Meet the new member of the Samsung Galaxy Note family. Forget phablets: this is the new Note.
Also: Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Australian Hands-On: Not Your Average Note
What Is It?
The new Samsung Galaxy Note 3 is an absolute powerhouse.
It’s a 2.3GHz quad-core monster device complete with 3GB of internal RAM, a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera, Category 4 LTE/4G speeds, up to 64GB of internal memory and a 3200mAh battery. The new Note even packs in 802.11 ac Wi-Fi standard for supercharged browsing on fixed networks, too.
If you think that’s impressive, the international (3G) version comes with Samsung’s legendary 1.9GHz octa-core processor. You’ll have to go to some lengths to get your hands on that one, as it’s unlikely the octa-core will make it to Australia in favour of the 4G connectivity.
The Galaxy Note line has always been the trailblazer for design at Samsung, and this year the South Korean manufacturer is changing it up, ditching cheap plastic materials for a fine-leather feel rear-case and an overhauled S-Pen which is (pardon the expression) ribbed, for your user-pleasure.
Add on top of that its compatibility with the Galaxy Gear Smartwatch also announced overnight and you’ve got yourself a pretty compelling proposition.
What Does It Do?
Samsung is putting a big emphasis on what you can do with the new and improved S-Pen.
The gadget-giant found through a bit of market research that the most popular features on the Note line are S Note, Multi-Window, Popup Browser and S-Planner, so Samsung decided to integrate all of these into a nifty new activate-anywhere hub called Air Command.
By hovering the S-Pen over the screen and clicking its button, you now get access to a radial menu featuring a few new features designed to leverage the Note 3’s giant screen and handy power.
You get new apps including Action Memo for grabbing quick notes, Scrapbook for highlighting and storing web, video and image clippings (a la Evernote or Skitch), S-Finder which searches your whole device including settings and hand-written notes.
There’s also a fun little feature called My Magazine which is Samsung’s version of HTC’s BlinkFeed, grabbing your social, news and other related content to present it in a zine-like format.
Where Can I Get One?
We’ve been told that Telstra, Optus and Vodafone have things to say about the new Note 3, presumably when and how much they’ll sell the new Galaxy for, but we haven’t officially heard from them just yet.
Samsung is telling us that the Note 3 goes on sale around the world on 25 September.
Telstra, Optus, Vodafone and Virgin have all confirmed they’ll stock the Galaxy Note 3.
Pricing will be announced before pre-orders in coming weeks.