Samsung's 'Tab-phone' Galaxy Note Now In India

Samsung has launched its latest smartphone 'Galaxy Note' in India. The mobile phone was first unveiled during the IFA 2011 event in Berlin, Germany. We had earlier predicted the price of the device at around Rs 35,000 and the actual number is very close to it. The mobile phone is available for Rs 34,990. Let's have a brief look at the specifications of the device.

The device comes with a mammoth display screen of 5.3 inch (the largest offered till now by Samsung) high definition super AMOLED multi-touch display screen (1280×800 pixel resolution) and it runs on the Android 2.3.5 (Gingerbread) operating system (which will be upgradable to Android Ice Cream Sandwich). The company is additionally providing 'S-Pen', an advanced stylus, for better input. Also, Samsung has combined the Samsung TouchWiz user interface with Samsung Live Panel user interface for enhanced user experience.

Galaxy Note runs on a dual-core 1.4 GHz Exynos microprocessor with Mali-400MP graphics chip and it has 1GB of RAM. The internal memory of the device is 16GB which can be extended up to 48GB with the help of a 32GB microSD card.

It comes with an 8 mega pixel rear camera with LED flash that can record full high definition (HD) videos (1080p) at 30 frames per second (fps). A 2 mega pixel front facing camera is also provided for video calling. The phone also has a new music player with SoundAlive feature (enhances audio) and a Stereo FM radio with RDS.

The dimensions of the device are 146.85mm x 82.95mm x 9.65mm and its weight is 178 grams. The device has a 2,500 mAh battery and comes with A-GPS with Glonass.

The closest competitors of the device in the Indian market in terms of price and specifications are Samsung's own Galaxy S II (Rs 30,000), HTC's Sensation (Rs 29,600) and EVO 3D (Rs 35,000), BlackBerry's Torch 9810 (Rs 30,099) and Torch 9860 (Rs 28,000) and LG's Optimus 3D (Rs 35,000). Additionally, Samsung's Galaxy Nexus will also compete with the device once it is launched in India.

First there were mobile phones; then came the wave of smartphones which was directly followed by the Tablet rage. With the launch of devices like the Galaxy note one cannot help but wonder which category to put it in. It offers the functionality of a smartphone and the convenience of a Tablet, so I guess we will just come up with a new category for such devices. We will call such devices 'Tab-phones'.