It’s taken me a few years, but I’ve finally learned to stop making fun of Samsung’s smartphone portfolio. The Korean company does to hardware what Google does to software. They both iterate quickly, test quirky ideas, and unceremoniously kill products that the market rejects. To tell you the truth, I used to not even care about Samsung, but that changed in 2011 when they introduced the Galaxy S II. It’s funny to think this today, but back then the idea of a 4.3 inch phone was absurd.
Sure enough, people got used to it. Just a few months after the S2 went on sale, however, Samsung did something even more insane. They launched the 5.3 inch Galaxy Note, a product that I’ve insulted so many times that I’ve lost count. Who in their right mind would buy such a large device, I asked my readers. Little did I know, in September 2011, that one year later I’d buy a Note II.
Why did I get the Note II? In part one of this review, I said it was because I couldn’t find an iPhone 5 due to it being sold out everywhere, but there’s a little more to it than that. For as long as I can remember, I’ve had two computers. One dedicated to work that was loaded to the gills in terms of specifications, and then a tiny machine meant for around the house or traveling abroad.
My little PC, until very recently, was a Lenovo ThinkPad X100e, and I hated it. I’ve owned at least five ThinkPads in my lifetime, and they’ve all been amazing, but the X100e was a steaming pile of garbage that I loathed using. Unfortunately, I’m a stubborn person who is also quite frugal, so I couldn’t bring myself to getting rid of it since it fulfilled all my needs.
Now because we’re in 2013, that means we’re in the post-PC era, right?
I figured I’ve suffered enough with the X100e, so earlier this year I decided it was time to buy a tablet. But then another issue cropped up: Do I really want to have three computing device? I’m a staunch supporter of convergence and owning as few gadgets as possible, so with that thinking in mind I swallowed my pride, accepted the fact that I’d never find an iPhone 5 in Kuala Lumpur during the Chinese New Year, and bought the Note II because I could use it as a phone and a tablet.
To say I made a mistake with pre-judging large screen devices would be an understatement. Not only do I love using my Note II, but as soon as Samsung announced the Mega 6.3, I emailed my contact in Finland to ask for a review unit. So how do I feel about the device after two days of intense usage?
Staying with the theme of the rest of this article, I’ll focus on size. The phone looked absolutely hilarious when I removed the top portion of the box it came in. I’m not joking, I was laughing when I was pealing off the plastic covers. But after a few hours, it felt “normal” to me. Yesterday was the first day I actually used the device productively. I’m currently in the process of trying to find a new apartment, so I had to use the Mega 6.3 to see an address on a map, figure out how to get their with public transportation, and then entertain myself while sitting on the bus.
It was only after leaving my new potential home that I realized how large the Mega 6.3 actually is. With 10 minutes to kill, and me being quite close to a shopping area, I decided to step into an electronics store to see if they had anything new. As soon as I walked inside, there was a Samsung Galaxy S4 on display. I picked it up, and the first thing that came to my mind was how tiny it was.
Let me repeat myself: I picked up a 5 inch smartphone and thought it was petite.
When the salesperson tried to chat me up about the S4, I pulled the Mega 6.3 out of my pocket, and he just looked at the phone in a complete state of awe. He literally just stood there, speechless, not looking at me, but the phone, for what felt like an incredibly awkward 30 seconds.
Wrapping things up, we all know that Samsung is going to announce the Galaxy Note III in a little over a month. The first Note III rumors, published in December 2012, said the phone was going to have a 6.3 inch screen. That number terrified me. Over the past few months, this “leaked” screen size has kept on shrinking. Today, people are pretty confident that it’s going to use a 5.7 inch panel.
Before carrying the Mega, I would’ve been fine with a 5.7 inch Note. But now I want more.
