The Samsung Galaxy Note 3 improves upon the Note 2 in many ways and is still the best phablet in the market. Samsung does, however, need to improve on the Note 3's camera software and work on a better rear cover accessory.
Announced at the IFA tradeshow held in Berlin, Samsung's Galaxy Note 3 is the chaebol's follow up to its popular Note 2 phablet, and features tweaks to its design, including a new faux-leather rear. It packs a powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor and runs the latest version of Android Jelly Bean (4.3).
Design
If you like the look and feel of Samsung's Galaxy S4, the Note 3 is very similar, but larger. Like the S4, the Note 3 has a metallic rim for a more premium feel, but ups the stakes by dropping the normal glossy plastic rear cover with a faux-leather one with stitches.
Fortunately for Samsung, this actually does work out. The matte feel gives the handset a better grip -- there's no more oily feel from the glossy rear. While it does look somewhat tacky at first, the rear cover grows on you -- especially when you look at the alternative S View cover.
The S$88 S View cover accessory replaces the faux leather rear with a PVC-like material. It also adds wireless charging capabilities and a new S View window that activates when the cover is closed. Like the LG G2's QuickWindow, the S View lets you quickly access the camera, write a memo, play music and read text messages. Its actually pretty useful, but there's just one major flaw with the cover.
Unlike LG's version, the S View has a plastic window instead of leaving a hole. I'm guessing the plastic is there to keep the shape of the window intact, but LG's solution uses a metal rim and is actually better. If you flip the case around to the rear to get a better grip of the handset, the clear plastic ends up distorting images captured by the rear 13-megapixel camera.
Like all Samsung phones, the Note 3 features a prominent home button and uses physical touch-sensitive buttons. The back arrow is also placed on the right, so if you use the phone left handed, it's can be a stretch for your thumb to hit it.
Samsung has always been "unapologetically plastic", to borrow Apple's design head Jonathan Ive's words, and the Note 3 is no different. I do, however, like the very solid feel that the handset has, which really does help sell the premium feel (and price).
The 5.7-inch display is slightly larger than the Note 2's 5.5-inch display, and it also ups the resolution from HD to full-HD. If you think this would have made the phablet bigger, well, you're wrong. The Note 3 is about the same size as the Note 2, and is slightly thinner to boot at 8.3mm to the Note 2's 9.4mm. Weight wise, the Note 3 is lighter as well, 168g to the Note 2's 183g.
Located at the bottom right corner is where the stylus is sheathed. This can be a bit tight and hard to pull out, but this ensures that it won't accidentally slip out of the phone. Next to it is a USB 3.0 port, which helps with faster data transfers (if you have a USB 3.0 port on your PC) and charging. It's also backward compatible with older micro-USB cables.
Features
Loaded with the latest Jelly Bean version (Android 4.3), the Note 3 is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 800 quad-core processor. The handset is clocked at a speedy 2.3GHz and has a whopping 3GB of RAM. As I understand it, Samsung's decision to load up so much RAM on the Note 3 is due to the multitasking abilities which I will talk about it in a bit.
Like all previous Note devices, the Note 3 comes with a digitizer stylus. It lets you control how thick your strokes will be. New enhancements include an Air Command wheel that pops up the first time you unsheath the stylus, It gives you quick access to Action Memo, Scrapbooker, Screen Write, S Finder and Pen Window.
Action Memo is basically a note taking app that you can quickly use and features handwriting analysis. You can call numbers or add contacts using this. Scrapbooker lets you highlight whatever you are currently looking at and want to save for later, and also works with Web pages (it will record the URL). Screen Write does what it says -- you can draw on your current screen and save the image to send as a note. S Finder is a universal search for content on your handset and on the Web, while Pen Window lets you quickly call up mini apps that float over your current one.
If you need to call up Air Command again, just hover the stylus over the screen while hitting the button at the side of the stylus.
Samsung has also improved the multitasking capabilities of the Note 3. Certain apps (such as the browser and the text message window can be placed side by side. Some third party apps, such as WhatsApp also work with this multitasking feature. Both apps are active -- which means you can share stuff between windows (if it's supported) by dragging them. I tried dragging a picture from the gallery to WhatsApp -- that didn't work -- but doing the same thing to the text messaging app worked.
Another cool feature is the new one-handed view. By doing a zig-zag motion on the touchscreen, you can shrink the current screen to a smaller size, which makes it usable with one hand. It also enables onscreen buttons. While the smaller screen is usable with one hand, you will lose out on a lot of screen real estate as the resulting window is now much smaller at about 4.3-inches.
The Note 3 comes with a 13-megapixel camera, and I found my experience with the shooter to be quite strange. The autofocus would randomly not lock on properly at times, even for non-macro shots. I did manage to get the camera to focus properly after multiple times of forcing it to reacquire the lock. I could not replicate it when I tried at our indoor lab.
One issue I had with the camera is the lack of shooting options -- you can't tell the camera to shoot macro (you can in the Note 2), you'll have to hope the auto mode gets it right the first time. Turning on the software-based image stabilization feature will load up a processing window that pops up right after you take a picture and this is annoying but you do get better shots (in low-light).
The camera performance, like the Galaxy S4, was average. You'll get great shots in areas with bright sunlight, but shooting in low-light conditions will result in grainy and smudged pictures. Turning on the image stabilization feature resulted in a washed-out low-light shot, but images definitely looked much better with less grain when this setting is turned on.
Lastly, as a bonus, you can take 4K videos with a five-minute limit with the Note 3, though I wasn't able to ascertain the quality of the video. I couldn't get my sample clip played back on a Samsung UHD TV that was in the CNET lab.
Performance
Loaded with a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 2.3GHz processor, I found the handset to be extremely snappy like other high-end handsets packing the same system-on-chip from Qualcomm. The Note 3 also scored 15,366 in the 3DMark IceStorm Unlimited test.
The Samsung phablet packs a removable 3,200mAh battery, and using our usual test settings of having two email accounts, Facebook and Twitter on push, we manage to last a day and a half on moderate to heavy usage. The Note 3 is a workhorse, and you can really get quite a lot of mileage with this handset.
Voice quality on calls was generally fine. Speaker volume was loud enough to be heard even when the phone is in the pocket.
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