Samsung Galaxy Note launches in South Africa

The Samsung Note has been officially unveiled across the world and in South Africa.

George Ferreira, Head of Mobile, for Samsung launched the Galaxy Note calling it “a new product category which fits between tablet and smartphone”. The Samsung Galaxy Note is a behemoth of a smartphone, 5.3 inches of HD Super AMOLED screen which is begging to be explored. The 1.4GHZ dual core processor ensures that the Note is the fastest mobile phone in the world. 21MBS HSDPA support delivers lightening fast internet and the 8MP camera provides pixel perfect shots.

Samsung is proud of features such as the embedded Digital S Pen, basically a self-charging stylus which never runs out of juice. “A stylus” you might think, “after the 90’s?” Yes, the Note includes a stylus as part of its plan to marry handwriting with smartphones. It’s a bold move and one that works fairly, if not exceptionally, well.

The stylus learns as you write and over time, it apparently becomes an amazing replacement for touchscreen typing. During the time we spent with the Note, we found that the stylus was unable to register the subtle nuances of our writing styles. Yet with “128 levels of pressure sensitivity”, the stylus will eventually learn and discover various handwriting styles on a per-user basis.

It runs on Gingerbread, or Android 2.3, an endlessly customisable OS. This may be the only minus for the Note as a display this large would have worked well with Honeycomb, as seen on the Xoom. Whatever Samsung Galaxy S II users enjoyed, the Note delivers in spades.

Other interesting features? Samsung ChatOn which comes included with the Note. Think of it as WhatsApp on steroids and a “free” service for Note (and most likely other) Samsung device users.

Is this the ideal marriage between tablet and mobile phone? Samsung would like to believe so and the number of canapés we have consumed may sway us into providing a positive review, but the Note seems gimmicky and it will take months, perhaps years of hard work to cement the Note as a suitable replacement for million-sellers such as the Samsung Galaxy S II. But in a Galaxy far, far away, the Note sits comfortably as the fastest, strongest king of the smartphones.

According to Samsung, the Note is making its way to stores in South Africa this week and as a “special offer” for early adopters, a 43 inch Samsung TV is thrown for all Note purchases. For between ZAR7000 – 9000, you too can be the proud owner of the biggest damn phone we have ever laid our hands on.

Bottom line, it’s a super-sized Galaxy S II. But it’s a lovely phone, with possibly the best stylus ever made and there is plenty to speak about, so look forward to the full review, coming soon on Gearburn.