The small tablet concept has worked for Amazon.com’s Kindle Fire e-reader and Barnes & Noble Inc.’s competing Nook Tablet. But both of them have 7-inch screens. The Note has a 5.3-inch screen, making it less practical as a tablet and quite bulky for a phone.
But not too bulky to fit comfortably into a shirt pocket, and not terribly unwieldy for a phone. As usual with Samsung, the new phone features an organic light-emitting diode screen, which delivers brilliant, rich colors, and eliminates the thick, heavy backlight used by other phone screens. And held against the ear, the Note doesn’t feel much larger than other big smartphones, like the best-selling Evo 4G by HTC Corp.
Exclusively for AT&T Inc.’s wireless network, the Note sells for $299.99 with a two-year contract, though you can get it for $50 less through Amazon.com. It runs Google Inc.’s Android operating system, and comes pre-loaded with the “Gingerbread’’ version of Android. It’s a perfectly adequate edition, but I’d have preferred running the newest upgrade, the one called “Ice Cream Sandwich,’’ because it adds features specially intended for tablet computers. AT&T is supposed to deliver an upgrade later this year.
Setting up the phone was child’s play, especially since I had it plugged into my home computer at the time. Instead of pecking in all the usual e-mail and Wi-Fi data on a small touchscreen, the phone directed me to an AT&T website. Once there, I could enter all the data through my PC, which then installed everything painlessly onto the phone.
Everything happens fast on the Note, thanks to its snappy dual-core processor chip and connection to the speedy new AT&T 4G LTE data network. I’ve generally found AT&T’s version of LTE even faster than the one offered by its biggest competitor, Verizon Wireless.
On the other hand, LTE devices are notorious for poor battery life. While I didn’t conduct exhaustive tests, I found the Note gave respectable battery performance. After about six hours of vigorous use, including two hours of movie streaming via Netflix, I still had about 30 percent left. A less aggressive user should be able to make it through a standard workday.
