My first impressions - Samsung Galaxy Note 3

In a recent post I had mentioned how I wish I owned an i-Phone. 

Less than a couple of months away and here I’m fiddling around with the supposedly most powerful mobile device on this planet, the Galaxy Note 3 from Samsung, Apple’s biggest rival. 

Galaxy Note 3

While I had managed to hold myself back with some gritty display of restraint (a rarity in my case) during the release of the earlier iterations from this phablet family, this time around, Samsung finally got me with loads of interesting features, a bucket-full of high quality functionalities and to top it up, with some innovative promotions. (They always had this habit of tossing at you more than you could take - but we love that anyway.) The adventure set me back by Rs 46999/- and I was desperately hoping not to end up disappointed with my effort. 

A fortnight with this beast, and I must admit that I’m mighty impressed with what I have got. It does everything I thought it would do and many things I didn't imagine it could do.

The first time I fired it up, it simply blew me away with its gorgeous 5.7 inch full HD, 1080 x 1920 Super AMOLED display – they have managed to fit in this gigantic screen within an even lesser real estate compared to Note 2, thanks to the ultra thin bezel running around the edges. 

The Snapdragon 800 processor allows you to run your apps lightning fast and provides you a astoundingly fast browsing experience. Battery back-up is vastly improved with the 3200mAh battery hidden in its slender frame.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that it shoots 4k videos. Even though my LG LED Smart TV doesn't do 4k, the videos I shot with Note 3, looked extra ordinarily amazing and lively on my giant screen.

S-pen action memo is quite cool; it lets you do much more this time around. Jot down the name of a place; it takes you right there in the Google maps. Quickly pen down a number and you could dial or save it in your contact list. All these stuffs were carried out with minimum fuss albeit my deliberate poor hand-writings, which is quite amazing. You could also draw a box anywhere on the screen and it re-sizes itself with a number of essential apps. I also love the scrap-booker and screen writing features that allow you to store a part of a web-page, video or a link for later under different categories.

It has got some cool party tricks too - hover your palm over the screen; it wakes up and dances to your gestures – makes you look like a Himalayan saint with divine powers.

It has taken multi-tasking to a whole new level. Pull out two apps from the left side multi-task bar and you screen runs them in two separate windows 50:50. Samsung’s touch-wiz interface was always nice, no surprises there this time too. Widgets are as seamless as ever and the 13-mega pixel camera is better than I would have imagined, with a loads of shooting options.The front facing camera is of 2 mega-pixel too.

The unimaginative faux leather finish rear cover

So do I have any complaints at all? Yes! The faux leather finish on its rear is a bit of a spoiler to an overall amazing experience. It looks tacky and just doesn’t work for me. Even as we all were hoping to see a HTC-like metal chassis, we could still have lived with that ever so familiar glossy cheap plastic-finished rear cover this one more time. Nevertheless, on a positive note, it does provide a better gripping experience in your hands.

That’s about it for now, will post a detailed review once I get to play a bit more with this latest addition to my gadget collections.

For now I’ll be switching between my Xperia Z (black) and Galaxy Note 3 (white) depending upon my mood and attire. 

The man who never had an iPhone!

“If you don’t have an iPhone, then you don’t have an iPhone!” – says Apple.

And unfortunately, that’s the story of my life, so far.

Not that my life has ended. By no means. So, as a matter of fact, I may still get a shot at this spectacular piece of technological marvel of our age.

But then, it’s entirely up to Apple.

As has been the case with most men of my generation, I started out with dumb phones (no offence to those big brickish Nokia phones - that’s all we had got those days), gradually progressed to semi-smart ones (mostly walkman and camera phones from Sony Ericsson and Nokia) and finally graduated to the top of the league smart phones.

Right through this journey though, I had always secretly nurtured this desire of owning an iPhone.

Fast forward to 2013, by now I have already experienced the best of the offerings from almost every maker who has ventured into our country (there are not too many who haven’t – who on earth can afford to ignore an alluring market like India?), but somehow, the iPhone has still remained elusive for me.

Meanwhile, Apple did manage to find its way into my private space through its offerings like the iPod and the iPad and I must admit that I absolutely adore them.

Then what could be the reason that has kept the iPhone out of my reach? Following are a few of them for starters:

Size, this is the age of Phablets. The merger of phones and tablets has not entirely materialized out of whims and fancies of a few modern age manufacturers, it has also come into existence out of necessities of today's generation. It’s all about the convenience of carrying a single gadget instead of two at a time. When Samsung released the first iteration of its Galaxy Note, people raised their eyebrows. But its roaring success not only silenced its critics but also paved way for the entry of what we see today in abundance, a distinct category called the "Phablets". And Apple falls woefully short here. Apple's age-old philosophy of one-handed use of phone has managed to keep many a prospective buyers like me at bay. It has adamantly stuck to that tiny 4-inch screen at a time when most of the successful phones of the present day are pushing 5 or 6 inches.

Android vs IOS: Well, in my case I already use IOS in my iPad. But I personally prefer android not due to any technical reason, but due to the simple fact that it gives me more options. I click pictures, shoot high definition videos and load a lot of stuffs in my android phone, which allows me to stream all these contents directly to my smart TV via my WiFi network. Also, from the comfort of my couch, it helps me watch a movie or a video stored in my media player, hard drive or my laptop. Android helps me do all these and much more, IOS doesn't. Well, you can still tweak your settings a bit and get some stuffs done, but the fact remains that IOS simply wouldn't allow you that freedom.

Free contents and Apps: This is self explanatory. IOS forces you to buy everything from iTunes stores, which despite of having a larger amount of contents, pales in comparison to Google play when it comes to free contents. Not everybody’s cup of tea this, but I love android for its flexibility.

Last week, Apple launched iPhone 5S with the same design as its predecessor. And in doing so, it has shown no signs of any changes in its stand point. It is certainly not considering to increase its screen real estate anytime soon. Understandably so.Why pose any sort of competition at all (however small) to its own iPad and iPad mini which are vastly successful? Rather, to boost up its declining sales, it has come out with a cheaper iPhone (iPhone 5C) with a plastic body. I don’t necessarily agree with this strategy, for, many people I know have waited for a bigger iPhone with baited breath, not a cheaper one. And they will have to keep waiting.

I'm just one of them. Is Apple listening?