devices side by side.

Galaxy Note 3 can maintain perfect contrast and is easily readable under the brightest of environments, including direct sunlight.

The Note 3 has a more refined and stylish finish than its predecessor. The device is angularly shaped, and sans its glossy hyperglazed finish. Samsung has switched to plastic that emulates leather and metal, which give the device a mature and classy vibe, all the more appreciated due to its business aspirations.

The Note 3 is almost entirely plastic (even if most of it may not feel that way). The plastic surrounding the screen has matte finish and a brushed metal texture to it. The sides which may look similar to a grooved metal strip is also plastic, although it not only increases the attractiveness but also improves the grip.

The most different area on the device was the back, and while many would have thought the faux-leather with faux-stitches a poor idea, Samsung have pulled it off in a way that it feels extremely close to real leather, making it one of the best backs on a mobile device. Also, as compared to aluminum or glass, this plastic can handle and hide scratches and other damage very well.

The Note 3 at 8.3 mm is one millimeter slimmer than the Note II which stood at 9.4mm, and it's lighter too, at 168g having come down from 183g of the Note II. This is even lighter than some cell phones. The Note 3 also reduced the bezels to make the device narrower by a millimeter and with the same height as the Note II. The device may sound bulky and large, but is by no means too big or too heavy. In fact, the device feels smaller than Note II.

Of course the device cannot be used single handedly, but then, phablets are normally meant for both hands. And, for normal phablet users, Note 3 is actually a good hand fit with the other devices in the market consisting of screen sizes of even up to 6.7”.

The S Pen has been upgraded to be applicable on the capacitive buttons also, so that the device is completely navigational by the S Pen. There are several shortcuts enabled for the S Pen, so using it may actually be a better option in some cases.

The phone has the version 4.3 Jelly Bean pre-loaded, the latest at the time of release on top of this Samsung has added its own security layer labeled Knox. Samsung is targeting the business users group that has been lost by BlackBerry. The security layer, approved by the government, is a step in the same direction, and we are expecting more development in this direction in the near future with every new release.

Samsung decided to replace the glossy plastic at the back causing multiple complaints with a surprising switch to a faux-leather styling, which feels nearly the real thing, while adding class.

Samsung has also added a large amount of options related to customization, tailored features, ability to easily expand memory and removable battery, and the new 2160p video capture.

The new version of the S Pen is almost the same height as its earlier version, though this time around it has been flattened, which actually improves the grip. The button is placed on one of the sides at a comfortable height to access. Samsung has tried to make sure that almost all the applications that was launched with the Note II is pre-loaded on this version of the device. Once the S Pen is taken out of the device, the latest addition, the Air Command menu, will come up on the device display on the Home screen. In other locations, the menu comes up once the side button on the S Pen is clicked. The Air Command menu is a ring-shaped menu with 5 shortcuts in place – these are, in sequence – the Action Memo, Scrap Booker, Screen Write, S Finder and Pen Window.

Action Memo allows users to write text and use it to initiate actions. An easier to understand example would be that a user can write numbers and then send them to the phonebook , or writing an address and sending it to Google Maps. The text recognition is impressively fast and highly accurate, and we could not think of anything it could not handle.

Scrap Booker allows users to take snaps of screen using the S Pen and takes these to a scrap book, where notes can be added against the snaps. These memos can be sorted category wise also.

Screen Write enables users to start writing on the surface no matter which screen they are on. This seems to be the best tool to take down memos when in a hurry. The S Search allows users to search their device and the internet as well. This search is additionally helpful since it can search material added via the S Pen also. The last menu item, the Pen Window, allows users to launch a mini window of supported apps, and opens the selected app inside the launched mini window, after correcting the mini window’s aspect ratio.

Samsung has released the Note 3 with the latest Android offering of 4.3 and a long supply of fresh TouchWiz features. Particularly the ability to arrange menus, homescreen panes, placing widgets, moving to self-defined shortcuts is much better. More importantly, giving the users the ease of handling the device to a personalized level without over-clutter is a big thumbs-up for Samsung.

As usual, we start off from the lock screen featuring widgets introduced in Jelly Bean 4.2.2, displaying the time and a personal message over beautiful images from TripAdvisor, swiping to the right can take you to the list of your favorite apps as the default TouchWiz setting, or can take you to the camera in case the setting is disabled. Swiping to the left displays widgets. The personal message can be edited or option disabled, as can the timer.

Using the Quick glance, the device lights up the screen when its sensor detects someone reaching for it, displaying the time, messages and missed call counter, music track info as well as the battery life. The notifications area is the same, though an expand option is present to manage the toggles present at the top of the notification area. The homescreen and notifications area are identical to the Galaxy S4. App switcher is unchanged also.

An interesting addition is the Multi-Window feature allows users to launch two instances of the same app together. This is added on to the original multi-app feature which allows more than one app in one view, with the size adjustment option also present. More and more apps are coming with multi-window feature support. This has enabled the data / information copy from one app to the other as well, something that many users will be very happy with. The settings menu has been upgraded to a tabbed mode, making it easier to identify and locate the settings.

A new cool feature with the Note 3 is the one-hand operation. This takes the complete device display to one corner of the screen, defaulting to the normal 4” display screen size (though this can also be adjusted). The volume buttons on the side of the device are also now available on the touch screen. This feature will be much appreciated by the many users, who although appreciate large screens, sometimes require the usage of one hand to operate their devices.

S Note and Scrap Book are similar apps, with the difference being that in the S Note users can create notebooks to store their notes, while in Scrap Book, users can categorize their scraps. However, both apps are powered to add any and all sorts of materials, from videos to images, doodling and text as part of the notes.

The information preview feature enabled by the Air View, which was introduced in the Note II is present here also. The Air View also can enable video and audio seeking, track changing, folder preview, magnifying links present on web pages on hovering the S Pen. With the ability to capture a hover from 3 cm and closer to the screen, this reduces a lot of screen tapping.

Additional features include the Air Gestures, already introduced in S4 in detail, detecting the hand motion over the screen at a distance of 7 cm and closer. The familiar Smart Scroll, Smart Pause, Smart Stay and Smart Rotate options are also available for use. The generic features like direct call, smart alert, shaking the phone to refresh Bluetooth devices list are all present.

The Phone Book is also very similar to the S4, and also includes the much demanded feature, the Block List. It also allows for specific vibration patterns for different callers, which is actually pretty neat. Even the speaker feature comes out very good. The keyboard floating is provided for users who need more space for the message body, as well as word guess is enabled for swype.

The S Voice is the Android answer to Siri. The options of S Voice are similar to Google Now in some places, but S Voice focuses more towards the device and its related operations.

The Samsung Note 3, in terms of the processing power is definitely in the lead in terms of hardware, but it has a lot of stiff competition to stave off. However, combined with the good looks, the operational capabilities, and the overall class, we would definitely rate Note 3 as way ahead in the lead.

As in other places, the web browser has also had a remake thanks to the gestures. The pinch zoom enabling the tab view, air gestures allowing tab switch, as well as Air view, Smart scroll and Smart stay all work in the browser.

The Polaris Document viewer is provided, to allow viewing of almost all the major document file types. However, editing is not present.

Another interesting introduced app is the Group Play, which allows multimedia sharing across multiple devices in the same room, while being interactive. The other phones / devices need to support Group Play though. The devices communicate via Wi-Fi and pairing is done via NFC. This can mean sharing music while allowing other devices to act as speakers for a surround sound vibe, discuss while viewing the same image with different areas being focused or pointed out by different people in the team, or multi-player gaming. Also, the Multi Vision allows for users to put their devices together to form a larger display. Then there is the Samsung Link, the ability to sync data with a computer, Dropbox or the likes.

Also, the S Translator helps people with language barriers by translating to and fro. Being enabled with multiple common languages provides a strong platform for the launch of this app. The S Health is the health and fitness tracking app by Samsung, allowing creation of profile, statistics, and managing activities and targets.

The gallery on the Note 3 can be sorted out by multiple options like albums, all, time, location etc. The pinch zoom and Air View works here as well. The ability to manage multiple images of a folder is also present.

The My Files app is consistent, and has not been enhanced, and the app is solid enough to go through. The IR remote control functionality is also present on the device.

The Note 3 has the same 13 MP snapper as the Galaxy S4 but with minor tweaks, like the Surround Shot. The 13MP camera can snap up to 4128 x 3096 pixels. Samsung attempted with this device to provide the ability to use one viewfinder for both still and video capture, to remove the mode switching dependency though, if there may be an issue when shooting full resolution 13MP photos, since this captures pictures in 4:3 aspect ratio, the videos will also be recorded in the same manner.

Most of the settings are in the top left corner. The volume rocker can be set to act as the shutter key, the recorder key or for zooming in/out. The HDR mode (Rich Tone) can save two copies of an image (one normal, and the other an HDR photo) or just the HDR version. Another option enables the device to name photos with your location, though this requires GPS to be enabled.

The better settings for taking pictures can be found in two places, the first being under the shutter keys labeled the Mode button, which brings up a carousel with different shooting modes, each mode comes with a descriptive image and text. The second location is the arrow button at the bottom of the screen, which pops up a row of different color effects, with each effect showing a live preview. Modes that have been present in some previous Samsung devices like the Best Photo (which takes multiple images and allows selection of the best from the lot) and Best Face (which allows each face in the image to be tweaked individually) and the Beauty Shot, which does some touching up of the picture automatically.

Samsung has added the Surround shot, the spherical panorama image. The additionally provided Eraser tool allows removal of moving objects from the shot. Another way to capture moving objects is Cine Photo, which creates an animated GIF file of a moving object moving. The Sound & Shot captures and records the surrounding sound. However, the Sound & Shot cannot be shared. The sound part stays on the phone. A new mode is the Double Shot. It takes a photo with both cameras front and back, and adds the person taking the shot into the main shot too.

HDR stills come out perfectly, with a large amount of fine detail and developing a lot of the highlights that would be clipped in many cases, whereas shadows are only given a minor improvement, so the contrast is still great and images still look real.

Panoramas can go up to 60 MP in portrait mode with images 3000 px tall, which is great. In either mode you can shoot images around 19-20000 px wide. The seamless stitching that was a great update to S4 is present on display here too, additionally the accelerometer and gyroscope warn you if the motion is too fast or moving off the right path.

The Note 3 introduces video capture ability to 2160p, labeled 4K, capturing videos of 3840 x 2160 resolution, which is four times the resolution of the FullHD clips. However, during 4K video capture, the Dual Shot mode or capturing stills is not allowed, but full resolution 8 MP images of 16:9 images during 1080p recording.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 3 can also capture FullHD in 30 fps mode at a bitrate of around 16 Mbps along with the 1080p@60fps option at about 30Mbps. The audio is stereo quality at 122 Kbps. The videos can be zoomed to 4x overall, however the first 2x contains the original video quality and downgrading of quality starts after this barrier.

Interestingly the 2160p video mode has a 47 Mbps bitrate for the same 30 frames per second, though audio is almost the same. The videos has very high level of detail, and this along with the enormous resolution makes the Note 3 the best smartphone out there in terms of video quality. The 4K videos quality is good enough that it can beat the 4 MP stills of the HTC One even in good light against every frame.

As is the case with the premium devices of the Galaxy series, Samsung has packed up an impressively long list of connectivity features to start off, all the basics - quad-band GSM/ EDGE/GPRS, as well as quad-band 3G – are available, with only the AWS being absent. The 3G connectivity is supported by HSDPA, with a 42Mbps downlink and a 5.76Mbps uplink capability.

The Wi-Fi support is available for all its standards, compatible with both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. DLNA and Wi-Fi Direct are also included, as is Bluetooth 4.0 LE. It includes Bluetooth 3.0, but also the efficient Low Energy mode. An IR-port is also present to support the WatchON app allowing control over various TV's and other devices.

NFC is fully functional, and media transfer by a simple touch of devices is now possible between the Note 3 and other later-generation S Beam-enabled devices by simply tapping them back-to-back. Other NFC devices can be communicated with as well, but functionality is limited to provision by the stock Android Beam.

AllShare functionality, that was further enhanced in the S4 recently, is now split into two, labeled the AllShare Cast and the AllShare Play. The first enables streaming from and to different devices (TV or computer) via DLNA, while the second provides transfer and data and multimedia sharing to laptops / PC’s.

And finally, for wired connectivity we have the MHL 2.0 port, which appears to be pretty similar to a normal microUSB port even in working, as well as being a charger port. However, the MHL 2.0 port additionally enables video output by using a MHL-to-HDMI dongle. The MHL 2.0 port has yet another feature - it features USB On-The-Go as well, another useful tool for people who are more tech-friendly.

The minor increase in the battery capacity for the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 from its predecessor was a bit of a concern for some, especially bearing in mind the screen resolution more than doubled. However, the 3,200mAh battery powering the whole thing performed quite well, we can even say above our expectations seeing the device size and resolution. The power-efficiency of the Super AMOLED screen was on display for the video-playback and helped the Note 3 achieve an excellent score despite the large display to be powered up for more than 13 hours. Talk time also passed with flying colors, going more than 18 hours, however, there was only a slight improvement for web browsing, going on to only about 9 hours.

Still, considering the overall rating achieved by the Note 3 of 75 hours, it is well in the front as far as the phablets race is concerned. The Note 3 should easily manage three full days on a single time charge as per average usage which may include around one hour each of calls, web browsing and video playback per day.

As is visible from the above review, the Galaxy Note 3 does live up to many of its expectations and more. Below are some shortcomings that the device does possess:

• The size makes it difficult to handle the device using a single hand
• Optic Image Stabilization (OIS) is absent, which is a let-down for snapper friendly people
• Absence of a dedicated camera key
• Lack of FM radio
• Some difficulty due to camera interface being shared

Samsung has again come out with a winner device not for the first time in recent years. In just the third version of the device, Samsung has returned to the domain it once created to clear out the lurking competition and claim the segment. With larger screens, highly impressive cameras, bodies that are water and dust proof and hugely powerful chipsets, there are many others trying to capture the domain, but Samsung, with this Note version, has proved that there is no lack of imagination and creativity at its end in fact, this is an innovation.

Instead of going for a huge screen, Samsung made the intelligent move by introducing the new leather-styled finish, but that is not all – in the same size of its predecessor, Samsung has managed to make the device lighter, slimmer and with a screen with an improved resolution and more than sufficiently increased battery. It's also powered by the best chipset available and comes with the whopping 3GB of RAM.

However, eventually, everything comes down to the experience, rather than the configurations, and Samsung has made sure that for this device, the user remembers every bit of his experience, with the complete range of Galaxy series feature at his disposal in one package.

And it’s not just the many Air Gestures and features like Smart Stay and Smart Scroll it's the S Pen, the single-hand usage optimizations, the capabilities of multi-tasking, which are unrivaled after the multi-window functions have come into play.

The ability to easily move content across different applications as well as the new search feature are only the tip of the iceberg. The S Pen is has an impact in almost every space of the interface. Then there is the dedicated single-hand mode, which impacts every screen - from the homescreen to the deepest setting – to be resized for single-hand use, and when enabled, the main controls (Home, Menu and Back) are taken to the dock at the bottom of the screen, along with the volume controls - so as to avoid users having to reach the keys on the sides.

In all sincerity though, we can visualize almost if not all users using the device with the device itself in one hand and the S Pen in the other to maximize the full potential of the device. With Note 3, Samsung has brought out the phablet benchmark for the competition to reach up to. Perhaps the only bad news of it all may be the price tag.