Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Review

The market for phablet devices is growing tremendously in India. Samsung Galaxy Note i one of the first phablet device to be accepted by the consumers with open arms. Looking at the number of unit sold, it is clear that Galaxy Note was a success and even after that Galaxy Note 2 sold pretty well. Following the same, Samsung brought the third iteration of their successful Note series, the Samsung Note 3 in October 2013 to India with new advanced features.

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 can’t be judged until you use it for a week atleast. It’s more than what you think. To be honest, I personally feel this is the best Samsung Galaxy I have ever used. However like every other handset, this too has some pros and cons while the later being on a lower side as compared to the former.

Build:

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 undoubtedly has the best build seen on a Samsung Galaxy handset. It has shiny edges with patterns to make it look like a book while the back is absolutely amazed me. How can Samsung bring this? The back has a leathery feel though it actually not leather but it gives the device that look and feel which any of the glossy back covers were not able to. The leathery back is actually just a back panel super slim without increasing any thickness which is why I was so excited. The front as usual has a physical home button with S4 like color on the bezel. I am happy from this build.

There is an unboxing video which we shot when we received the device which was been uploaded on our YouTube channel and can be watched below. It shall let you know what’s inside the box and an overview of the build.

Display:

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 has a Full HD Super AMOLED; 1080p; 1080×1920 pixels resolution display with bright color reproduction and brightness levels. Talking about my personal experience, I truly enjoyed by experience on the device one of the reason being the display. It’s amazingly awesome. You will get to know this better when you use it in person. Display
is great but have those AMOLED problems, clearly one of the best AMOLED screen used till date.

Hardware:

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 comes with a Exynos 5 Octa processor in India whereas the rest of the world enjoys a Snapdragon 800 variant. After my experience with S4 having the same chipset, I was a bit skeptical about the performance but it looks like Samsung fixed those issues. There’s nothing to worry about those random issues which arise on S4 as the chipset have been improved after that. The battery life was too good though it was kinda variable depending on usage. Hey Full HD requires a lot of juice to run for a day.

Software:

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 runs on Android 4.3 JellyBean out of the box. The Note 3 is one of the first smartphones to come with Android 4.3 Jelly Bean directly out of the box. It runs on Samsung’s Touchwiz user interface and packs lots of software features which basically makes the Note 3 a worth the money spent.

You can see our software review of the device which has been attached below.

Camera:

Camera on the Note 3 if you ask me is perfect for a smartphone. Why do you need a smartphone camera? To click decent pictures with minimum noise and perfect visbility. All of this have been taken care of by Samsung. Note 3’s camera works flawlessly and gives great results. We are not comparing it with the Nokia Lumia 1020 which is solely appreciated for its camera but considering the rest we can say that it is one of the finest works by Samsung. Moreover it can record videos up to 4K resolution, what say now? Some samples along with a camera review video has been attached.

Performance

Talking about the performance of the smartphone, we did some benchmark test and have attached the screenshots as accordingly.

Talking about the performance in daily usage which is what consumer can actually measure, the battery life of the phablet struggles a little bit when it comes to surviving it for a day between moderate to high usage. I use my phone a lot so it was able to stay awake for 12 to 15 hours which is not bad considering it has a full HD display that too 5.65-inches.

Gaming is absolute fun on the device, bring it high end or casual it is able to run them all. There is no game lags observed but the device heats up a little when it continues to consume the GPU for long probably an hour we can say.

Verdict:

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 the phablet series from Samsung launched at IFA Berlin 2013 has been quite successful since it’s launch. Consumers who get used to big screen can’t go back to the small displays and demand for even bigger. Especially for the Galaxy Note it is quite impossible to go back to a smartphone without a stylus. Considering the same, Samsung has been innovating since the last two models and has done it once again with the Galaxy Note 3 with better technical specifications. We have discussed about the features above but there are some of them worth mentioning again. The stylus, display and the camera is what I personally liked apart from the applications flow and performance. Galaxy Note 3 is a complete package which makes you love it more when you use it more. It is worth every penny spent if you utilise it’s features properly else you should not buy it on the first place.

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