The Samsung Galaxy Note 3 is an Android phablet smartphone produced by Samsung Electronics. The Galaxy Note 3 was unveiled on September 4, 2013, with its worldwide release beginning later in the month. Serving as a successor to the Galaxy Note II, the Note 3 was designed to have a lighter, more upscale design than previous iterations of the Galaxy Note series (with a plastic leather backing and faux metallic bezel), and to expand upon the stylus and multitasking-oriented functionality in its softwareâ€"which includes a new navigation wheel for pen-enabled apps, along with pop-up apps and expanded multi-window functionality. Samsung has sold 5 million units of the Galaxy Note 3 within its first month of sale and broke 10 million units sales in just 2 months.
Specifications
Hardware
The Galaxy Note 3's design was intended to carry a more upscale, "premium" look in comparison to previous Samsung devices. Although it carries a similarly polycarbonate-oriented design to other recent Samsung devices, the Galaxy Note 3 has a faux metallic bezel and a rear cover made of plastic leather with faux stitching. With a thickness of 8.3Â mm (0.33Â in), it is slightly thinner than the Galaxy Note II, and is also slightly lighter.
The LTE version sold in the European Union and North America of the Galaxy Note 3 (N9005) uses a 2.3 GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 chip, while the GSM-only model (N9000/N9006) sold outside aforementioned regions uses an octa-core Exynos 5420, consisting of four 1.9 GHz Cortex-A15 cores and four 1.3 GHz Cortex-A7 cores. Testing has shown similar performance for both models."[20]". The device also includes 3 GB of RAM, a 5.7-inch 1080p Super AMOLED display, a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera capable of filming videos in 1080p at 60 fps and 4K resolution at 30 fps (capped at 5 minutes), 16, 32 or 64 GB of internal storage, and a 3200 mAh battery.
Galaxy Note 3 Duos (N9002) is based on LTE variant but adds additional second SIM card slot.
As with other Galaxy Note series devices, the Galaxy Note 3 ships with an S Pen stylus, which has been updated to use a more symmetrical shape. The Galaxy Note 3 is also the first smartphone to include support for USB 3.0, which enables faster data transfers and charging when connected to a compatible port.
The Galaxy Note 3 was first made available in black, white, and pink. In December 2013, Samsung introduced three new color schemes for select markets; black with gold-colored trim, white with rose gold-colored trim, and red with silver-colored trim.
Software
The Galaxy Note 3 comes with Android 4.3 "Jelly Bean" and Samsung's proprietary TouchWiz NatureUX 2.5 user interface and software. Additional pen-oriented features have been added to the Note 3's software; removing the stylus from its compartment (or pressing its button whilst hovering over the display) activates an "Air Command" pie menu which provides shortcuts to pen-oriented features such as Action Memos (on-screen sticky notes that use handwriting recognition to detect their contents and provide relevant actions, such as looking up addresses on Google Maps and dialing phone numbers), Screen Write (an annotation tool), Pen Window (which allows users to draw pop-up windows to run certain apps inside), the search tool S Finder, and Scrapbook. The multi-window functionality has also been updated with expanded app support, the ability to run multiple instances of a single app, and the ability to drag and drop content between apps. The device also ships with a news aggregator app known as My Magazine, accessible by swiping up from the bottom of the screen, and an updated version of S Note.
On January 13, 2014, an update to Android 4.4 "KitKat" was first made available through Samsung Kies in Poland for LTE models. The update adds user interface tweaks such as a camera shortcut on the corner of the lock screen, options for setting default launcher and text messaging applications, support for printing, and a new location settings menu for tracking and controlling the use of location tracking by apps. 4.4 also makes significant changes to the handling of secondary storage on the device for security reasons; applications' access to the SD card is now restricted to designated, app-specific directories only, while full access to internal primary storage is still allowed. Although this behavior has existed by default since Android 3.0 "Honeycomb", OEMs such as Samsung previously modified their distributions of Android to retain the previous behavior, allowing applications to have unlimited access to SD card contents.
Samsung began rolling out an update to Android 5.0 "Lollipop" in January 2015.
Release
Samsung first teased the unveiling of the Galaxy Note 3 with its announcement of a Samsung Unpacked event on September 4, 2013 at IFA Berlin, which contained the tagline "Note the date." The international Galaxy Note 3 was released on September 25, 2013 in over 140 countries, while its U.S. and Japanese releases were released in October 2013. All Galaxy Note 3s will also include a free one-year subscription to Evernote Premium.
The American and European models of the Galaxy Note 3 implement a regional lockout system in certain regions; requiring that the SIM card used on a European and North American model be from a carrier in that region. While a Samsung spokesperson claimed that the lock would be removed once a valid SIM card is used, it was reported by users that this was not the case. Although an XDA Developers user developed a tool to clear the carrier blacklist that the system uses, it requires that the phone be rooted. A spokesperson claimed that the system was primarily intended to prevent grey market reselling, although some critics suspected that carriers may have asked Samsung to implement the feature in order to force users to roam while travelling by preventing them from using a local SIM card. Samsung also stated that it implemented a similar policy on Galaxy S III, Note II, S4, and S4 Mini models manufactured after July 2013.
The models of the Note 3 are: SM-N900 (GSM), N9000 (3G), SM-N9005 (4G/LTE), N9002 (LTE dual-SIM), SM-N9006 (China/WCDMA), SM-N900A(USA AT&T), SM-N900T(USA T-mobile), SM-N900P(USA Sprint), SM-N900V(USA Verizon), SM-N900R4(USA US cellular), SM-N900W8 (Canada and some of the operators of Latin America)
Reception
The Verge complimented the incremental improvements to the Galaxy Note 3's hardware and software, considering it to be the company's "best attempt yet at making touch input optional on a mobile device." Its overall design was considered to be "cohesive and well thought-out" despite Samsung's continuing use of plastic, and subtle changes such as a symmetrically-shaped stylus were also noted. However, the My Magazine app was panned for being a "tacked on" gimmick. TechRadar considered the Galaxy Note 3 to be an evolution in comparison to its predecessor (including its faster hardware and bigger screen), but criticized the device's design for not looking as "slick and premium" in real life as it did during the promotional video.
See also
- Samsung Galaxy Note series
- Comparison of smartphones