Welcome to the second part of our three part series on Samsung’s announcements at IFA 2013. Last time we covered the Galaxy Gear smartwatch, and now we’re back to have a look at another widely anticipated reveal: the Samsung Galaxy Note 3!
The original Note pretty much kicked off the current massive smartphone trend, when it launched with a 5.3″ screen two years ago. The newly dubbed ‘phablet’ include qualities of both phone and tablet, with powerful hardware and a sensitive stylus that could be used easily on the large display.
Two iterations on, and the Note still offers these same advantages – although mainstream smartphone displays have grown faster than has the Note’s. The Note 3 includes a 5.7″ screen at 1080p resolution, and includes a newly symmetrical S Pen. Despite the increase in screen size and resolution, the Note 3 is smaller, lighter and thinner than the Note 2.
Perhaps the most interesting development is that the Note 3 is the first big Samsung phone in a long time to ship without the slick and shiny ‘hyperglaze’ finish that’s attracted criticism from all corners. Instead, there’s something that sounds even worse – a faux leather effect complete with stitching – but somehow manages to be a big improvement. If you hated the slimy feel of the Galaxy S4, then this might be a welcome reprieve – even if it isn’t the metal or glass that seems to be most preferred.
Internally, the Note 3 continues to impress. It will ship with a top of the line quad-core 2.3 GHz Snapdragon 800 processor, 3 GB of RAM – a smartphone first – and 32 GB of storage augmented by microSD. The camera is the same as that on the Galaxy S4, at 13 megapixels. All of this is powered by a mammoth 3200 mAh battery. To sum up, there’s nothing wrong here from a hardware standpoint – the Note has a good chance of being the fastest smartphone ever.
The Note 3 has one more cool feature – it’s the first smartphone to ship with USB 3.0 on board. That means it can charge faster, and copying files to and from it will be much faster when a USB 3.0 port is used. The connector is larger, but microUSB can still fit inside to provide charging and data.
All in all, it’s a predictably strong launch from Samsung. The Note 3 will be available worldwide by the end of September, with a UK release date of September 25th.
We’ve already begun to add to our range of Note 3 accessories, with new cases from Trident, Zenus, PDair and Samsung. We’ll cover these in more detail in a later post!
Image credit: The Verge