The Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) operating system update began to roll out to all Samsung Galaxy Note 4G devices on July 7, and the phablet (smartphone/tablet) is available from AT&T for $199 with a standard new two-year activation and data plan in your choice of either Ceramic White or Carbon Blue chassis from select retailers. When it arrived in early January of this year, many industry analysts and so-called experts decried the large 5.30 inch display as making the handset “too big.” Current sales estimates from multiple online industry analysts show that the buying public in the United States and around the world evidently think that the display is “just right” as the Galaxy Note has totaled between 7 million and 10 million units sold.
Buy the Samsung Galaxy Note starting at $199.
With the TouchWiz user interface overlay the handset accepts multitouch, capacitive gestures, and that touchscreen is accentuated by native handwriting recognition technology and the S Pen smart stylus which accompanies the device. At 5.30 inches the display is the largest found on any 4G smartphone, and the device offers many tabletlike features. However, that handset is still small enough at 5.78 x 3.27 x 0.38 inches (147 x 83 x 10 mm) to be held in one hand, and delivers a feature set which ranks it as one of the top end 4G smartphones.
The large display on the Galaxy Note delivers an 800 x 1,280 pixel resolution at 285 pixels per inch pixel density, and visuals are rendered in more than 16 million different colors. That Super AMOLED screen comes with built-in light and proximity sensors, and a layer of glare reducing and scratch resistant Corning Gorilla Glass protects the screen. Talk time from a single charge of the oversized 2,500 mA battery runs 25% better than the typical smartphone, at 10.00 hours.
The Samsung Galaxy Note also benefits from one of the quickest processors found on any 4G smartphone, a dual core 1.5 GHz Scorpion CPU. A separate Adreno 220 GPU handles all graphics processing, and 16 GB of built-in, user accessible storage join 1.0 GB of RAM system memory in the hardware package on board the device. The Galaxy Note 4G also comes designed with a microSD slot offering microSDHC support, and cards up to 32 GB are accepted.
The handset delivers the same high resolution camera combo found on Galaxy S II smartphones, consisting of a rear facing 8.0 megapixel camcorder and front facing 2.0 megapixel chat cam. That rear device is capable of 1,080P HD video capture, and the front facing chat cam provides portrait snapshot opportunities as well as video call support. Facebook, YouTube, Picasa and Twitter applications have been pre-installed, and the Samsung Galaxy Note 4G phablet delivers Near Field Communications (NFC) support out-of-the-box. Buy the Samsung Galaxy Note starting at $199.
