Price: from €149 but depends on contract
Looking at modern mobile phones, it’s hard to imagine there was once a time when the idea of a large-screened mobile phone was scoffed at. Back when screens were under four inches, the idea of a 5.7-inch screen seemed monstrous.
But Samsung persevered with the Note, and we're now up to the Note 7 – minus the Note 6, which Galaxy left out of the series, jumping from 5 to 7 instead.
In a market where phones now routinely breach the five-inch size barrier, what exactly can the Note 7 offer consumers? A lot, it turns out.
Aesthetically, the Note 7 nails it in my opinion. Looking back at earlier versions of the device, you could see why some people wouldn’t be keen.
The Note has always been a two-handed device. Its sheer size means there is no getting away from it. But the new design means you get more screen for your device than the original Note, for example. While you’ll probably still need to type an email using two hands, you can comfortably fit the phone in one hand.
The curved screen gives you a bit of extra space, drawing inspiration from the Galaxy S7 Edge, but stopping short of a full-on copy. The S7 still looks like it has more a curve, but the Note 7 gets all the good bits of the feature, including the Edge apps, that allow you to pin favourite apps to the edge of the screen for quick access.
The Note 7 is a nicely-designed phone, enough to almost make you forget that technically it fits into the phablet category. The one flaw is its ability to pick up fingerprints. Not on the front of the device, but the rear. It turns into a smudgy mess quite quickly, which means you’ll be forever wiping it clean.
It’s not just relying on its looks though. The Note 7 has also beefed up its security. Aside from the inclusion of Samsung Knox, the device also has a Secure Folder. That allows you to drop files, photos, even apps into a walled-off secure area of your phone.
Aside from the convenience of being able to keep your things away from prying eyes, it also has a more practical function. If you have two email accounts, you can keep the confidential one in the Secure Folder on the email app, while your personal account can sit outside its boundaries, completely separate. It essentially duplicates the apps, so you don’t get them confused.
Samsung has brought back the fingerprint scanner for the Note 7 too, allowing you to register it as an additional biometric security measure. But it’s gone a step further with the iris scanner. It took two goes to set it up in our tests, but that was due to bad eye positioning, and the software talks you through all the steps. Once it’s up and running, it unlocks the phone quickly.
There are some caveats for the iris scanner. It will struggle in direct sunlight, and if you wear glasses or contacts you might find it struggles to get an accurate read, depending on how you looked when you took the original reading.
The S Pen has been improved too. While its predecessor wasn’t too shabby, the S Pen that comes with the Note 7 has been improved in a few ways. It feels like you’re writing with a real – if undersized – pen. There’s no sense that there is glass between you and the notepad you’re scrawling your shopping list. Functions like being able to create your own GIFs and translate websites with a few pen strokes may seem gimmicky but came in remarkably useful.
We couldn’t test the always-on display, where you can pin a memo to the screen of the phone, because the software was a pre-release version, but the feature is available on retail units shipping in a couple of weeks.
The good
The Note 7 is a nicely-designed phone that sits in the palm of your hand. It’s well balanced, not a slippery bar of soap, and although it’ still large, it doesn’t feel overly so.
The not so good
The fingerprint-attracting rear of the phone is sure to get on your nerves after a while.
The price is higher than other Android phones, but then the Note has always been a little above the average in this regard – it hasn’t hurt its sales significantly.
The rest
The Note 7, and the S Pen, are waterproof. You can still write on the screen when it’s wet, although we’re not too sure when this will come in handy.
The camera on the Note 7 is in the same vein as the Galaxy S7, which puts it above a lot of other Android handsets in this category.
The verdict
When it comes to large-screened phones, Samsung has history and the Note 7 is a worthy addition to it.
