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AS WEEKENDER
@Asian_Standard
13
TECHNOLOGY
by RAHUL RAUT rahul@asian-standard.co.uk
Samsung has made smartphones exciting once again with the launch of Galaxy Note 7 - its new smartphone in Note series. The New Note 7 is the best all around phone the company has released to date. It is an ultimate phone that manages to deceive just about every other box in your list. It has gorgeous, symmetrical and water-resistant design and gets you more storage power, excellent battery life, speed and features. Everything is better in this new Note 7 if we compare it with other Note phones. It is a great upgrade for any note older than a year and the best android phone you can find right now in the market. Just one demerit: it’s too expensive. However, if we look at its camera, its gorgeous, carved display, its sleek, its stylish looks and its bonus security features, it might be worth its hectic price tag. Design Note 7 is a beautiful piece of gadgetry. It is the combination of metal and glass, symmetrical sides and rounded corners that makes it the nicest looking phone. The symmetrical curved edges make the Note 7 really nice to hold. Its functional design gives the Note 7 a normal phone feel, even though it has a massive display. Its dimensions, which is actually smaller than any other phone in this class (it’s shorter and narrower than iPhone 6S Plus, Nexus 6P and Note 5), makes it easier to handle, nicer to use and easier to slip into a pocket than any other big screen phone.
Note 7 has made a real improvement over last year’s Note 5. It comes with 64 GB of internal storage instead of the S7’s 32 GB, which leaves you plenty of spaces for photos, videos and games. There’s also a spot for microSD card in the SIM tray that supports cards up to 256 GB. Display Note 7 has a 5.7-inch Super AMOLED display, running at the resolution of 2560×1440 pixels. Viewing and angles are superb. Though the screen is small
for fine arts, compared to a 10-inch tablets, it handles notes and drawing very well. With Note 7, you can sketch some really cool things. Software Galaxy Note 7 runs Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow but will upgrade to Android Noughat down the line, according to the company. It has 4GB RAM and 2.15 GHz, 1.6 GHz, Quad-core processor. Power-saving modes have been updated. Samsung’s browser is also more powerful thanks to its
support for a QR-code reader and an ‘Amazon Assistant’. There aren’t a ton of preloaded apps now. The four desperate apps that Samsung used to package on the Note have been combined into a single Note app for all your writing. Iris Scanner The most important new headline feature on the Note 7 is Iris Scanner which is used for hand-free unlocking. It uses a special front facing IR camera array to scan your eyes and unlock your phone. This feature is handy, fast and accurate. Iris Scanner opens the device too easily on many occasion, but if you wear glasses, it may take much longer. You can also use a password, PIN, pattern or fingerprint in the place of Iris scanner to unlock the phone. Iris scanner can also be used to protect sensitive files or documents in a dedicated “Secure Folder”. S Pen The updated S Pen separates the Note 7 from Samsung’s other devices and every other big phone. The improved S Pen is slightly slimmer and lighter than the last one. S Pen has a typical ballpoint pen size (0.7 mm) nib for more fluid writing and sketching. The new S Pen which can be used to jot down notes, draw pics or navigate the phone’s interface, is more comfortable compared to the previous one. You can actually write things on Note 7’s screen even under 5 feet of water for 30 minutes. With S Pen, one is able to magnify anything on the screen up to 300 percent. S Pen can also be used to translate texts on screen from one language
to another using Google’s translate services. The translation aren’t much elegant though. Rather than sentences or paragraphs, this feature lets you translate only one word at a time. GIFs are yet another S Pen feature. The ‘Smart Select’ feature has been updated to let you create GIFs from any video in just a few taps. You can create GIFs from YouTube videos, add notes or stickers to it and then save it and share it right from your phone in just a matter of seconds. Camera Note 7 has the same cameras (12 megapixel on the back and 5 megapixel up front) as the S7 and S7 Edge. It takes clear, bright, crisp photos in even the dark thanks to the size of pixels on its sensor. The Dual pixels camera setup makes it damned fast at focusing. Front camera is generally good too, but that’s way less interesting. In short, the Note 7 is very impressing and probably one of the best shooter we have used. Battery Life Note 7 has 3500 mAh battery. It may not have the biggest in Samsung’s lineup but it’s still one of the best and lasts through a whole day of use. Note 7’s battery is 17% larger than the battery in last year’s Note 5. It has a USB-C charger port that also charges up your other devices. On the whole, Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is compelling, beautiful and functional smartphone that’s lets you do more in more places with bigger screens, more storage and better cameras.