Samsung Galaxy Note 3 (A little first impression review)

Got my note 3 yesterday. I will try to make a little review of my first impression about the device with no specific details just my general opinions (sm-n9000q for Turkey - Exynos version).

First of the look. It is much better then my note 1 and note 2. Love the design and the leather texture at the back cover. Sides are good too. If you don't inspect it carefully, it looks like metal. Handling is easy. It is a little narrow then note1 but much more easy to hold maybe because of the side grips.

Big advantages of the device are its big full hd screen and multitasking abilities. I have been using multiwindow thing a lot with my note 1 but with the powerful hardware and the new feature pen window it is much better now in note 3. And the full hd screen is great but this opinion is coming from a note 1 user.

Altough i read about lag in device on some internet reviews never encountered one, it runs fluid and responsiveness is very very good imo. Also pen applications are more usable in real life then note1. Still note is away from fully replacing a notepad but it has all the ability of a scratchpad. Scrapbook is very very good, i start using it instantly. Also i love how they make it easy to share things over chaton.

Camera is awesome unless you are trying to take shoot at dark. Many users are complaining about external speaker but i am not an expert on that area so again imo it is better then note1 but i can not say anything if we compare it no htc one or iphone or etc.

As for the bad side first thing for everybody is knox. i am not much fan of cyanogen or aosp or other custom build roms but rooting voids the warranty is very stupid. while i am a private user of the phone i will not use knox in any means but will have it's restrictions :( . Although they said every note3 will come with knox and again although i have knox software on my device, it does not show knox status in the download mode but i am sure they will install a new bootloader in the next update which will fix this... for them!!!. And the second bad thing about the device is samsung released note 3 without testing the software enough. We see stupid mistakes like handwriting recognition is not working in keyboard after 29 sep because someone forgot to remove that limitation or other little or big mistakes. We are still using a beta firmware on this device. Samsung tries to fix everything as fast as possible so i can't argue their afford on fixing side but they should have tested it better.

Conclusion: device is way better then i expected. in note 1 i used s-pen for showing my friends what note 1 is capable of but i believe i will use note 3's s-pen and it's features more oftenly for real.

While the Note3 is impressive I will stick to Note 2. I have built my own ROM for it and get great performance and more importantly battery life.

I do like the looks of the Note3 though, but for what you are getting, it just is not worth the upgrade for me personally.

nice review though.

i agree with you getting new phone every year is nonsense if it is not your hobby or something like that. if nothing changes my plan is to stick with odd numbered notes.

Let us know how it works out in the long haul..

I have a note 2 (if anyone wants to buy it, I'll gladly sell it lol) & while it was awesome at first, it has terrible call quality. Constantly staticy (if that's a word) and I get a lot of signal drop. That said, I was going to get a note 3, but Samsung's quality scares me. Considering that I'm on JUMP through t-mo, I could get the note in 6 months. I bought a LG G2 instead & it's one hell of a phone.Big upgrade from the note 2.

I'm not trying to be a debbie downer. I also own a S3 & that phone gives me problems as well. Call quality issues, static, screen going blank when you need to answer a call. I'm iffy on initial reviews of samsung products now. They seem to break down over time. Not really sure why.

All of that said, I hope the note 3 works out. If you have good luck, I might trade in the G2 for the note 3. Comments on XDA forums really swayed my opinion of the note 3 & that forum is really the reason I got the G2 in the first place. You will have a HUGE development community with the note 3, so there's no time to be bored with the phone!

ok a little update then :D

battery performance is awesome. i needed to charge note 1 every night with its replaced battery (2 months ago) but with same usage note 3 goes one day more.

i noticed a call sound quality problem but can't be sure if it is because the speaker or the network.

in general as i said s-pen helps me much. my little boy lost note 1's s pen and i even didn't think to buy new one once but in note 3 s pen is really useful.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by [XC] Synthetickiller

Let us know how it works out in the long haul..

I have a note 2 (if anyone wants to buy it, I'll gladly sell it lol) & while it was awesome at first, it has terrible call quality. Constantly staticy (if that's a word) and I get a lot of signal drop. That said, I was going to get a note 3, but Samsung's quality scares me. Considering that I'm on JUMP through t-mo, I could get the note in 6 months. I bought a LG G2 instead & it's one hell of a phone.Big upgrade from the note 2.

I'm not trying to be a debbie downer. I also own a S3 & that phone gives me problems as well. Call quality issues, static, screen going blank when you need to answer a call. I'm iffy on initial reviews of samsung products now. They seem to break down over time. Not really sure why.

All of that said, I hope the note 3 works out. If you have good luck, I might trade in the G2 for the note 3. Comments on XDA forums really swayed my opinion of the note 3 & that forum is really the reason I got the G2 in the first place. You will have a HUGE development community with the note 3, so there's no time to be bored with the phone!

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Ive never had call issues, but I am also on Verizon.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kromosto

ok a little update then :D

battery performance is awesome. i needed to charge note 1 every night with its replaced battery (2 months ago) but with same usage note 3 goes one day more.

i noticed a call sound quality problem but can't be sure if it is because the speaker or the network.

in general as i said s-pen helps me much. my little boy lost note 1's s pen and i even didn't think to buy new one once but in note 3 s pen is really useful.

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My Note 2 rooted with my own made ROM, going on 20 hours just hit 55%. Most default ROMs are just full of crap that kill the battery, plus if you use GoogleNow I would suggest turning that off as it kills the battery pretty quickly I have found.

Battery is more then enough for me so google now is running... actually everything is running will going to disable some but i don't need to hurry on it.

Sent from my SM-N9000Q using Tapatalk now Free

Another update. Two features that i saw on advertisement are not working. First one is adding youtube videos to scrapbook as playable. It only adds image. People says new OTA update fixes it but haven't got it yet so can't talk. Second feature which is not working is while in double window mode can't drag drop images to chaton chat. It takes the whole page and shares the link.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by HuffPCair

Ive never had call issues, but I am also on Verizon.

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It's the phone.

My G2 is clear. Barely any static. Even calls on bluetooth pick up less background noise. I'm not sure if it's post processing or something else, but everyone I've spoken to asked outright if I bought a new phone.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kromosto

Another update. Two features that i saw on advertisement are not working. First one is adding youtube videos to scrapbook as playable. It only adds image. People says new OTA update fixes it but haven't got it yet so can't talk. Second feature which is not working is while in double window mode can't drag drop images to chaton chat. It takes the whole page and shares the link.

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I hope you get it working. Have you looked on XDA for fixes or anything? Maybe there's something you can do, other than wait for updates. :shrug:

for the first one i still need to wait for the ota update and the second one is my fault, if you want it work you should use samsungs browser not chrome like me :D

Picked up the ATT variant (Snapdragon 800), here is a quick Antutu run, third highest still on stock rom:D

http://i.imgur.com/WQ9hZvF.png

http://i.imgur.com/ncrmyRr.png

http://i.imgur.com/uVyF9Xf.png

http://i.imgur.com/PUzEfEO.png

http://i.imgur.com/we3lv6V.png

http://i.imgur.com/fW4lcVi.png

http://i.imgur.com/mDniHVS.png

http://i.imgur.com/UMLl7en.png

http://i.imgur.com/ZUKjcZ5.png

i will try antutu too. samsung made a little trick on benchmarks don't know if they fixed it or not.

also i got the ota update and other problem solved too. now i am very happy with the device everything working nice.

another update. today i discovered that default music player of the note 3 has some problems with some mp3 files. One of my mp3 plays good on note 1 but not on note 3. i tried it on 3 different note 3 devices and all same. Solved it with start using PowerAmp but another ticket for samsung.

After more than a month of usage i can say everything is going very well. 2 updates so far and that fixed all of my issues. battery life is still very good only some apps like poweramp prevent note3 to go deep sleep and drains battery more then it desires but when you identify which app causing it and by force closing it after usage solves the problem. i think this might be something about android 4.3 compability of these apps.

most beautiful part of the phone is screen. i begun to watch my favorite series on note 3 now. s-pen is very useful on my daily work.

i can advice this phone to everyone. definitely the best of of samsung.

How's everyone's Note 3 holding up?

Still smooth & good call quality?


My LG G2 has severely degraded in quality. I can't even turn on the screen during a phone call. I have to knock the phone to "fix" the gyroscope in the phone so I can access things during calls. It's an odd bug. I can upgade in 3 months, so I wanted to see if the Note 3 was still good.

I have exactly the same problem with my LG G2. I asked a friend of mine at LG and he stated that this was a common problem.

I got rid of my G2 & am rocking a note 3. Love the phone. Probably getting the note 4 when it lands in Oct/Nov.