Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Hands on Review: Made For Real Multitasking

Samsung Galaxy Note 3: Design, Display and Hardware Performance

Do you think only Apple is capable enough of churning handsome phones? Oh sorry Samsung has already broken that misconception with the Galaxy Note 3. In fact, the Note 3 is sitting on a different league all together, where no other phone including Apple iPhone 5S comes close.

Like any other group of techies, we were excited to see the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, when the delivery boy handed over the device for review. Whether you notice anything or not, the perception did change, when one see the Galaxy Note 3 for the first time. Someone rightly said that design is the method of putting form and content together.

Despite not using metal clad body, Samsung Galaxy Note 3 has a refreshing design. The square shaped phone has that smooth finish with metallic finished chrome-edges. Notably, the rear-back panel drew our attention, as it appeared that the Note 3's design was first conceived by some Italian leather designer. The reality is that Galaxy Note 3 still made out of high-quality polycarbonate plastic with a removable back cover. The thin and light Galaxy Note 3 measures 8.3mm in terms of thickness and weighs 168 grams.

Unlike the iPhone 5S, which comes with a non-removable battery/cover, Samsung Galaxy 3 offers a peek-a-boo into a 3,200mAh battery, and an expandable microSD card slot. It's great to see a high-end phone with a removable battery. On the back you will also notice a 13-megapixel camera and an LED Flash. Further the S Pen sits comfortably on the side of phone's bottom.

The phone comes with three regular Android buttons beneath the display, a volume rocker key on the left, a power button and a microphone on the right side. Above the display, a 2MP front-facing camera is given alongside, and on the top of phone comes a 3.5mm headphone jack, another microphone and a reset button. Extreme down the phone, there's a speaker grill, yet another microphone, and last not the not the least a micro-USB connector.

Talking about Galaxy Note 3's physical traits, the phone features a huge 5.7-inch Full HD Super AMOLED display having a resolution of 1,920 x 1080 pixels. The display is gorgeous, so effortless. The screen works great in the direct sunlight. You can always set the display by changing color tones. The Note 3's screen offers real value by displaying the content without loss of colors with deep blacks and wide viewing angles. The screen is very responsive to touch, and that's what matter at the end.

After having a good look at Note 3's intriguing design and macho like build quality, it's time to witness what's goes under the hood that makes this device going. The Indian variant of Samsung Galaxy Note 3 has an Exynos 5420 Octa-Core processor, instead of a 2.3GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 SoC. The GSM-only version of Galaxy Note 3, consisting of four 1.9 GHz Cortex-A15 cores and four 1.3 GHz Cortex-A7 cores, backed by 3GB of RAM and 32 GB of inbuilt memory, which can be further expanded up to 64GB via a microSD card slot. It should be noted that the amount of storage a user can access is limited to 23.65GB.

Performance wise, the Galaxy Note 3 is a rock star. In our tests, the phone passed with flying colors. We haven't faced a single damn challenge in the span of 10 days of thorough usage. According to AnTuTu benchmarks, the Galaxy Note 3 Octa (34,434), simply blew both the LG G2 (32,917) and HTC One (25,651).