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
S-Pen
I was a tablet user for just over 4 years, but when I mean tablet I mean the old school kind with an active digitizer and Windows, before the age of capacitive multitouch everywhere. With the original Note, I was excited to see active digitizer finally represented again in a mobile device, complete with all the hover and pressure features that come with it. I still find it impossible to use styli on capacitive panels since they lack the resolution and fidelity for the kind of writing I used to do.
With the Note 3, neither quality of the digitizer nor the S-Pen formula change, and that’s a good thing. It’s still the same pen, and from what I can tell, still the same sensitivity and hover distance, and still Wacom based as well. I’m not going to go super in-depth with S-Pen since by this time it should be something readers are familiar with since we’re on the third iteration of Note (and multiple tablets) with the pen.
The Note 3 stows the pen inside itself in basically the same spot as its predecessors, and has the same pen-removal detection and single button on the pen itself. I have no complaints with how it feels or my ability to hold it and write on the screen, and the Note continues to do wrist rejection very well so you can rest your hand on it for making fine grained drawings with a bit of added support.
Perhaps the biggest single improvement with the Note 3 from the perspective of the pen is that it now triggers the menu and back capacitive buttons on the front of the Note 3. I found it confusing on the Note 2 and Note that with the pen out I had to switch between this weird finger and pen modality, rather than be able to accomplish everything with either appendage. With the Note 3, it’s now possible to do just that – it sounds crazy but that single change is the biggest thing that made me instantly happy with the Note 3 the second I pulled the pen out, just being able to hit menu and back with the stylus and have it actually work finally.
With the Note 2 I started to feel like the features that surrounded the pen were getting overwhelming, and I wasn’t sure what feature I should be using at a given time. There’s definitely feature creep each generation as things get added but never really removed, with the Note 3 Samsung does a great job mitigating most of this by surfacing what they believe are the standout features of the S-Pen experience in a popup dialog with a ringed interface and shortcuts to functions. Previously removing the pen would jump you to a special homepage with relevant links if you were on a homepage. Instead if you pull the pen out, this new overlay appears. The overlay makes a lot more sense and has helped me use the pen a lot more than I did previously.
I remember joking with another reviewer that I suspected a large number of Note owners used the pen once, put it back, and never really bothered or understood it after that, and instead were just after the Note for its large display. That sort of mirrored my own use with the Note previously since I’m not artistically inclined or sitting in lectures writing down equations and graphs and diagrams as fast as I possibly can anymore (though soon that hopefully will return with grad school). With the Note 3 and this new interface also shared with the Note 10.1 2014 edition I’m using the pen a lot more since it’s a reminder of what’s really handy.
The ring switcher has shortcuts to action memo, scrap booker, screen write, s finder, and pen window. You can also get to this switcher by hovering and pressing the button on the pen.
Action memo pops up a sticky note that you can immediately start writing on, and it’s the most useful honestly. These notes can then be transcribed on the fly and used to either create contacts or events or look at a location in google maps. The idea is that you’d quickly jot down a phone number and name, or an address, and then be able to act quickly on them or save it for later. I find this works surprisingly well. Samsung says their handwriting transcription engine is also even more accurate this generation, but I don’t have specifics.
Scrap booker lets you grab content displayed on the screen and store it for later, this seems to also parse what’s in a view and intelligently take metadata along with it, for example web pages, YouTube videos, and maps will all get pulled along.
Screen write is a perpetual favorite, it takes a screenshot that you can then annotate or draw on top of. Handy and useful if you need to send something with a pithy remark or drawing to someone either for work or play.
S-Finder is a universal search function that parses through all your notes and memos and writing for a string entered in the search bar. Samsung is always transcribing notes so they’re searchable, this surfaces everything including those hand written notes. I’m reminded of how OneNote search worked, very useful if you’re taking a lot of notes.
Pen window is like a new version of multi window, except instead of snappable windows it’s a viewport of arbitrary size matching roughly what you draw on screen. In practice though the windows are the same aspect ratio as the display (16:9) just whatever rough size you’ve drawn the square and scaled to fit. Samsung continues to try and solve the multi-window problem and admittedly does a novel job here given the constraints of the Android platform. Not every app can be put in one of these smaller windows, rather a subset of the multi window applications.
S Note and the other applications that I remember being present on the Note 2 are still around, as well, it’s just this smaller subset that’s exposed and promoted through the ring switcher. Of course you can also disable the action switcher menu and have pen detachment launch action memo or do nothing at all.
I think S Pen is novel, and what’s important to me works well (the equation parsing engine is supposedly even better and worked with what I fed it), I’m just more sold on the Note as a platform because of screen size than I am note taking. Although the Note 3 doesn’t have the killer third party app attention that draw something had with the original Note, there is Snapchat and a variety of others though that might make the S-Pen a very attractive thing for people looking at the Note for something beyond note taking.
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jerry_carter - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
Making a mockery of "The Most Trusted in Tech Since 1997"Anand:
I appreciate your site and reviews and have read religiously for several years now. That stated, the most recent Samsung review [1] falls significantly below your traditional journalistic standards. I use the word 'journalistic' because you've earned it -- working independently when possible and calling out limitations when forced to work within them. You've historically identified significant issues in several products and revised articles or reviewed products when these issues were corrected.
With the Samsung review, you have failed to meet these standards. I accept your comments that benchmarks from several products are suspicious. That is no reason to not take a harder line with each and every case that you encounter. I have no problem with posting the 'manufacture optimized' numbers provided that they are presented in parallel with numbers for with the optimizations are disabled (or believed to be disabled). I do appreciate that this is more work, but your site, Ars Technica, and others can expose corruption (or as least bad behavior) where it occurs and motivate manufactures to 'do the right thing. And really, isn't that what journalism is about?
Thanks for your work over the last several years. I trust that the review will be corrected soon and look forward to that and future work in the months and years ahead.
Best Wishes,
Jerry Carter
[1] http://www.anandtech.com/show/7376/samsung-galaxy-...
ccd2 - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
The popularity of the new iPhone is really amazing. With the maturity of the phone market, the trend seems (to me at least) to be away from a one phone does all to a number of segments. The Note 3 represents one of those segments (I own the Note 2). If I were in the market for a phone, the Note 3 would be my phone. My guess is that, in time, phones like the S4 which I would consider a kitchen sink phone where everything is thrown in, will give way to more phones like the Note 3, which are designed for market segments. My guess is that most people who buy a phone like the Note 3 would not give the iPhone or Galaxy S4 a second look. That is no knock against Apple before the fanboys jump on me. It's just that with a bigger screen, S pen, etc., the Note has a different focus and appeal. You can already see other potential segments like where the phone is more camera than phone. To me, this seems where the phone market is headed as it continues to mature.SeriousTodd - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
Brian, if you could comment on the subject of legitimacy of this website, it would be great.http://www.displaymate.com/OLED_Galaxy_S123_ShootO...
SeriousTodd - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
Brian, it would be great if you could comment on the subject of legitimacy of this website.http://www.displaymate.com/OLED_Galaxy_S123_ShootO...
ChrisMars - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
Great review, thanks!May I propose to adapt the CalMan results graph in a way it's more easy to grasp at a glance?
Just putting the best on top would be a improvement already.
Adding a line at 6505K for white-point deviation would also be good to improve readability,
SpacedCowboy - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
Just one more voice added to the cacophony.I started reading anandtech a long time ago - so long that I don't remember exactly when. The nature of the reviews here caught my eye, and I became a fan. What I liked was how things were made bare, with intelligent guesses (always noted as such) and astute observations leading to conclusions that other sites just didn't provide. Over time, the track record was excellent and trending better.
Now, though, you've just taken a huge step back. Some points:
1) It's not an insignificant difference between the cheating and non-cheating modes as you suggest in the review. Perhaps there's something else going on rather than just locking the clock to fMax - perhaps they're relaxing the thermal envelope as well. Who knows ? It's all very dodgy.
2) It's all very well to say that benchmarks don't mean anything, but a lot of people who don't really know what they want, but just "want the best phone" are going to look up a review on the internet, see which phone is at the top of the graphs, and assume that's the best one, then go out and buy it. Tech-savvy customers are the exception, not the rule, and you've just given Samsung everything they wanted.
3) You say you're struggling with how to react. I'm struggling to see why you're struggling. If someone cheats, you call them on it; simple as that, and you make the cheating the major point of any review. Naming and shaming manufacturers, and the commensurate bad PR is the only way we'll stop them (and by 'we' I mean sites like your good selves).
The only reasons I can see why you wouldn't do this is that you're afraid that you'll lose access to new products in future, or you're being paid to shill their products. If it's the former, well, that's a story in its own right; if the latter (which FYI, I don't believe to be the case), then a sad day has dawned and I'll go somewhere else for my tech reviews.
4) I don't care who does it, be it Apple, Samsung, HTC, whatever - name them and shame them. Cheats should never prosper.
You're in a privileged position. You've gained that position because of your reputation and hard work, by doing the journalistic version of speaking truth to power. It just seems so ... sad ... that you didn't hold yourselves to your previous high standards this time, and I guess we're all just a bit shell-shocked and asking "why ?"
TL;DR: Such a shame.
cozmot - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Very good points, and that sums my thoughts up perfectly.Arbie - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
"How is it cheating if everyone does it?" -- First off, it's cheating because it's intentionally misleading; and secondly because not everyone does it. The companies who are not cheating are being shown in a falsely bad light. And I wouldn't have known that from reading this Anandtech article.So Anandtech really needs to highlight the fact in the same chart that presents the results. Or better yet, omit Samsung scores on that parameter and say why.
Samwise - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
Anandtech, please review the Droid MAXX.apljack80 - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
I think I have read enough of these posts to feel like many of your words are an unwarranted attack of the writers of Anandtech. Let me be perfectly clear, Samsung and other OEMs DID NOT CHEAT, and ANANDTECH DID NOT LET THESE COMPANIES OFF THE HOOK. Let me articulate why this is the case.1) First you must look at the device and it’s intended purpose. These are phones not laptops or desktops, that for the most part enjoy an unending stream of power. These phones are designed to sip power with extreme efficiency. As a result, they do this at the cost of unleashing the full potential of the hardware of the phone, in order to optimize the full potential of the battery. Consider all of the effort they have taken to make more powerful CPU’s, GPUs, and bright huge screens use so much less power than their predecessors, think about how much they have accomplished with all this AND make a phone last almost all day.
2) All of these phones are also very efficient crushing the full potential of the hardware, however, a benchmark is testing the efficiency of the hardware not the battery. And this causes benchmarks to become ARTIFICIALLY LOW. So when faced with this issue the OEM’s have made provisions, to allow the device to fully unleash it’s full potential in the code. Try thinking of it like this, Samsung did not improve its scores by adding that code, but let us see what the actual power of the processor is. Other implementations of the same hardware are lower, because the software and power saving devices are forcing it to be slower. That is why you are seeing these ‘special’ cases, because you could not see what the real ability of the phone is without the code.
3) I believe the writers of Anandtech understand this at some level, and lack the ability to truly communicate that message to the masses. If you read their articles, they do feel it is a form of cheating, but have not called it in any way a lie. They walk a fine line between being honest with themselves, and offending a company that sends them devices for review. So they have to be careful in how they word things, and in this case I felt their response was diplomatic to say the least. They did not ignore what is happening like other tech sites, they acknowledged it and reported their raw numbers. The raw numbers that the phone can actually do outside of it’s limitations.
I am embarrassed at what I have seen here today, and I am embarrassed by all of you who have failed to engage you minds on this topic. Think before you speak, you will find more doors will open to you that way. And be grateful they have even replied to any of us during this tirade.