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Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Review - 17 months of use

The Galaxy Note 3 is the phone that arguably kickstarted the interest in larger phones, or phablets, with its fairly large 5.7 inch 1080x1920 display. But is it a good phone? Let's find out...

 

Display

 

The display is really nice, it is truly large enough to be able to enjoy watching a movie, reading a book or anything else you seek to do on a smartphone. It doesn't bode well against screen glare though - even on a higher brightness the screen is practically useless when there's a lot of sunlight. The display is suitably sensitive as well and has great viewing angles, ultimately, I would give it a 7/10.

 

Software

 

Here is my biggest gripe with the phone and what made me fall out of love with Android as a whole, Android manufacturers are including crap software and bloatware on their phones which are often impossible to remove without rooting and even then, removing the software and bloatware can sometimes cause serious problems. TouchWiz is ugly, clunky, resource-heavy and crash-happy to the point where I wonder why Samsung even included it in the first place. We also have to suffer the horrors of Knox; some sort of software security tool which will void your warranty if you attempt to root your phone meaning that you, as an Android user, are being limited which is ironic because the point of Android is being able to be free to do as you please. The sad part is that a lot of the bloatware that Samsung includes solely exists just to act as a tech demo for the phone which in practice seems stupid to me. The "tech demo app" for the Galaxy Note 3 is the note taking app, or, S Note - an app that works wonderfully with the included stylus but could just as easily be replaced by any other note taking app. I also feel disgruntled at the fact that this software is basically Samsung's excuse to bulk out the Galaxy Note 3 by including a stylus and a holster for said stylus. Why not make another version of the Note 3 which is slimmer or has a bigger battery so that we don't have to be stuck with a stylus that you'll only ever use a handful of times before getting bored with it?

 

I do like, however, the multi-window tool which allows for multiple apps to be used at the same time, so you can watch a video on YouTube while playing a game such as 2048, but when multi-window isn't in use, it is truly an obstacle. You can accidentally press it and you'll have the little white menu appear or you could try and watch a movie and the arrow on wherever on the screen you moved it will block some of your view. But, it is actually practical, so I will let it off. I can really dig the eye scrolling tool, but sometimes it just doesn't work and you end up actually having to tilt your head to scroll instead of just moving your eyes. You also can't scroll to the side with your eyes, or rather, head which is disappointing because longer e-mails would sometimes require you to need to do that. Oh, and ignore the stock Samsung web browser because even though that supports eye scrolling, it's slow and it sucks. 4/10

 

Aesthetics, or look and feel

 

Samsung made a phone which definitely looks better than a lot of their previous models with a silver border and a really thin bezel, the front of the phone has an LED for notifications which can sometimes be annoying when you're trying to watch a movie or show and you also have a half-decent camera at the front. The front speaker which is only used for calls does stick out, but it doesn't look awful, so I won't complain. What does look awful, however, is the flimsy faux-leather back. It comes off really easily and is too bendy for my liking because it just perpetuates the cheap image that Samsung are criticised for. The side of the phone is all-plastic with some chrome looking paint which does eventually wear off which is a shame because from a distance it can look really good.

 

The various buttons on the phone are non-obstructive and it is clear which button is which due to their clearly different sizes and of course, there's the now-iconic home button and the non-physical 'back' and 'menu' buttons which really do come in handy and light up when pressed. That's cool. What isn't cool is that Samsung tries to tell everyone that their phones are sexy and trendy now before giving us this quite frankly awful looking charger port which requires a really wide connector to supply power to it. I can appreciate that charging can be done in no time at all thanks to the larger charger and wall socket, but if you plug the phone into anything else but the wall, as far as I've seen, the Galaxy Note 3 actually charges slower which is a shame because that means you can't transfer files to your PC or laptop while charging it fast enough to get out of the door when you need to. I also feel as if I should point out that the phone is not really scratch resistant and it picked up a few scratches from small drops which are very, very noticeable. 6/10

 

Hardware

 

The Galaxy Note 3 is powerful. It has a meaty 2.3 ghz quad-core processor and an Andreno 330 GPU which allow for some solid mobile gaming so you can be certain that your favourite waiting simulators such as Clash of Clans and Boom Beach can run very smoothly. There are three variants of the phone, the 16GB, 32GB and 64GB models, all of which support expandable storage which quite frankly is fantastic and in my opinion, that's what the iPhone sorely lacks. Again, I refer to the colourful display which has great viewing angles and whatnot but is still defeated by screen glare. I also have to point out that the phone gets very hot under load sometimes which makes me question how cool this phone actually is.

 

The cameras are underwhelming. There is no support for decent slow motion, the highest framerate you can achieve is 120 FPS at 720p - not exactly the best. The 4K footage you can shoot looks alright but again, not great. The camera app has a lot of features which take full advantage of both the phone's camera's fantastic sensors but is let down by a general lack of functionality in some places. Also, the focus is a load of garbage on the phone. If you like taking photos or play the selfie game then I would not recommend using this phone's camera. 7/10

 

Is the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 a disastrous phone? No. If you can get it for a cheap price then I would actually encourage you to buy it. But this phone is betrayed by poor hardware optimisation, middling software and DRM, a wimpy camera and other issues with the overall look of the phone. The design on the phone in some places is well and beyond flimsy which is a shame because Samsung also tried to make their phones look premium so that consumers wouldn't look the other way towards Apple, but in doing so, the phone looks worse by sticking to a plastic and faux-leather construct.

 

This phone scores a total of 24/40, or, a 6/10.

The Dude's PC Build<p>i5 4690k @ 3.5ghz w/ The Crappy Intel Stock Cooler | Asus Z97-K | 8GB Corsair Vengance LP DDR3 RAM @ 1600mhz |1TB Seagate Barracuda + 120GB Samsung Evo SSD | Gigabyte Windforce R9 290 4GB | 650 Watt CoolerMaster Gaming Series PSU | Bitfenix Shinobi Windowed | BenQ GL2460 | Corsair Vengeance K70 Cherry MX Brown | Razer Naga Hex Wraith Red gaming mouse | A £0.63 mouse pad from artcow.com

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Nice review, shame the future-proof phones are always the most expensive

Current Rig:   CPU: AMD 1950X @4Ghz. Cooler: Enermax Liqtech TR4 360. Motherboard:Asus Zenith Extreme. RAM: 8GB Crucial DDR4 3666. GPU: Reference GTX 970  SSD: 250GB Samsung 970 EVO.  HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 2TB. Case: Phanteks Enthoo Pro. PSU: Corsair RM1000X. OS: Windows 10 Pro UEFI mode  (installed on SSD)

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Nice review, shame the future-proof phones are always the most expensive

 

The price when it came out wasn't really reasonable. Samsung still doesn't realise that high prices and cheap materials aren't premium and neither of those are 100% the reason why people buy Apple phones.

The Dude's PC Build<p>i5 4690k @ 3.5ghz w/ The Crappy Intel Stock Cooler | Asus Z97-K | 8GB Corsair Vengance LP DDR3 RAM @ 1600mhz |1TB Seagate Barracuda + 120GB Samsung Evo SSD | Gigabyte Windforce R9 290 4GB | 650 Watt CoolerMaster Gaming Series PSU | Bitfenix Shinobi Windowed | BenQ GL2460 | Corsair Vengeance K70 Cherry MX Brown | Razer Naga Hex Wraith Red gaming mouse | A £0.63 mouse pad from artcow.com

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I too have had the phone for roughly the same amount of time. Upgrading to Lollipop 5.0 has made it quite a better experience for me using the phone. Have you tried this?

 

Also I have to agree with the camera, really a disappointment.

 

I am now moving to the S6 as I snagged a pretty good deal.

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