The wrapping is off Samsung’s latest handset and it’s pretty much what we expected, to be honest. That’s thanks to all the leaks that were slowly drip fed to us over several weeks, essentially stripping away any element of surprise the phone maker might have been hoping for.
But now the Note 7 has officially been announced, what is it like? We got hands on with the device to get an early impression.
The look:
There once was a time when the Samsung Note was awkward to handle and came with a plastic casing that wouldn't win it any design plaudits. The Note 7, on the other hand, is metal and glass, and despite its 5.7 inch screen, fits more comfortably in the palm of your hand, even for those of us with smaller appendages.
That doesn’t mean that you’ll be comfortably using this phone/tablet hybrid one-handed for everything, although Samsung has made changes to the device that will make it easier to take photographs and perform other functions with one hand. There is no getting away from it though – the Note 7 is a serious bit of kit, although it’s sleek with it.
It borrows heavily from the S7 Edge, with its curved screen and body design. And why shouldn’t it? The S7 is one of the most eye-catching phones out there. Samsung has also made it IP68 rated, which means it is dust proof and waterproof, within reason.
The display:
If you were holding out for 4K, you’ll be disappointed. The Note 7 sticks with quad HD and Super AMOLED, and the overall effect is impressive. Samsung’s displays are always among the best out there, and the Note 7 carries on this tradition admirably.
Really, you only miss the 4K display when it comes to virtual reality. A more detailed display will always perform better when your eyeballs are placed in close proximity to the display. Maybe you will, maybe you won’t, but Samsung isn’t ignoring virtual reality with the Note 7. There’s a new virtual reality headset for the device that not only adds extra padding to make it more comfortable to wear, but also expands the field of vision from 90 degrees to 101 degrees. And it’s now black, neatly dealing with any objections to the white colour of the previous Gear VR headsets.
The S Pen:
Samsung says its stylus, or S Pen, is the distinguishing feature between its Note range and the rest of the large screens out there. Over the years the S Pen has evolved to include functions such as magnifying text and translating chunks of websites for you. The latest one is waterproof and dust proof, similar to the phone itself. And it can even write if there is water on your screen.
You can also use it to create your own custom GIFs, selecting a portion of video and transforming it into a GIF with a few pen strokes.
Security:
The Note 7 has some beefed-up security with Samsung Knox to encrypt the system, and a new iris scanner that will allow you to unlock your phone without laying a finger on it. Setting up the iris scanner is simple, from the security settings menu it takes some careful lining up of your eyes with a guide, and you are done in less than two minutes.
Once you have your iris registered – you can only do one registration by the way – all it takes is a press of a button to wake the phone, look at it, and it unlocks in seconds. It worked seamlessly, and for those who don’t want to be confronted with a close-up every time you go to open up your phone, you can add a “mask” that will hide your eyes with some sort of cartoon-style graphics.
The one thing we couldn’t test was its low-light capabilities. Samsung has been doing eye tracking for a while, with the Smart Stay function that kept the screen active as long as you were looking at it. It ran into trouble though when the light was poor. Will the iris scanner suffer from the same? Samsung says no, with its reps assuring us that it has been tested in low light and come through with no problems. We’ll reserve judgment until we test that ourselves.
If the idea of using your iris as a security authentication method is a little too much for you, you can still register your fingerprint as a back-up security measure, add a password or a PIN.
There is also a “secure folder”, an area where you can drop your files and apps that you want to keep away from prying eyes. It’s easy enough to do. In a demo, a Samsung rep showed how to transfer photos through selecting the images you would like to move, pressing the menu button and selecting the option to move them to a secure folder. Of course, live demos being live demos, it wouldn’t work when screen mirroring was switched on, but performed fine once it was disabled.
It’s not just about hiding files though. You can have an email account in there on an app, while having a separate account on the same email app outside the secure folder. The system essentially duplicates the app and maintains both as if they are two separate programmes.
Something to note for those who like to customise their phones. If you have a secure folder active and the system detects rooting or custom ROMs, it will block access to the Secure Folder, effectively locking you out of your files. So don’t do that. Oh, and always back up your files to another location.
Camera:
Good news on the camera front. The Note 7 takes the same camera module that’s in the S7 and improves it. So you get decent images with good colour and sharp detail, with a 12 megapixel sensor for the rear camera and five megapixels in front. You can also take wide selfies by tilting the phone to the left and right – no contortions necessary.
Samsung has made it simpler to use the camera one-handed too. Swipe left to right to bring up the camera modes and option, and from right to left to move through Instagram-style filters.
The rest:
Samsung has made some refinements to its user interface, making it a much cleaner experience. It has also included a micro SD card slot that will allow you to bump the internal capacity of 64GB – no 32GB model here – by an additional 256GB. That’sa lot of room to play with.
The verdict:
The Note 7 will keep Note fans happy, and may convert a few others to its cause.
