Gadgetory

hey what is up guys i'm kim Bhd here and this is a revisiting of a phone that probably got some of the biggest hype of 2013 and judging from the comments section of my CES bag tour video and many other people on twitter etc people want to know how this phone has been holding up and it's been about four months since the full review so the natural place to start would be the hard word because when it first came out this Galaxy Note 3 design was one of the most talked about in Samsung's lineup specifically the material choices so the size of the phone were the first and any Samsung phone to appear sort of metal like the Galaxy s4 but it's a soft material and it's held up pretty well but really it's the back of the phone here that's gotten a lot of attention it's the fake leatherette stitching and soft touch feel now I actually like this feel on my Black Galaxy Note 3 I've actually switched to the black one since the review it's a little bit less soft on the white Note 3 to avoid staining and I think that was a smart move from Samsung and as soft as it is there's really only one small blemish on the back of my phone and it's only noticeable from certain angles when it catches the light well that would have been a full-on scratch on a plastic phone like the galaxy s4 but then again it probably never would have been seen on a metal phone like the HTC One so this this soft touch design and the stitching is somewhere in the middle and I kind of dig it I like holding it and the stitching is also now made its way through all of Samsung's lineup including the Galaxy gear SmartWatch and their new tablets and even some of their packaging so I wouldn't be surprised at all to see the Galaxy s5 Rock this same material but that's another video either way I take really good care of all my electronics and I don't really actually use any cases or screen protectors on any of my phones which some people think is crazy but this Galaxy Note 3 has been perfectly fine to withstand that test anyway what I was hoping would be better with this phone is the software so in my original review I talked more about this in depth and of course I'll leave the link to the full review right below that like button if you want to check it out again relive that but essentially since I've gotten it I've done everything I can routing it to make it a sort of a Google edition Galaxy Note 3 I grabbed the Google experience launcher from KitKat a bunch of the AOSP Google themed apps the keyboard and I basically mirrored it to my Nexus 5 as much as possible to make it more pleasant for me to use and of course with its top-notch specs none of that really impacted the performance but here's the thing no matter how hard you try you can't shake TouchWiz it pops up wherever you go in this phone in the settings in the notification panel in the visual styles and the fonts it's everywhere and at this point I actually don't really like TouchWiz that much I much prefer stock Android from something like the Nexus 5 and not only that but you got to remember that since this phone has come out a new version of Android has released its Android 4.4 KitKat and this phone doesn't have it yet it's still running Android 4.3 jelly bean now not that that's old or anything but just today Samsung announced they release the kernel source for Android 4.4 on the note 3 so that's definitely on its way soon but even when that drops it'll still only change so much and ultimately it will still be TouchWiz and TouchWiz has so many features and so many alterations that it actually impacts speed in a couple of ways it impacts the speed of the operation of this phone it's such a heavy skin that the phone actually needs all three gigs of RAM that it has and it impacts the speed of updates so you know how we keep seeing those Motorola phones like the Moto X and the Moto G gets super fast updates to KitKat it's because they run a version of Android that is very very close to stock and that will never happen with the Galaxy Note 3 because of TouchWiz so if you're not into routing you'll have to settle for finding equivalents of stock Android features in the Play Store like I did and I managed to find a lot but really not everything is a perfect equivalent I look through all the stock themed camera apps for example in the Play Store and they all seem to work alright they can take quick photos none of them are particularly bad but none of them can record 4k video like the TouchWiz camera can on the note 3 and they all seem to crash when attempting to take a photo sphere or a panorama or do anything too fancy so this is the reason why I have two of a lot of apps on my note 3 1a OSP themed app and onetouch was one to back it up that I just have to keep around and that camera one is actually kind of a big deal I really wish I could tap into 4k video more often with the stock camera interface because the footage looks phenomenal hey if you don't believe me check out some recent super scientific videos shot on his Galaxy Note 3 they are crispy I'll leave some links below but other than that this phone is just as grey as you'd expect after a few months of launch and it's been surprisingly successful so Samsung you know we the whole Galaxy Note line started as basically an experiment and this third version has sold way more than 10 million for them so they are really serious about it now it's no longer an experiment other minor things I wish the camera had optical image stabilization to make the video even better I wish it had wireless charging built in like the Nexus 5 instead of having to spend extra money on a case that adds it and I wish the design of the UI was just better than what Samsung has here with TouchWiz so really at the end the day when you're looking at a phone like the note 3 and you look at the software if you like the software that that whole touch was experience and you like the hardware this is still a great phone and it's one that I have no doubts will be super super duper future-proof because of all the great specs the massive amount of RAM the great display it's just all around a great phone and we all know that I'm not a person that uses a stylus that much so I'm actually really into this phone still because I can pretty much guarantee you that when this phone gets a CyanogenMod build a stable build of the ROM that brings the AOSP experience to this phone it'll be getting a lot more use from me than it already has so there you go guys thanks for watching and I'll talk to you guys in the next one peace member