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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
302 Comments
View All Comments
identity - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
Anandtech said every Android device does it but keep ignoring that ok?Chillin1248 - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
And because several (he never said all) manufacturers are cheating, the rest have to suffer?At the very least he could be fair and run the battery tests with the browser renamed as one of the "boost" apps. Let's see how Samsung (and others) will like how their results show up then compared to the manufacturers that aren't doing such blatant cheating.
identity - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
Samsung still beat the G2 without the boost according to Arstechnica anyways. I doubt people will care if the HTC One uses the same boost(which it does and nobody cares) because it's not a threat to Apple and it's not Samsung,Chillin1248 - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
But barely, not with the huge margin that we currently see in Anand's benchmarks.Anand, for the sake of your site's integrity; I plead with you to take down the current benchmarks and re-run them with ARSTechnica's workaround. Either that, or run the WiFi battery benchmarks while renaming the browser to one of the "boost" applications. That way, it will be a fair comparison of the Device's User Experience.
Squuiid - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
Does that make it ok then? Benchmarks are used to compare cross platform devices. Pretty sure Apple and Microsoft don't inflate their benchmarks.Would you condone drug taking in sports if everyone doped?
stajcer - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
I too am disappointed in Anandtech's coverage of this issue. I think that this is usually one of the best written and most in depth hardware review sites out there, but to (seemingly) gloss over this issue with one or two lines in the review and then state that the Note 3 has the fastest s800 chipset is just absolutely false. You know that its cheating, and you mention it in the review, but then coming to the conclusion that this is the 'fastest android device' based on benchmark info that you know to be misleading is a huge error IMO.Just because other companies do it does not excuse this behaviour. unless more people are made aware that they're cheating (one or two lines buried in the middle of a review dont matter) they'll keep doing it. The only way to end it is to blatantly call out the manufacturers that are doing it. Which means that you cant conclude something is 'the fastest' if you know that the benchmarks are run in a way on the device that it cant be replicated by the end user - end of story.
Klug4Pres - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
I too am disappointed in the way Anandtech is choosing to deal with benchmark cheating. Either find a way to circumvent the cheating, or do not post benchmark results. It really is that simple.doobydoo - Saturday, October 19, 2013 - link
I completely agree. If you know a phone is boosting a benchmark - the point on the graph should be labelled as 'artificially boosted' or words to that effect. Then a non-boosted benchmark should be run.2disbetter - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
I don't know... I'm not that bothered by Samsung's attempt to get higher scores. Their "cheating" as it were, is simply overclocking the chipset. The chipset IS in fact performing as the benchmark indicates. It's misleading, sure, but not really lying. We have long since surpassed the need for hardware speed improvements on any mobile OS, so bickering about performance seems kind of redundant. None of the premier phones today can actually really use their horsepower so ultimately what does it really matter?xype - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
It matters because it makes the damn benchmarks useless. What help are performance graphs if they have to come with an asterisk and "Well, not that any performance difference seen herr matters anyway, cause we're too fucking lazy to put in the work and do a proper comparison."