SAMSUNG GALAXY NOTE 800 FULL FEATURE REVIEW
A good tablet for both work and play
The Galaxy Note 800 looks nothing like the iPad. While each has its own fundamental USPs and design form, Iam not here to compare the two just yet. The Note 800 is a sleek, polished, professional-looking device that, in spite of its large size, is quite lightweight at 600 gm and easy to manage. It’s one of the thinnest tablets yet, at just 8.9 mm in depth. Its 10.1-inch capacitive touchscreen features a 1280 x 800 pixel resolution that’s nowhere near the New iPad’s Retina Display. It still is, nevertheless, quite a vibrant display with 16 million colours squeezing out their best.The stereo speakers placed on either side of the display focus the audio at you, making for a better experience if you’re watching a video without headphones. The bottom houses a proprietary USB / Charging port, which we have to admit, looks similar to Apple’s 30-pin connector. A microphone is located close by in case you need to make those absolutely urgent calls and can’t quite reach your headset. Speaking of calls, the Note 800 has a microSIM card slot and supports microSD cards up to 32 GB in case you want to increase the onboard storage of 8 GB, 16 GB or 32 GB with up to 32 GB more.
What sets the Galaxy Note 800 apart from its peers, however, is the little IR sensor at the top. This, coupled with a pre-loaded app called Smart Remote, will let you connect to most HDTVs for remote access, making your tablet a fully-functional remote control. A 5 megapixel camera with LED flash is placed at the rear with a secondary 1.9 megapixel front-facing camera just above the display. Samsung’s pudgy little S Pen is neatly tucked away at the bottom right hand corner of the tablet.The company has also provided plenty of extra stylus pins should you be a little too rough with the one that comes out of the box. It’s lightweight and easy to maneuver, even if it is a little on the thicker side.
Samsung has gone with its TouchWiz Nature UI for the Note 800, so if you’ve used the Galaxy S III, you’ll be familiar with the interface. Running on Android 4.0.4, the interface is quick and painless. There’s very little visible lag when switching between home screens or apps; everything is extremely responsive. The smoothness of the UI is thanks to the 2 GB of RAM and quad-core Exynos 4412 running at 1.4 GHz. The two highlights of the Note 800 are, of course,the new S Pen technology and the ability to view two apps simultaneously side-by-side. Starting with the S Pen, Samsung has incorporated Wacom’s pen input technology and the Note 800 now has 1024 points of sensitivity, so the stylus feels a lot more like a real pen - the width of lines drawn in the S Memo app will actually expand depending on how much pressure you apply. This does make drawing and sketching a lot more accurate. Pulling the S pen out of its dock brings up a list of apps designed for it. You can either have this shortcuts toolbar open, or choose to launch an app automatically.
The split-screen function works well, but only lets you view a handful of apps side by side. Your choice of apps for split-screen mode includes Polaris Office, S Note, Video Player, Gallery and Email. Sadly, you can’t watch a YouTube video through the app and browse the web at the same time. This feature should have been applicable to all apps or at least all of Google's Apps. Samsung has always been quite generous in the past when it comes to a device’s media capabilities and the Note 10.1 is no exception to this rule. It offers an audio player that comes with enough customization options to keep even your average audiophile quite entertained. Along with a standard set of EQ presets, you’ll also be able to personalize the tones with a Custom setting. I have a Seven band Graphic graphic EQ option and an Advanced mode that lets you tweak features like virtual 3D surround Bass Boost, Reverb, etc. Overall, the tone quality is balanced. The highs are not too sharp, and the mid and lower frequencies provide well-rounded tones with a very impressive bass level. There’s no FM Radio app though.
Like most Samsung’s mobile devices, the Note 10.1 comes pre-loaded with plenty of codecs to support most of today’s popular formats, full HD (1080p) files notwithstanding. A few audio presets are also provided specifically for the video player, including a virtual 7.1 surround sound option. Watching videos the Note 10.1 was certainly an enjoyable experience whether we used the bundled earphones or the built-in speakers.
The Note 10.1 supports quad-band GSM and 3G networks as well. Voice calls are also supported There’s full HSPA+ support, which means theoretical speeds of up to 21 Mbps down and 5.76 Mbps up. There’s also dual-band Wi-Fi support (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz) using the faster 802.11n standard, and Samsung hasn’t left out Bluetooth 4.0 either. Wi-Fi Direct capability gives you the option to connect directly with other compatible devices without the need for a Wi-Fi router or a switch in between. The only thing missing of this device is NFC.
Come to Camera side, The rear camera is an auto-focus 5 megapixel unit with a single LED flash.Indoor photographs are bright and clear even with low ambient light; however there’s a lot of noise that creeps in and the camera isn’t able to capture a lot of detail. Some of the features first seen in the S III make an appearance in the Note 10.1, like Share shot and Buddy photo share. The rest of the scene modes and effects are similar to what we’ve seen before on TouchWiz. Outdoor shots do fare a bit better; however, the level of detail is still lacking after you zoom into the picture. The front-facing 2 megapixel camera does a good job even in low light conditions. Video recording maxes out at 720 p at 30 fps. We expected 1080p recording, but we guess Samsung has capped it on purpose, for whatever reason.The captured video has a very steady frame rate, but again, the quality is just about average.
The 7000 mAh battery in the Note 800 delivers really good battery life for a quad-core tablet. In our video drain test, we managed to squeeze out nearly 10 hours of video playback.
The Note 10.1 is one of the better looking and better built Android tablets in the market. There’s good attention to details excellent multimedia capabilities, 3G calling, memory expansion and very good battery life. But the average camera performance and high price might be a deterrent for many.
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