Review: Samsung Galaxy Note 800 aka Galaxy Note 10.1

Samsung recently launched their new addition to the note lineup that is the Note 10.1 N8000 aka Note800. It was launched last week in India for INR 39,990. It’s a phone cum tablet ( yes a 10.1 phone! ) which has been designed to focus upon creativity. Lets look through a detailed view at its specifications.

Hardware:

The device runs on a 1.4Ghz Exynos 4412 Quad-core processor with 2GB RAM ( Boo yea! ) and Mali-400MP GPU. It has a sharp PLS 16M color capacitive 10.1-inch touchscreen display with 800×1280 pixels (149 ppi). It is available in 16, 32 and 64 GB variants with additional support for microSD upto 64GB. Talking about sensors Accelerometer along with gyro, compass are also present. The phablet has bluetooth ( v4.0 with A2DP) , dual-band WiFi(a/b/g/n) ( with hotspot ), microUSB (v2.0), and an Infrared port ( Yes,it still exists! ) . The device is powered by 7000mAh standard Li-Ion battery which can easily last for 2 days of normal usage or a day with heavy usage.

Built:

The device weighs 600g and measures 262 x 180 x 8.9 mm. It has that plasticky built which is what is expected from Samsung.

On the top there we have the power key, volume rocker, microSD card slot, infrared port, 3.5mm audio-out jack and the normal sim slot.

Then the 5MP camera on the back and 1.9MP on front.

On bottom, we have the microphone and 10-pin port for charging and synchronisation.

The device is meant to be used in landscape mode though no one can stop you to use it in portrait. It’s stereophonic speakers which are on the either side of the screen in the front sound really loud as compared to others.

We all know about the S-Pen with the Note so it is with Note 800 which is slided-in at right-bottom.

Software:

The phone cum tablet runs on Android 4.0.3 aka Ice Cream Sandwich with future plans for upgradation to Jelly bean. The mobile OS runs very smoothly with some bundled proprietary apps like S-Note, S-planner, S-suggest etc. rest is the same like a typical Samsung ICS device.

Applications:

S-Note

Some of the applications are specially designed to be used by S-Pen. One of them is S-Note. This application makes it easy to take down notes as if we are writing on a paper. It also allows change in background under various themes. We can change the pen width and even change it to a brush.

PS touch

There is a special photoshop variant designed by Adobe for this device knows as the PS touch with which we can create our projects right on this 10-inch touchscreen display.

While reading an ebook, one can highlight and make notes right there like it could be done on a physical copy.

Camera:

The device has a 5MP camera at the back with LED flash which can take decent photos. It can shoot videos upto 720p with the rate 30 frames per second. There is an 1.9MP camera on the front top which is sufficient for normal video chat.

Conclusion:

The phone-o-tab looks pretty in hands. Inspite of having a quad-core processor it lags a little or maybe we are too used to Jellybean that we find previous versions laggy :p The S-Pen powered applications PS touch, S-Note, S-suggest, S-calendar all work pretty good. The ebook stuff is really cool. Handling a 10.1-inch phone can sometimes be a heck of a job. You always need to plug-in the headphones or use the bluetooth headset for receiving calls. The price tag seems to be too much but lets wait for Jelly bean and then decide is it really worth or not. I’ll suggest buy only if you need all these features otherwise there is Galaxy Tab 2 as an option. Hope it gets better in future.

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