Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Phablet

[Mike]

Anyone have any experience with one of these little beasties? I've done extensive research on them, and had at least 2 personal demos from owners, and they seem to do everything a laptop, tablet, and top end cell phone can do, all in one perfectly portable package. I am currently looking at options for a replacement for my XP laptop, as well as my cell phone, and eventually my GPS (still works fine but for how long, I don't know) and it would be nice to come up with an all in one device to do everything my cell phone, laptop, Garmin, digital camera, etc, can do.
Pros? Cons? Hearsay?

[Rok]

Hi Mike,

I have the earlier version, the Note 2 with Verizon, and it is pretty nifty, but it doesn't do nearly what you deascibe it as doing. The bigger screen and little stylus make it easier to use than other smart phones, but it really doesn't compare to a dedicated tablet like my iPad Air or my wife's MS Surface. Of course, a laptop is best for surfing and other stuff because it has a real keyboard. I do have a bluetooth keyboard for it, but I haven't used it yet.

Hope that helps.

Oh, almost forgot, it is a lot harder to carry around than a smaller phone.

...Rocky

[Mike]

Thanks for the input.
I guess it's a matter of opinion, then. One man's smartphone is another man's laptop.
After doing some more research and lugging a 14 inch laptop along with us on our last trip that got used once, I decided to take the plunge.

I got the Note 3 last week and it is simply amazing. It can do everything (so far) that I've thrown at it, and I'm sure I'm only scratching the surface (no pun).
I was considering adding a tablet or hybrid like the Surface in addition to this all in one for some of the reasons you mentioned, but I no longer think it will be necessary.
This little pocket sized machine does it all.
It even has a speech to text feature that I'm learning how to use, which should cut down on keystrokes considerably, although I'm finding typing with all the built in idiot proofing features, fairly easy.
It's been another paper maps to Garmin moment, where I'm asking what took me so long to make the jump. I guess it was mostly the Win XP demise and the smaller netbook had sufficed as a portable option for traveling Internet access.
Thanks again for your comments. They did help in the process.

[Rok]

I also have the Note 2. I almost always use the voice recognition to do searches, send texts, etc. I really like the larger sized phone. We also take my i-Pad, my wife's MS Surface and a laptop of some sort along. Oh, and my wife's phone, too. All in all, we're pretty connected when we get out on the road. We have a wi-fi booster that we finally learned how to use, and if there is no wi-fi, we have 4G on our phones as backup.

Unfortunately, we haven't been doing much traveling this year because we just bought a house and have been embroiled in the negotiations, then the sale, and now the move. We scuttled a 2 1/2 month cross country (Seattle to Nova Scotia) road trip we had planned because of the house purchase. Bummer. Maybe next year.

--Rocky

[Bugsy White]

Yeah Mike, i have had my Note 3 going on a year and a half now ( got it the first week it came out ) and its the best all-in-one thing-a-myjig that i have owned. Question: you regret getting rid of the XP yet ? ( since most of MS os's have sucked since then, lol ) I wont get another laptop until after i get my RV, no use lugging a 5 lb brick in my Maxpedition when the Note fits in the jacket pocket....I still have about 50% of the phones features that i havent even touched yet, lol I wont get another phone until this one goes dead or breaks. i need to save every penny now for my 'B'

[obgraham]

Mrs O and I have twin Galaxy Note 4's since January. Basically we are phonophobics, and this gadget has done nothing to change that. Sure it can do a bunch of things. But trying to do real computer stuff on that little keyboard, either by fingers or the stylus, is an exercise in frustration.

Try as we can, we cannot be transformed into twenty-somethings.

[Mike]

Originally Posted by Bugsy White

Yeah Mike, i have had my Note 3 going on a year and a half now ( got it the first week it came out ) and its the best all-in-one thing-a-myjig that i have owned. Question: you regret getting rid of the XP yet ? ( since most of MS os's have sucked since then, lol ) I wont get another laptop until after i get my RV, no use lugging a 5 lb brick in my Maxpedition when the Note fits in the jacket pocket....I still have about 50% of the phones features that i havent even touched yet, lol I wont get another phone until this one goes dead or breaks. i need to save every penny now for my 'B'

We've got a Win7 full sized (14"?) laptop that was purchased 4 years ago and it's fine for DW. I've still got the WinXP unit, and it's still working fine for now even with support pulled. I'll keep it around until it ceases to function, or creates other problems, but for now it still works. Knock on wood, no errors on the hard drive and no other issues. Anti virus/malware still works on it.
I'm wary of anything Win8 or 8.1, reminds me of the Win Vista roll out, and think we'll wait for Win10 to see what it's like, before making another purchase. I'm currently not feeling any Microsoft brand loyalty at all, for all sorts of reasons. Honestly, they should have just kept on patching and reworking XP to make it function on a multi-engined, faster, touch screen/tablet, if that's where they saw their marketshare headed, and forgotten about the other OS upgrade (debacles). If it ain't broke.....
I may simply get a Samsung Tablet running Android #.#.# and add a keyboard and go with that as a larger, keyboarded, text machine, as I become more font challenged over time. It would be the replacement for the XP box.
As for the Note 3, I've installed Flash on it (unsupported by Google/Android but it works fine without rooting the phone) and that was the phone's only shortcoming (at first) when I bought it.
The Note 3 is sometimes awkward to use to compose/create lengthy text things like emails, or posts like this one. Oddly though, it's more an issue of constantly educating the phone's keyboard, not hitting the keys, at least in my case. That said, typing text on the phone can be a test of patience at times, but that's largely due to the auto-correct feature which sometimes works against you. I'm sure you know what I mean, when you have to regularly correct the auto-correct, or change and update the keyboard dictionary. As for the actual keys on the touch screen keyboard, once you get used to it, it's not that much tougher than an actual physical keyboard, IMO. And I still have the WinXP netbook as a backup, when I'm charging the Note 3 phablet.