Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Review

[loepa]

So I Pre-Order(ed) Samsung Galaxy Note 3 White.

 

I had 2 days of use with it. So this is more like first impression and early use.

 

Packaging and accessories

The box is painted to looks like wood. Not sure what it made of.

inside you will find the phone.

 

On the bottom of the box you will find :

-The manual and quick setup guide.

-The S Pen Tip remover and the tip itself.

-Wall charger.

-USB 3 cable.

-Earphone (In-Ear).

-earphone tip.

All colored white (I don't know will the color change if you get the black version of the phone).

 

Physical Look

Aesthetic Note 3 Looks great. With the more square shapped edge like S4, Leather like back. It looks a bit more exclusive than the other samsung device.

 

The Side are plastic with metal-like look. It have horizontal texture which helps your sweaty palms and hands from slipping or lossing grip of the phone.

 

The front looks pretty Standard. Not special. But the back, and the feel of the backplate is a lot better than S4 and the predecessor. Yes, it is not real leather but rather plastic that is textured like leather, But somehow it makes you feel like holding an actual leather.

 

on the top you will find audio port jack and something that looks like an IR (I'm not sure). on the left you will find volume rocker. ont he right power button. on the bottom you will find speaker, USB 3 port for data and charging and S Pen.

 

The Backplate.

The backplate itself is pretty standart. It doesn't have strength (Flex a lot) it's pretty much the same as the previous Samsung Galaxy phone it is made of plastic (Probably one of the few disappointing thing about this phone).

 

The S Pen.

Yes this had a small change from the old Note 2 and Samsung Galaxy tab 10.1. It's now a little bit more square shape, So now you can actually put the pen back into the phone easier. Because there are 2 ways (the top and bottom are shaped the same and the same size so it can go in both ways) to put it in.

 

The Screen.

It's Now 5.7 inch. For some people it can be a problem, Especially if your hands are relatively small. But for me personally it's not a problem. It is to be honest hard to grip properly sometimes. My friends who have small hands, Can't even grip the phone. So If your hands are small this is not an ideal solution.

 

The feel and use

How it feels you might ask.

Before I had 7 months experienced with S3 and some other smartphone. To be honest Note 3 doesn't feel special. Even though the screen is bigger and such. Does it feel too big for your hands? Yes, Sometimes. Although i can grip the phone properly it stills feel like the phone is too big for my face it feels like too much (Probably because I'm not used to it yet). But this can change over time.

 

Primarly so far I use Note 3 to play games. It gets warm quite a lot. But not to the point it's too unconformtable to hold(for me personally). So far it doesn't cause me trouble. The screen can get really bright and sometimes makes my eyes tired quickly (again I'm not used to phone with big screen).

 

The battery itself so far doesn't impress me. The battery can give you 1 day life if you don't use it for heavy task or you have a very good phone signal strength (So Far for me). It takes about 2-3 or maybe 4 hours to charge. It had 3200Mah battery anyway so it is expected to take a little bit longer to fully charge.

 

Features

other than the new android 4.3 which have minor changes. there's not much that is important for daily use. the new S Pen feature is pretty useful if you need small notes. It does have feature from the S4 like the air-view and other stuff (which I disable most of them to save battery life).

 

Specs and Speed

To be honest the new spec doesn't make this device any faster than the other device (S4, S3, Note 2) (for me personally). But the 3 GB is ram actually very Important. if I turn on my phone it will use up 1.0-1.5 or so GB of RAM which is huge remembering you will be activating other background app like Facebook, Twitter, Line, etc.

 

I won't be putting the full specs here because you should see from other website to prevent any misstype from me.

 

Camera

I haven't use the camera a lot. But one thing for sure, It is pretty good. I don't have the chance to compare the result with other phone. But so far it looks promissing. But, It does have the same amout of megapixels with S4.

 

Pros:

- Bigger Screen

- Textured backplate and sides.

- New Shaped S Pen

- Better feels when holding the phone

- looks more appealing

Cons:

- Can be too big for your hands

- Battery Life isn't good enough for me

- Gets warm easily and often

- New Feature is not very useful to everyone

 

So there it goes. So far this is all I can write. Pics are coming soon.

Any other thing you want me to put or ask feel free to write.

English is not my main language so please pardon Grammatical or other error.

[Darell3]

I actually saw a demo version of this phone at a local ISP, damn it looks amazing, even with the watch thing..

[GamerDude]

Got one a couple of days back, still getting used to it but the transition is easier for me since I'd gone from an S3 to an S4 to this. Only thing is the size, but I'm more than happy to put up with this minor inconvenience as I love watching ripped 720P movies on it. Did not go for the watch thingy as I could not justify the price, but will consider getting it sometime in the future.