Samsungs Galaxy Note 7 poses noteworthy challenge to iPhone

Samsungs Galaxy Note 7 poses noteworthy challenge to iPhone

Samsungs Galaxy Note 7 poses noteworthy challenge to iPhone:- Expect Apple, as has widely been speculated, to unveil a brand new iPhone next month. And expect the yardstick by which many folks will measure it against to be the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 that becomes available Aug. 19.

I’ve gotten to test Samsung’s latest pen-based phablet in advance and it’s a winner, a handsome slab of metal and glass that is slightly bigger and modeled after the South Korean company’s other flagship smartphone.

That would be the Galaxy S7, or, to be more precise, the Galaxy S7 edge, since the Note 7 can convert a narrow portion along either edge of its dual curved 5.7-inch screen into a secondary display. With a gentle swipe, you can surface shortcuts along the edge to apps or people, Yahoo news snippets, even a ruler or compass.

Both curvy Galaxy’s have a substantial feel to them, with narrow bezels and smooth, almost slippery, backs. Both have fast-to-fire cameras that can produce splendid pictures and video.

If I’m nitpicking, I still think that Samsung’s hardware outshines its software, which I find a bit less friendly than Apple’s.

That said, Note 7 is a powerhouse, with features and capabilities that Apple has failed to deliver on the iPhone so far, including fast wireless charging, expandable storage and water resistance. It becomes the leading Android alternative to whatever Apple cooks up in a new iPhone, especially for those of us who appreciate phablet-size devices, the category of large phone/small tablet hybrids that Samsung pioneered five years ago.

The Note 7 also makes the use of a digital stylus Samsung calls the S Pen, improved for this version.

Of course, at $850 on up (from all the major U.S. carriers), Note 7 doesn’t come cheap.

Let me call out one feature right off the bat: Note 7 has a conventional headphone jack, something I wouldn’t normally go out of my way to mention. But Apple is rumored to be leaving out the jack on the new iPhone, giving way, apparently, to increasingly popular wireless Bluetooth headphones, or headphones that connect via Apple’s proprietary Lightning port. We’ll see.

Note 7 also includes the emerging USB Type-C connector. There’s an adapter in the box for those of you who still need to connect a USB cable

S Pen. The latest digital stylus has a ballpoint-pen type tip that feels more natural to write with than prior versions. While I reckon most of you will use the S Pen to jot notes or draw, its bag of tricks has been expanded. For one thing, you can hover over a word with the pen to translate it into a foreign language. For another, you can hover to magnify text. And you can capture and crop video content that you can turn into an animated shareable GIF. Nice.

Moreover, when you’re on the lock screen and pull the S Pen out of the compartment where you stash it, you can immediately write a memo on the “always-on” screen, and pin it there, a handy reminder, say, to pick up milk or the laundry.

Since the pen, like the phone, is water resistant, you can even write on the screen when your mischievous kid takes it into the pool, not that I’m condoning such behavior.

Eye-pleasing security? The idea that you can stare into the phone to unlock the screen, get past Web logins, or pay for stuff sounds really cool and it is. And it doesn’t take long for the phone to train the phone to recognize your iris. Once my eyeballs were scan-able this form of hands-free authentication worked way more often than it did not.

The truth though is that at least when it comes to unlocking the phone I found it easier and even faster to employ other methods: drawing a pattern on the screen (with your finger) or using the fingerprint scanner.

Still, Samsung has grand plans for iris recognition. The company is working with at least six major global banks, including Citi, U.S. Bank and Bank of America, on implementing the technology in lieu of passwords.

The Note 7 already can be used with the Samsung Pay mobile payments system, a rival to Apple Pay and Android Pay.

Samsung has also added a Secure Folder where you can keep sensitive apps and data isolated on the phone away from prying eyes, perhaps a list of passwords or your passport info. You can keep two versions of the same app on the phone, but use different account credentials for the app you keep in the Secure Folder as opposed to the app you keep outside.

The phone also relies on what Samsung claims as a defense-grade mobile security system called Knox, primarily targeted at enterprise customers.

Also notable. I didn’t conduct formal battery tests, but Note 7 does have a bigger battery than prior models. In mixed-use I didn’t fret that the phone would poop out prematurely. If you do run out of juice, you can charge up the phone in a hurry, either via the supplied cable adaptor or via an optional wireless charging pad accessory.

The phone comes with 64GB of storage, but which is generous. You can expand capacity (up to 256GB) via microSD.

Samsung also claims the Note 7 display is the first to take advantage of High Dynamic Range or HDR mobile video streaming on a smartphone, similar to video used on 4K TVs, and not to confused with the HDR photography feature on many phones. Without getting bogged down in the details, what I can report is that the display looks terrific.

Source :- http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/baig/2016/08/16/samsungs-galaxy-note-7-poses-noteworthy-challenge-iphone/88715870/