Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Review
by Brian Klug on October 1, 2013 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Samsung
- Mobile
- Android 4.3
- galaxy note 3
Conclusions
The Note 3 is an iterative product, that’s absolutely true, but the improvements in the Note 3 are pretty dramatic. It really does feel better, thinner, lighter all while having a bigger, more usable display. The silicon inside is incredibly quick, easily the fastest in the Android camp. It's also good to see Samsung on the forefront of RF technology here, implementing an envelope power tracker alongside Qualcomm's 3rd generation LTE modem. The combination results in a fairly robust, very high-end platform that is modern on both compute and modem/RF fronts. Given my affinity for the latter, I'm happy.
Battery life benefits from the large chassis and associated battery, as well as Qualcomm's Snapdragon 800 platform which seems to manage power a lot better than the outgoing Snapdragon 600. I was also impressed by the Galaxy Note 3's IO performance. Although it didn't beat the Moto X in random write IO performance, it came extremely close and absolutely destroyed everything else in sequential write speed. Samsung clearly went all out with the Note 3 and pretty much tried to win all of our tests. The beauty of that approach is it should lend itself to an awesome user experience.
The S Pen experience continues to improve and I don't really have any major complaints about it on the Note 3. It's a novel addition that I can see resonating very well with the right type of user. Approximating pen/paper is tough and no one has really done a perfect job there, but the S Pen can be good enough in the right situations. The good news is that even if you don't use the S Pen much, it hides away quite unobtrusively and you can go about using the Note 3 just like a large Android device.
There are only three issues I'd like to see addressed with the Note 3. The move to USB 3.0 is interesting and could be a big benefit when it comes to getting large files off of the device (the NAND/eMMC isn't quick enough to make USB 3 any faster at putting data on the phone), but the hardware or software implementation of USB 3 on the Note 3 doesn't actually deliver any performance advantage (Update: In OS X, in Windows you can actually get USB 3.0 working). For whatever reason 802.11ac performance on the Note 3 wasn't as good as it was on the SGS4 or other 802.11ac devices we've tested. It's not a huge deal but for an otherwise very well executed device I don't like to see regressions. And finally, I would like to see Android OEMs stop with manual DVFS control upon benchmark detect, but that seems to be an industry wide problem at this point and not something exclusive to the Galaxy Note 3.
Whereas previous Notes felt like a strange alternative to the Galaxy S line, the Galaxy Note 3 feels more like Samsung's actual flagship. It equals the Galaxy S 4 in camera performance, but exceeds it pretty much everywhere else. There's a better SoC, better cellular/RF and even better industrial design. I suppose next year we'll see the Galaxy S 5 play catch up in these areas, but until then it's clear that the Note 3 is the new flagship from Samsung. Although you could argue that the improvements within are incremental, the Note 3 really defines what incremental should be.
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cdomigan - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
Extremely disappointed in AnandTech for their passive stance on benchmark cheating. Please live up to the high expectations you have set for tech journalism and call this out for what it is!Wade_Jensen - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
I would've liked a bit more depth on subjective UX in terms of responsiveness and lag/stuttering. I'm sorry, but I'm starting to think that Touchwiz is just so inefficient and poorly coded that galaxy devices lag no matter how much ram and compute you throw at them.After all S600 was seen as crazy fast at the start of this year but at the end of the day the GS4 still feels slow and heavy for basic operations compared to any other ROM (except motoblur haha).
tanyet - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
I agree with this wholeheartedly. Touch responsiveness and a lag free experience is what I want most in mobile devices. I can say that I haven't noticed any lag or "micro stutters" with my Note 3 and I'm really obsessed with these things. It's still not as smooth as iOS but I feel that's more to do with Android than Samsung. It took me awhile to get used to not having the bounce back effect and it also took awhile to get used to the speed of scrolling (or the abruptness of the scroll stopping) I chalk this up to patent issues. Mine definitely doesn't display the choppiness I've seen with some friends S4's. Who know though. It's early days.I would really love the TouchMarks benchmark to be added to the list of reviewer tools because I feel that it is a much better gauge of user experience than some others.
Dentons - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
Come on Brian. We know you don't care about two of Samsung phone's biggest selling points, user replaceable batteries and MicroSd expansion, but not giving those real, actual features any appreciation or credit at all? That's a bit much.Unlike Brian, some of us really, really, really care that Samsung allows us to carry extra batteries and store our ever growing media libraries on MIcroSD. We know you don't care. You dismiss those features in nearly every Anandtech Podcast, but should your personal use habits so prominently factor into a review this comprehensive?
Apple doesn't have these features.
Google Nexus doesn't have these features.
HTC don't have these features.
It's a major differentiator. For many of us, it's a big deal, perhaps one of the primary reasons many will buy this phone over its competitors.
ScorpionRaY - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
Agree!nerd1 - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
Totally agree. Nowadays micro SD memories are dirt cheap and apple is still charging $100 for extra 16GB...Davidjan - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
Agree with you. Meanwhile we can use this Meenova MicroSD reader to add storage: http://goo.gl/U6IyYSpunjji - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Entirely agreed. I'd have happily bought a Nexus 4 for a lot less money were it not utterly impossible to store my (modest!) media collection and photos downloaded from my camera on there.Similarly I refuse to pay Apple ~£160 extra just to get slightly less capacity with their flagship phone than I got for my Note 2 by paying £40 for a 64GB MicroSD card. Were it not for this option I would have to submit to the blatant scam that is NAND upgrade pricing.
tuxRoller - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
Whoa, what's going on with the G2 in the 4G tests? It was far and away the best at 3G and I thought the current AT reasoning was that 4G only improved the browsing time over 3G by racing to idle? Is the Qualcomm 4G baseband that bad?ithinkux - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
To me, the benchmarks presented above prove, beyond any doubt, that Apple did the right thing switching to 64-bit architecture.