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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Spunjji - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Cheesecake.Talks - Saturday, October 12, 2013 - link
Hmmm… it seems to me that almost all of the commenters here, are Americans; thus, a certified Apple Fanboys!, and this certainly includes Ars Technica, AnandTech and many others! That, is the very reason why, all product that is needed to be reviewed (as the market demands), those are which directly competitors of Apple, especially Samsung, for sure; all possible types of professionally conjured praises shall certainly be provided just to pelt there most hidden agenda of wanting the very downfall of Samsung, believing that by doing so, Apple products specially iPhone 5S and beyond, will go up again to the top, hoping to become again the number one selling Smartphone of 2013 and beyond! Oh come-on…, don’t be too obvious, and envious!!!doobydoo - Saturday, October 19, 2013 - link
Dude you're the only one on here who seems to have issues. And Anandtech is a fully international site with an international audience.akdj - Wednesday, December 11, 2013 - link
You should get a first name....'Stop'....and maybe add an 'ing' to the end of your handle here. Where did this completely off the wall comment come from? Left field anyone?Anyway...sorry to let you in, the 5s isn't hoping....it's happened. 'Again'. Number one selling smartphone of 2013. Doesn't mean much. There's a LOT of choice outside of the limited iOS world....which with choice and expanded options will always make it tough for even the largest and most successful OEMs ala Samsung to best them with a single product to product comparison.
It's a good, no.....a GREAT thing to have such phenomenal competition between vendors. We're the beneficiary....seems like overnight we were able to put the power of yesterday's laptop in our pocket! These things SCREAM! The 5, 5s, Note3, G2, S4---it's funny to me ANYone that appreciates and enjoys technology so much could be against one or anti the 'other'. Between the pair....or in each the Play Store and the App Store have more software available than anytime in history for ANY computing platform....and comparing the Note 3 to it's older, two year old sibling....improvements I'm computing and graphics are in the neighborhood of 1500-2000% increases! That's blowing Moore's law out of the water man!
Enjoy them all. Buy what you can. But don't spew bullshit on websites beyond your comprehension and knowledge. Just kinda 'outs' ya as a dumbass....at worst, ignorant at best. ;)
J
Dribble - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
Name and shame - once the PR for getting caught doing this has more impact then the positive PR you gain from cheating it'll stop.Squuiid - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
Anand, as it stands, this review is a farce. All it is doing is encouraging Samsung to continue it's deception. If reputable sites such as your own don't call this out and make a big fuss about it, then why would they stop? We all know Samsung's ethics are rather questionable as it is. Let's not encourage them.Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
We did call it out in the review. The problem with only circumventing it on the Note 3 is that other devices do it as well. We can work towards circumventing it everywhere, but we can't selectively choose when to enable/disable it.Chillin1248 - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
Then don't bother benchmarking it then. If you can't come out and say that the numbers listed in the benchmarks reflect the Device's User Experience, then don't bother benchmarking them. Just leave the page blank.What you are doing is condoning fraud. This is like the manufacturer of a car giving you a car to test, just that when the GPS detects that you go o the racetrack to test the speed of the vehicle, it switches to a brief higher power mode that would never be presented otherwise to the consumer and is unsustainable long term. (you get the drift)
By publishing the benchmarks, you have only condoned the practice you claim to disdain.
DanNeely - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
I agree. Frankly, the attempt to minimize/brush aside the blatant cheating Samsung is doing has me questioning Anandtech's objectivity. Even if it's not possible to catch the cheaters every single time, that's no excuse for letting them get away with it when it's a major impact and doing so is trivial to do.bubblesmoney - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
surely they will tread carefully on pointing out the bad points, thats the quid pro quo for getting access to devices before they are released to the public. Their reasons for treading softly on this issue and the region locking issue is obvious.I know they briefly mentioned region locking, but isnt a hardware site actually meant to mention that a phone meant for power business uers actually being gimped and a so called business phone wont work abroad as it will ask for an unlock code when a foreign sim which is in the MCC list wont work for making calls. only way it will work is using costly roaming. Nice way for samsung to shaft its end users and get nice kick backs from networks to samsung so that their network gets preference as to what is blocked and what is not. see proof of region blocks with links on my posts on the trustedreviews article http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinions/galaxy-note...