Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy Gear Overview

On the 4th of September at the IFA 2013 in Berlin, Germany Samsung announced its Galaxy Note 3 the latest instalment of the Galaxy Note product line. The new device boasts enhanced S Pen features and impressive multitasking capabilities; it features 4G LTE capabilities, 5.7 inch screen, 32/64 GB configurations with microSD support of up to 64GB, 3GB of RAM – an industry first, NFC functionality, a 13 MP camera, with up to a 2.3GHz quad-core krait 400 processor paired with a 1.3GHz quad-core cortex-A7 processor – making eight (8) cores in total and twice its predecessor, all powering on Android v4.3 (Jellybean) OS.

Samsung also announced its first ever Smartwatch, the Samsung Galaxy Gear – this is Samsung first attempt at wearable technology. The primary function of this device is for quick access to notifications and basic features on your mobile phone or tablet. The Samsung Galaxy Gear has a built-in speaker and microphones which allow the device to be used as a hands-free and can function independently also as a digital watch.

One drawback about the Samsung Galaxy Gear is it’s only currently compatible with the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1, but Samsung promised compatibility with more Galaxy devices with their next scheduled OS update. Both devices will be available for purchase from September 25, 2013 in Nigeria.

Sources -1, 2, 3

Samsung Galaxy Price Guide (September 2013)

Yup it’s a little late but here’s the final batch of lowest device price point we could find in Nigeria. For all you bargain hunters out there, happy hunting!

Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom – NGN 76,000 est.  (Seventy Six Thousand Naira Only)
Samsung Galaxy S4 – NGN 94, 000 est. (Ninety Four Thousand Naira Only)
Samsung Galaxy Note 2 – NGN 83, 000 est. (Eighty Three Thousand Naira Only)
Samsung Galaxy Mega – NGN 58,000 est. (Fifty Eight Thousand Naira Only)
Samsung Galaxy S III – NGN 64, 000 est. (Sixty Four Thousand Naira Only)
Samsung Galaxy Core – NGN 37,000 est. (Thirty Seven Thousand Naira Only)

Sources – 1, 2, 3

Apple v. Samsung - How it all began

This battle has been raging on for over a year, here’s a brief recap to help you fill in the blanks. This all began in April 2011, where Apple sued Samsung for (according to Apple) “Instead of pursuing independent product development, Samsung has chosen to slavishly copy Apple’s innovative technology, distinctive user interfaces, and elegant and distinctive product and packaging design, innovation of Apple’s valuable intellectual property rights”.

Samsung soon after announced that it was counter suing Apple - taking the fight international with lawsuits in Korea, Japan and Germany. Samsung soon launched its frontal attack filling a complaint in the North District of California, accusing Apple of 10 counts of patent infringement. Seven of the patents to do with UMTS/W-CDMA 3G cellular communication, and the remaining three covered various user interface elements.

On 9^th of August 2011 a German district court issued a preliminary injunction preventing Samsung from selling the galaxy Tab 10.1 in every EU nation except the Netherlands. Two week after a Dutch court ruled that Samsung Galaxy S, Galaxy Ace and Galaxy S II Smartphones infringe on one of Apple’s patents. Samsung avoided the sales injunction in the Netherlands by patching the scrolling and browsing behaviour of the infringing Samsung photo app use in Android 2.3 build (gingerbread).

On the 13^th of October, a federal court justice in Australia granted Apples request for an injunction barring local sales of Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 until the two companies settle their dispute via trial.

In late November 2011 an Australian federal court overturned Apple’s patent related injunction of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 after a slight redesign, allowing the Samsung tablet to go back on sale in that region on the 10^th of December 2011. Soon after a US district judge in California denied Apple’s request for a preliminary injunction to stop sales of some Galaxy smartphones and tablets.

 

Early this year Germany’s Mannheim regional court rejected Samsung’s complaint involving a patent related to the 3G/UMTS wireless telecommunications standards, the court later went on to reject another of Samsungs patents infringement claim against Apple. A Dutch appeals court in The Hague upheld a lower court’s decision to not grant Apple’s request t halt sales of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the 10.1v with a preliminary injunction. 

A Munich court denied apples recent request for a preliminary injunction on Samsung’s new Galaxy Tab 10.1N and Galaxy Nexus devices in Germany. On the 14^th of March, 2012 the Hague District Court rejected Samsungs attempt to ban Apple’s iPhones or iPads in the Netherlands.

Two months ago Apple asked a US judge for a ban on the Galaxy S III before its US launch but the US District Judge delayed Apple’s plans to block the US launch of Samsung’s Galaxy S III due to Scheduling conflicts. The Hague district court has ruled in Samsung’s favour regarding a 3G patent asserted against Apple. Shortly after US district Judge Koh agreed to tentatively stop sales of the company’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in the US. Another US court ruled granting the motion and imposing a ban on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Almost immediately after learning of the federal judge Lucky Koh’s granting Apple’s request for a preliminary injunction on the Galaxy Nexus devices, Samsung filed a motion to stay the ban. Judge Koh then issued an order denying Samsungs request leaving the injunction in place for the time being.

After which Google and Samsung had a patch readied to address one of the search patent issues. This patch was to be rolled out to the Galaxy Nexus devices in the US regardless of carrier, which limit results from the quick search bar on the android homescreen  to just those from the web.

On the 4^th of July, 2012 the High Court of Justice’s Chancery Division in the UK ruled that the Samsung’s Galaxy Tab does not infringe upon the design of Apple’s iPad because Samsungs tablet isn’t well-designed enough to be confused with Apple’s product. Later that month a ruling from the Dusseldorf Higher Regional Court in Germany clears the Galaxy Tab 10.1N for sale but extends a German ban on the Galaxy Tab 7.7 to the entire EU.

 

The trial began on the 30^th of July, in Apple’s opening statement Apple painted Samsung as an aesthetic thief that took inspiration from Apple rather than innovate on its own, claiming Samsung infringed on four design patents and three utility patents. According to Apple, Samsung has sold 22.7 million devices in the US that take advantage of Apple’s intellectual property, generating $ 8.16 billion in revenue and more than $ 2 billion in profits, thus seeking $ 2.522 billion in damages.

In Samsungs opening statement, Samsung reassured the jury that “Samsung is a major technology company that develops its own innovations”. That it was a company that prides itself on providing consumers the products that they want – and if consumers want touchscreen devices, that’s what the company would provide. 

The battle raged on for three weeks coming to an end on the 21^st of August, with both sides issuing their closing statements. 

In its closing statement Apple’s lawyers said “Steve Jobs shocked the world” with the iPhone, and how did Samsung respond to that? They used three months to design what would become the original Galaxy S. “In those three months Samsung was able to copy and emulate” the “World’s most successful product”. Apple’s lawyers went on saying “No Samsung witness even sat in the chair and said ‘those designs are not similar’”, “The test is overall visual appearance not [these] minor differences”.

In Samsung’s closing statement, Samsung’s lawyers accused Apple of “attempting to block its most serious competitor from even playing the game”, stressing that “competition is what built this country [US]” Saying Apple thinks it’s “entitled to have a monopoly on a rounded rectangle with a touchscreen”.    

One Friday the 24^th of August, 2012 after a short deliberation of only three days, the jury has thus for ruled in favour of Apple. The focus of this particular case involves whether Samsung infringed on the variety of Apple patents.

The court also ruled that Samsung willing fully infringed on Apple’s Patents on a wide variety of its Phones, about twenty five different models to be exact, including the Galaxy S II to the infused 4G and more. Samsung has been ordered to pay Apple $ 1,051,855,000. Since the incident Samsung has experience a significant drop in its share prices as Apple pushes to have eight of Samsung’s smartphones banned from being sold in the US. Apple as well as other struggling Smartphone manufacturers such as Nokia and Blackberry experienced a significant rise in their share price.

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Samsung Galaxy Nexus Overview

Even though the phone has been released for a while, about nine months, it is now officially available in Nigeria, courtesy of Airtel. No doubt a strategy to grow its subscriber base similar to what Etisalat tried with the Samsung Galaxy Note. I’m sure you wondering how the device stacks up against the completion, right? And what makes it so special? Well you in Luck, because that’s what we’re here for!

First thing you have to understand is how this phone has come to be. You see the boys at Google teamed up with the guys from Samsung and produced the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. The goal was to create a device that would be able to perfectly bond with the pioneer version of the android operating system, Ice Cream Sandwich, to give the user the optimum Android experience. 

Although this was 9 months ago and now the newest version of android OS is Android 4.1, Jelly Bean, but this isn’t a totally new build but a more polished version on Ice Cream Sandwich. But freight not! This update is available over-the-air for the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Some have even gone as far as to say that a Samsung Galaxy Nexus running Jelly Bean gives a better experience than the Samsung Galaxy S III running Ice Cream Sandwich! Gasp! 

According to a popular mobile phone retailer you can get the Samsung Galaxy Nexus for about NGN 91, 000 (Ninety One Thousand Naira) with the Samsung Galaxy Note going for NGN 99, 000 (Ninety Nine Naira). 

Let’s round this up with a little bit more about Jelly Bean shall we?  So what’s new with the Jelly Bean upgrade? You can’t talk about Jelly Bean without talking about “Project Butter”. Project butter is Google’s answer to the often criticised android user interface lag. It smooths out the transitions and animations of the operating system - removing the occasional lag noticeable even in the most powerful android devices. Other upgrades include an improved notification centre, improved camera and gallery apps, improved keyboard behaviour, offline voice recognition, updated Google user interface, high resolution contact photos, USB audio output and HDMI multichannel audio output.  


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Samsung Galaxy Note. Phone? Tablet? Or Both? – Review

It’s been a while since we’ve seen a stylus on mainstream touch screen devices especially in this time and age with the rapid adaptation of capacitive touchscreens, for a long time using your finger was seen appropriate and made the stylus for most part redundant if not obsolete. A phone with a stylus to me initially would have sounded like a definite miss (unless you’re a certain Japanese videogame company), but the Samsung Galaxy Note is the exact opposite.

 

Here’s what you need to know, the Galaxy Note is one of the latest offering from Samsungs long line of android devices, it’s got a 5”3 Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen with 16M colours and 800x1280 pixels, 1GB of RAM with an option of 16GB and 32GB of internal storage. It takes 8MP stills at 3264x2448 pixels, with auto focus and flash, records at 1080p FullHD. Its android OS (Gingerbread) is powered by a whooping 1.4GHz Exynoc dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor (the same as the iPad 3) all this coupled with 4G capabilities.

So what’s up with the stylus? Well it’s not just a stylus. Affectionately dubbed the S-Pen, the Galaxy Note Stylus has been integrated with button which provides a new dimension to the way to interact with the android OS. When you hold the S-pen button down and hold the S-Pen over the screen of the Galaxy Note simultaneously it takes a screenshot, if you press the S-Pen button and swipe to the left it means back, which does coming in handy when browsing, if you swipe upwards the context menu will appear s, so you should get the idea. If you don’t, it means the S-Pen allows you to operate your phone without pressing any hardware keys, reducing wear and tear. It’s the little things that count. 

A truly unique feature the Galaxy Note has that few people highlight is the ability to sketch. This may not seem like much but with its TouchWiz 4.0 powered user interface your strokes are mode defined based on the amount of pressure applied, the S-Memo also gives you an interesting amount of textures, brushes and palettes to choose from, equipping you with a mini art studio on the go. The fluid physics is good but it could be better, if it get blur and smudge support which would let you blur colours into each other for a more realistic fade, but considering it was not purpose built for that, it’s good enough.

Personally I’d spend hours doodling away on the S-Memo over playing angry birds (for the umpteenth time) any day. Couldn’t help but make a few sketches while I was with the Galaxy Note either, check out my doodles below. 

It’s had to look at the Galaxy Note and fault it, some may argue that its screen is extraordinary large compared to other Smartphones in its class, but its unique and innovative design makes it definitely stand out among its peers.  

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