Features

Hello, features, the Note is filled with them. Samsung's Galaxy Note's standout feature is and always will be its S Pen. Gone are the days of laggy stylus pens or when a great stylus-sporting device came along, it had crappy specs to go with it. Samsung have fused together the world of world-class smartphones, with a stylus and they've done it quite well, I might add.

As I said before, I'm not a huge fan of stylus pen's, but after playing around with the Note, I can see why Samsung are interested in going down this route. I find the problem with unique smartphone features (such as the S Pen), is that they require you having friends, family or other people with the identical device, in order to take advantage of these phone-specific features. Samsung have taken this route with the Note and their S Pen-capable apps, so for example if I want to draw something funny and send it to a friend through SMS, E-mail or similar, they'd receive it fine. But, what if they want to reply? They have to own a Note in order to really take advantage of the fun between S Pen-capable apps.

This is one of the biggest hurdles of non-iPhone smartphones, because of the fragmented software that gets baked into these devices. One person might have a top-of-the-line Android-based phone with ICS, with another who owns a mid-range device featuring only Android 2.3. You might have another friend with a tablet that sports Android 3.2 and then a friend who has lived on the edge with an Android 4.2 Jelly Bean sporting Nexus 7 tablet and you're seeing a huge problem here.

The Note features the usual Bluetooth 3.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, USB 2.0 HOST support and a slew of Samsung-specific apps, as well as Google-specific apps.

The Galaxy Note's 8-megapixel camera was great to use, but I had already been spoilt by the S II's camera, so there was no surprise when using it. I took a few sample pictures and a video that you can check out below.

Messaging on the Note was a blast; I truly loved it. The screen size is great for typing either horizontally or vertically, which can't be said for all smartphones. Once I had SwiftKey installed, there was no stopping me. I typed pages and pages of e-mails, Facebook status updates and comments and plenty of TXT messages, too.

Gaming on the Note is also a joy, thanks to its 5.3-inch screen. I'm not much of a mobile gamer, but if you're the type of smartphone owner who likes to play a heap of mobile games, the bigger screen makes these games really pop out. Gaming on a tablet feels awkward because of its much bigger size, but a 5.3-inch screen is perfect for games. Games look gorgeous on the screen and with most games being played horizontally, the phone's width is perfect to hold for big sessions of Angry Birds or others.