Gadgetory

a love letter or at least a light letter to the biggest phone on the market carriers that need to learn a lesson from cupid and a keyboard that makes Brian's heart sing I'm Jessica doll courts you are joining the Valentine's Day episode of dialed in i'm joined in san francisco by lynn LA oh and in New York by Brian Bennett what's up and Steven Beecham is our technical producer hello today's podcast is sponsored by the letter via and by this huge phone that is giant net thr way I drew it I drew it on the samsung galaxy note for those of you who are not watching the video and then I drew a little Valentine's note to everyone so a note on the note and that brings us to the samsung galaxy note so Brian and I managed to get our hands on a review unit that this phone comes out for AT&T officially on Sunday for three hundred dollars and we are going to be just looking at every aspect of this I mean it's got a 5.3 inch screen it is it is big it is big I'm holding in my hand it takes up the whole of my hand it's really it's a little awkward I found my self adjusting so it's a little more comfortable if I hold it here at the bottom but it's one of those things where I think you can get used to it but a lot of people a lot of other like reviewers and people who've seen the phone and held it or just like that phone is stupid big it's dumb it's stupid big stupid big um Brian and I both have overlapping and yet different opinions about this but Brian let's start with you what do you think about it well I mean it's funny because i was actually i wrote a post a little while ago just saying ok here it is this note is coming out you know what do you what do you think i don't know if i can deal with this can I you know you know can I is going to replace my tablet or is going to replace my phone or I'm just going to like use one device for it both well she's gonna replace your phone cuz it is yes right well that's the thing you know it is a phone but it's a tablet is it really a tablet is a small so I mean people say it's a big phone own a small it's a small tablet there's so many heating can you get it in your pocket back well maybe you know what you know what listen wewe yesterday I went out on the street in New York and just started showing this phone to people and and got the reactions and one of them was basically said you know you cannot put this in your pocket because it is the wrong type of bulge in your pocket so you know I know that was pretty pretty impressive you know I don't think we really need to see anything else about it right right because that is the one line that you really mean I mean for me I can fit it into a back pocket but I'm not really gonna walk around with it in my back pocket but it does fit in my purse pocket which as a lady who carries a purse is the way that I carry all 17 of my phones yes and that's true well you know that's the thing it depends on how you use it you know if you're using a tablet primarily at home like maybe by the bedside or on the couch or something like that this this is going to look really you know you know it's going to be smaller a lot smaller and you know if you're going to take if you take your tablet a big tablet on the train or on the plane or something like that then this this thing would actually probably be a lot more convenient just because you're not going to bump elbows with people and get in you know start a riot we're okay now one of the characteristics of the galaxy note is that it's got this throwback stylist here it's it's pretty small there's also an accessory that Brian and I both got it's called the s pen holder kit you basically just slip a stylist in here that's an extra of 50 bucks and it comes with the stylus and I think this one's much more comfortable but realistically most people who get this phone aren't they gonna shelled another fifty dollars unless they're really dedicated to it what did you think of the stylus and what did you think about using the stylus on this phone well so far I haven't really had much use for it I have to say because I'm not really sure if I really want to be taking notes I mean I do want to take notes in meetings or you know just just to remember things but you know my handwriting is pretty bad so oh sorry I remember on your man in the street video um when you showed that the guy that you had a stylus he was totally turned off by it like oh god there's a stylist and you're like oh what do you think about that and then he's just seemed I think a lot of people thinking I think look old-fashioned yeah yeah especially because the last time we really saw styluses well okay there was the HTC fly excuse me that's uh that's tile I island-style I there was the HTC Flyer tablet and that had one and and you know but really before that the last time we saw them was mostly unlike palm phones yeah with ya with a resistive touchscreens and you couldn't really use your fingers or anything else I think on this phone it's it's okay because um you know it's got it's basically another input method so you can use your voice you can still type and the keyboard is quite large on this phone as you can imagine especially when you're holding it in landscape view I actually have been taking notes on it I when I picked up the phone from samsung I took notes on the tab um I in scratch Jessica yeah it got a lot better when I actually switched from the paintbrush to the ballpoint pen and picked a fine tip but there is a little bit of a delay when I'm using it i notice i tried to draw some pictures and i'm not so much the artist but there's still an issue sometimes with the sensitivity and the responsiveness but I'm not an artist so I really wouldn't use it for a lot of doodles unless it was to do something fun or entertain some kids or something like that and to be honest I personally think that if you never use the stylus it's okay because what you're left with is a samsung galaxy s2 phone that somebody spilled miracle grow on for overfed or subject I'm asteroid's injected with steroids exactly i mean it it basically looks just like a a larger version of the sky rocket which was a larger version of the samsung galaxy s2 it's a android 2.3 gingerbread it's got TouchWiz it's got some motion controls so i think that the stylus and the apps for that like there are some memo apps and they're going to be some games and things like that and also in addition you can use the stylus pretty much anywhere there's a text field so if you decide you want right in with your hand instead of typing in like cnet com for example on the browser then you can do that but i think if you never use the stylus you're still going to find just a perfectly good phone it's got the 8 megapixel camera that's really good on the other galaxy s2 phones it's got a 2-megapixel front-facing camera 1.5 gigahertz dual-core processor in here what else am i missing screen HD super amoled which is not a sharp you may not be surprised as it is on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus which has a smaller screens at the pixel density is a sharper but it's still nice it's very nice actually it's just when you hold them side-by-side and compare them so I think to me it comes down to size and how you use it I personally think that you know if you've already got a 10 inch tablet you might take this phone more often but it's not going to have a similar you know video playback viewing experience you're going to have to turn more pages when you're reading an e-book but if you've never had a tablet and you like a phone this large and you think it will feel comfortable in your hand and then I think that you're going to get a good phone but I think that most people if they're smart should consider the size before they consider the stylus when they're thinking about it yeah I mean in a way it's like a step up to folks you know for folks who are considering a tablet you know going from a from a more traditional smartphone you know you're gonna you're getting a you're getting a lot of tablet like features and a pretty you know powerful phone itself but the whole pen thing I don't know I don't know I mean I well you know what I'd like and then just I'll be real fast by this basically if this is fantasy land here but if the screen had a almost like paper like feel to it um that provided I kind of friction uh it's glossy you want the resistive screen no no no I mean now I don't want it unresponsive I wanted to you know have that kind of feeling of writing on paper you know for you know for me to use as a pen with a pen I mean and then of course it'd be great if the paper actually I mean that the fake paper would emit light like a screen but that's you know science fiction so wow so you we saw a couple respondents but surely you ask more people what they thought what was the general consensus or was there one for the people you were asking in New York at the park well I mean I I was uh you know we talked to four different people we just basically just ran over to the park and I went you know coincidentally there's a shake shack right there so I didn't have any vested interest there but um but yeah so we went there and obviously it was a cold day and a lot of people out there still even so so we we talked to some folks and we do not yep and believe it or not you know we talked for different people I would say for the three of the three out of the four were definite iphone users invested in iPads and iPhones so they they were not sold on this though uh there was um well one person seemed to sort of two women one woman seemed sort of on the fence but she did like the side she thought the size wasn't soaps so large and it would fit in her life whereas this other woman who actually was a fan of Android and had a original Galaxy S device she actually liked it a lot and thought she would buy it immediately so so it's actually pretty mixed even though even though I mean if you look at the post though that I wrote talking about the video there people on there who are just flaming me and just saying you know what are you talking about you know why why are you phrase the question like this but habla you won't you have it out for Android and all that stuff that's not true because I use Android I've actually don't even use an iphone so you know basically it depends on where you stand this is like at the center of a huge controversy whether or not your iPhone or iOS or whether your Android whether you're a tablet user or an iPad user pretty much or a smartphone user and an Android user I mean it seems like you're to Center this issue what is this device how would you use it it's it's all it's like the center of a maelstrom so so send us your thoughts on that Brian and I have a lot more great stories on the galaxy note to come including how well it does with art if you can indeed use it in workplace environment to take notes and also what it's like to live with it for a week so more stories to come and also it comes in carbon blue which almost looks black to me ceramic white or at least it will on Sunday and the pink color is a coming along as well so basically sorry as I pause there so so basically that's AT&T and we kind of like at least we like the Samsung Galaxy Note even though there's some question marks surrounding it but what we don't like is the carrier's being bits of Scrooge's unseat assembly with upgrade fees so did you guys see the stories Kent wrote one basically a nice little tidy rants about AT&T basically charging customers to be loyal they have confirmed that they were doubling the upgrade fee from eighteen dollars to thirty-six dollars and that's on the heels of sprint also offering it's sort of an offer they're offering an upgrade now for people who are not within their to your service agreement or if they're still in the middle of it and then there's a rate during this promotional program of like thirty-six dollars to 165 dollars to upgrade so what do you think about this so I mean what is the fee for that's what I don't understand exactly like are they paying you to stay with them or pain so you're bringing them yeah I mean would that's so crazy I don't understand a better phone or if you want to keep your contract and then have a better phone that's um more high-tech than the one you have now they will charge you thirty-six dollars that doesn't make any sense to me in addition to the price of the phone yeah but I mean I thought the whole point of pain for the phone was because they already paid for most of the phone right subsidies yeah so why are were you paying them again I I don't understand this I think it has to do with patent wars they have to pay fifteen dollars per device or something for the all the patent litigation they're going through I think they're trying to like get it out of the customer somehow that's that's my could be true an ATT told phonescoop that since today's cell phones are more sophisticated than ever before then the costs associated with upgrading to a new device have increased and that's part of the upgrade fee so I think that it definitely sounds like a litigation issue as well however how much does it cost I mean you go and you look online like Verizon for example the HTC Rhyme costs zero dollars it is free with the new to your service agreement so aren't they just encouraging turn which is that the last thing they want I don't know it did it I really have I have very I'm very skeptical let's just say that it seems really backwards to me yeah but the sprint thing is actually a deal only offered at corporate locations and will run just a month from februari 12th through March 14th and Scott Webster who wrote this piece said well think about it you know from the other point of view you could be paying five hundred dollars if you bought it without a contract so the fact that you're getting it for two hundred dollars even with an upgrade rate even if you pick the highest upgrade rate you're still gonna save 100 bucks or 130 bucks and I think that's a good point I just don't think that's how people in this country think if they've been with a carrier before who is like post paid so if you sign up for it to your contract you're definitely I think expecting a certain kind of payment roster and upgrade schedule and prices associated with that yeah i mean i just--that's AI think they're done that's that's totally ridiculous so I mean charge more for phones i guess but i'd rather be charged more upfront and then rude to stay with the carrier then have to keep paying hidden costs and nickeled and dimed exactly i mean night people should be able to vote with their feet and not be tied into contracts and if worse comes to worse if the phone is more expensive up front than fine just as long as you can leave whenever you want and you know and also swap out your device for a much better device you know for most of our device if you can find one you know I mean that's Bette's much better so we're going to give you that food for thought and we're going to take a quick break and we'll be back with quick hits and reviews and we are back it is styled in its valentines day and we've got some news that's sparked our interest this week first of all will the PlayStation Vita OS land on smartphones and tablets this is Sony's new OS coming to a handheld gaming device and I don't know since they bought ericsson we are their stake in sony ericsson we could possibly be seeing this in the future on smartphones Ryan you want to take us along to the next sure yeah well we have learned that it's possible that HTC will further bring out some more details of ice cream sandwich landing on a few devices so you know that would be awesome we want more ice cream sandwich wherever we can get it and definitely check out the article if you want to learn more and another apple ipad or iphone rumor this one dealing with the ipad 3 apple will reportedly unveil ipad 3 in early march i think it's probably yes we're definitely going to prepare for that the Justice Department says that it is not going to stand in the way of the Google and Motorola of marriage at least according to The Wall Street Journal so Google should jump over the last couple hurdles to buy motorola outright excellent well actually now this is the thing here we've got we've got sprint here with the next hill situation and i'm not even sure you know they've gotten rid of their that service right so i thought it was dead already but you know is officially is dead now so let's you know let's hope that they'll be able to buy some more spectrum and modernize their service yeah 2013 was the year and if you couldn't get enough already about the huge galaxy note there's remember that LG will go big with a 5-inch Optimus Vu which has fewer view view I'm going to vote for view okay I like that name better Optimus view and it's going to be a good Scott I have a 5-inch display and an eight is it what cam and the camera megan is an 8 megapixel camera yep NFC support 1.5 gigahertz processor so we could be hearing about that at Mobile World Congress perhaps I don't know just a note we are going to be doing our mobile world congress preview next week with Mobile World Congress coming after that and since monday is a holiday for us we'll be back here tuesday at one o'clock again same time next week but we have a little bit more of the love letter variety for this next phone Brian took a look last week at the motorola droid 4 and he's going to tell us all about that all right yeah so I mean you know we just took a look at the motorola droid razr maxx which was pretty awesome but now you know just a week later motorola came out with the droid 4 which basically is an upgrade to the droid 3 and essentially ads you know LTE 4G data connection on verizon's network costs 199 99 basically two hundred dollars and it's a it's a great phone it problem is it doesn't run a ice cream sandwich comes with Gingerbread they will have support for ice cream sandwich down the road and I mean that's a drawback but otherwise it's a great device just you know if you want a keyboard that has full five rows offers great tactile feedback and a pretty nice decent you know eight megapixel camera on there this is this phone is worth checking out but it does feel a little bit dated because not many devices have keyboards these days it's kind of thick it's kind of heavy you know it depends on what you want if you really are married to a keyboard and you want an android phone with 4g on verizon this is very compelling otherwise you might be better off just going with the galaxy nexus for cutting edge ice cream sandwich or going over to the droid razr maxx for incredible battery life and a very thin design I'm surprised because when you first saw this you were all over this phone you I know loves it it's yes you're like I got it I got it at the stage we're gonna see it so I mean did you fall a little bit out of love with it after seeing that surprises yes you know it's I guess kind of fitting on valentine's day for me to uh you know changer to break up with this phone you know well I mean I guess what it was was uh you know this has been a device that people been looking at looking for for such a long time I I know people that you know are addicted to keyboards they loved the original droid the first droid that came out a few years ago when was at two thousand seven or whatever it was no no no 2008 right I'm just gonna let you say it's it's so long ago I can't remember but anyway the original droid that broke the Android barrier everybody you know heard about Android through that device they loved the keyboard they loved the power that it had they even could deal with the motoblur interface that Motorola put on Android and it was it was a device that everyone just you know kind of near and dear to many people and the subsequent revamp so that that product line have been steadily kind of blah you know so when a new device like this came out and it in it by the way it did come out originally October 17 2009 2009 there you go thousand oh nine Wow okay yeah you know that's you know feels like 10 years ago but uh you know I'm sure there are people out there who still have their original droid and still can't give it up so if you really need that keyboard this muy bien as long as you don't mind turning it on its side and sliding out the keyboard I want to see more portrait queries oh god no i don't know like the tortoise motorola droid pro for example that's an Android device right it's true not like a super premium Android device but definitely gunning after a blackberry there anyway we also have a review Lynn took a look at the LG marquee for boostmobile which is would you say it's very similar to the original sprint version yeah I mean they're pretty much the same except that it runs on boost mobile's a carrier so it's kind of pre it's prepaid no contract and a lot of people that that's their style they might really like it goes for 279 99 so it's the most expensive phone on boost mobile's website and it has a 5 megapixel camera on the back two megapixel front facing camera and I kind of liked it out like the designed it was it was slim and it's very light so it could easily kind of travel with you my only thing with it is that it's a little sluggish the internal processor was a little slow so when you browse the web or you translate the processor alma I I think those it one gigahertz yeah and it's a Singapore yeah it was a it was pretty noticeable and but the display is really nice i has seven seven hundred nits of brightness just like the LG connect 4g so it's really really bright but it also drains the battery quite quickly if you use it like that i remember i'm taking a look at this phone before for sprint and comparing it with some of the other bright funds of the day and it's interesting what people mean with with brightness and color because it is really really bright but the colors aren't always true it's interesting there's definitely a trade-off sometimes you get like over saturated color but it's not quite as great but definitely like when you hold the phones up like they look good yes one looks really good is it almost like too bright that it's like Sir never be too bright bride no no really it also like 700 minutes at max yeah and it's so if you drop it down and then in just it i mean if it if it's too bright you could always lower the display but you're right about the kind of the picture quality is some some of the stuff is pixelated and a lot of the graphics weren't as smooth as I wanted it even though it's such a really bright screen yeah so but definitely good for boostmobile you would recommend it for anyone who's interested in that Network I would say go for a kind of a cheaper phone that boost mobile can offer only because it makes really great calls so there's that but if you really just wanted a phone that had made really great calls on a note uncheck kind of basis then but if you wanted a smartphone like a more advanced smartphone for boosts then would you recommend this one sure I guess sure well there you go so we also took a look at the blackberry curve 9370 for verizon that's the sort of entry-level 3g phone with some world capabilities so it's got a sim card GSM SIM card also i looked at the samsung SPH m3 71st print that's a basic flip phone I mean that's real basic it did make very good calls its twenty bucks so I would recommend that and then Brian checked out the Jabra supreme bluetooth headset you can find all of those full reviews on cnet com and did you guys get any email this week I didn't either no I got a little tiny bit of personal email I got an email from a co-worker here it was really cute he's like hi I don't mean to annoy you you probably get these questions all the time but you know my wife's looking for a new phone on Verizon you know she's willing to spend this range what can you recommend I'm sure it's on the site but I really hope I'm not annoying you and I'm like this is what we're here for of course you're not annoying me so if you're curious I recommended oh and she will use it primarily since she's a commuter and she drives to work him back she would use it primarily for navigation so the voice readout is really important and that's sort of like the deciding feature for her between like iphone and android essentially although i did mention that Windows Phone has that as well it does have a voice freed by read out with being maps but for Android I recommended the Samsung Galaxy Nexus I'm just because of the Ice Cream Sandwich experience and they don't flip their phones a lot they're going to keep it for two years so it seems like a good phone that will last the hold years it also probably get all the updates to like yeah exactly no delays and stuff and I actually also recommended HTC Rhyme because it is free right now and her needs are actually very whew you know she just she wants you know a phone that she likes the look of that will do the voice by you know the voice readouts for directions turn-by-turn nav and that's every android phone and so it's a nice device and I don't really think she's that much into charms but if she doesn't mind a smaller screen then you know it's fun to get a phone for free rather than paying three hundred dollars for one right go figure everybody likes anything I had a great set of headphones too in there so we'll see we'll see what uh what she winds up with um but if you have other questions or anything or want to keep us company more like to hear your name on the air then send us an email dialed in at cnet com leave us a voicemail we will probably play it at 1 866 4022 638 you can read all of our amazing wonderful and insightful blog posts at dialed-in cnet com especially if you are interested in the samsung galaxy note we're going to have a lot of coverage this week and check out all the other podcasts at podcast cnet com happy Valentine's Day everyone stick with us next week for a mobile world congress preview and take it easy by