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Samsung Galaxy Note for T-Mobile review, availability, and more

The Samsung Galaxy Note debuted at IFA in September of 2011, and on August 8th, 2012, it came to T-Mobile customers as well. The huge 5.3-inch device is available for $249.99 on a two-year contract. Below, we've collected everything you need to know about the new phone: our original review, and some carrier-specific impressions and benchmarks for the T-Mobile variant of the phone.

  • David Pierce

    Aug 8, 2012

    David Pierce

    Samsung Galaxy Note for T-Mobile: impressions and benchmarks

    Galaxy Note T-Mobile
    Galaxy Note T-Mobile

    We reviewed the Galaxy Note months ago, and other than its potentially cumbersome size there's a lot to like about it. The phablet / tabphone / phoneblet is fast and well-made, and its 5.3-inch display is stellar. The included stylus makes the Note a great tool for drawing, getting work done, and, well, notes. Since the device came out, it's also received a huge software upgrade to Android 4.0, bringing a number of new apps and services to the Note plus adding all the beauty and stability of Ice Cream Sandwich. The "Premium Suite" update also brought a lot of stylus-friendly tweaks, making the pen even simpler and more powerful.

    Good things come to those who wait, so T-Mobile users will get all the Note's newest features and apps from day one. Unfortunately, buyers also get year-old hardware: the Note's 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S3 processor, 1GB of RAM, and 16GB of internal storage are all unchanged from older versions of the handset. The processor is the biggest frustration — it's not a bad or underpowered SoC by any stretch, but it's now far from cutting-edge. Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 is faster and more power-efficient than the S3, and we've seen quad-core chipsets from Nvidia and others as well.

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  • Jan 23, 2012

    Vlad Savov

    Samsung Galaxy Note review

    Note: Our original review was of the unlocked, £499.99 ($784) GSM Galaxy Note. We've updated the review to reflect our impressions and tests of the $299 (with contract) AT&T model as well. Check out the Connectivity and Software sections, in particular, to see the biggest differences between the two devices.

    There once was a time, commonly referred to as the pre-iPad era, when people questioned if there really was a gap between laptops and smartphones for tablets to fill. The two established device categories seemed to have too many overlaps in functionality to permit a separate product type to exist between them. Today, that question has been answered emphatically by the wildly popular tablet market, but the challenge of trailblazing new form factors remains and has been taken up by Samsung with the 5.3-inch Galaxy Note. Too small to be considered a tablet and too large to be deemed a phone, this new Android device seeks to demonstrate the value of its unconventional size as well as its own credentials.

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