More on the Galaxy Note

I've seen mention of Samsung's Galaxy Note in a few places online, and people seemed to look at it like it was a joke.  Reminded me of the way that reviews treated the HTC Flyer.  They looked at the specs and didn't understand the price, failing to see the value that a stylus could add. I'll admit, I wasn't sold on a 5" stylus-bearing device, until I saw this:

Image blatantly copied from Samsung's site (this page), which I assume they're fine with because a large chunk of advertising for the Galaxy Note involves the phone's users copying and pasting images from the web.

Look at the right side of the image.  The phone appears to be on a Moleskine-style notebook.  Brilliant. That's what this phone is trying to replace.  Sold.  Right there, I get it.

For those of you scratching your heads right now, Moleskine notebooks are those little leather-bound ones you've probably seen art students writing in furiously while out and about.  They're resilient.  They come in a variety of shapes and sizes, and a lot of different configurations.  They make books with blank pages for sketching, books with music staffs, books for graphing.  See image below (nabbed from this page on Moleskine's site).

I was once given a Moleskine notebook from a very close friend.  I liked it so much that I can never use it. Too much pressure.  I do too much crossing out, I throw too many pages away.  I prefer to type now, but when I wrote, I did it on legal pads, then later I collected individual pages in folders.  I write too much shit to put it in rugged notebooks with archival ink, saved forever as reference material.

I liked the size of the notebook, though.  I am a big fan of the form factor.  Hey, for years I've been begging for a phone the size of the Nokia N800 (5.7 x 3 inches, pictured below), except all screen, no buttons or speakers on the face.  The Galaxy Note is almost dead on (5.74 x 3.266 inches).

Wait a second.  I haven't seen a Galaxy Note in person, I didn't realize that their dimensions were so close until I just now looked it up.  The Galaxy Note is pretty much the same freaking size as the Nokia N800---THAT IS SO FREAKING COOL!!!  Bravo Samsung, you just made a 29-year-old boy's dream come true!

Anyway, the Galaxy Note is almost the same size as the N800, but it comes with an additional feature I don't think I would have asked for from a phone--an active digitizer.

There are some problems.  For one, it hasn't been released in the US.  It's rumored to be slowly making it's way here, but it needs to be sooner rather than later.  Processors are getting outdated faster than ever.  Also, I understand a delay of a few weeks or even a month, but why a delay of many months between releasing a device in one country and then another?  Wait, they have to physically manufacture these devices to work with different regional networks?  And there are oceans IRL (unlike in cyberspace)?  Okay then.

Another potential problem would arise if they don't stand behind this phone in the US.  Look, I have this phone I might have mentioned a few times, the Nokia N900?  Well even though it was fully compatible with T-Mobile's network, potential customers had to find this out through their own potentially complicated research.  This phone wasn't available in any T-Mobile store.  There were no tv commercials that I'm aware of.  It was Nokia's first (and now only) Maemo 5 device, and they dumped it.  That's right, for some reason manufacturers don't always stand behind their devices.  The N900 was kind of an odd duck (and an ugly duckling, thinking of it), but it could have done great with some muscle behind it.

The Galaxy Note may not be the jack-of-all-trades that the N900 was, but it still fulfills a lot of roles one wouldn't expect of a phone, and people need to see that in their advertisements.  The videos on Samsung's web site are doing a great job of showing the Note's capabilities, but if the phone is released in the US those ads need to be everywhere.  I'm not too worried in this regard, because reports from people in other countries say this phone is well advertised and it seems to be selling well.

Hey, even if the phone doesn't get released in the US, even if they don't stand behind it, I can still buy one. I'm just thinking of the future.  If this gets mishandled, what about the next generation's stylus phones?  Will there be any? Will there?  Think of the children!!!

Very rarely I see a device and it's love at first sight, so to speak.  Most of the items in my "Things I Have Loved" post fit that bill.  The Galaxy Note hasn't been love at first sight--I saw it weeks ago and wasn't impressed.  It's been love at first advertisement, strangely enough.  Usually I skip the marketing bullshit and go straight to the specs.  This time, I actually needed the marketing bullshit to make me see the potential.

Now I wonder how long it'll take for me to actually get my hands on one.  Ho hum.

Till then,

David