The Samsung Galaxy Note III

The Samsung Galaxy Note III

It’s that time of year again; the Samsung galaxy Note III is tipped for an early September announcement. Phone speculation is an interesting sport* and this year things are hotter and more exciting than ever before.
The Note III is set to be a smash hit no matter what. The Note series is a perfect idea with no serious competition, so it’s pretty much impossible to screw up… unless Samsung does something truly stupid.  If you want proof, just look at the Note II, till now the Galaxy Note II is without a doubt still one of the best devices on the market. You can go as far as to say that it is one of the greatest devices ever made!

You can see my take on it here.

But back to the galaxy Note III.

Manufacturers are starting to wake up and there will be competitors. Everyone from HTC to Sony to LG… but outside of the Asian market, nobody can match the infinite advertising budget of Samsung. All marketing power belongs to Samsung . Because of this, all competition ris set to largely fall flat on their faces even they are BETTER phone-tablets. Chances are, the only reason you’ve heard of the HTC ONE MAX,  LG Optimus G Pro or Sony’s Xperia Z Ultra is because you follow technology news. The general public has no idea.

Enough with the ramble.

So what do we know?

Well, we know a fair bit about the device, but let’s break it up into 3 categories.

Design, Hardware and Software.

Design

Above: Probable design for the Galaxy Note III 

The Note III is said to be about 8mm thin and retain the plastic body style with a removable back panel, with a thinner bezel than the previous Note. I would say there’s an 85% chance that Samsung will play it safe and stick with a “larger S4” design. Nothing new, fun or exciting here guys. I personally have a bit of a problem with this but that’s another can of worms.

Samsung’s flexible, unbreakable screen that has been supposedly been floating around for the past year will probably not make an appearance here.  

Hardware

CPU

✖  Snapdragon 800

✖  28nm Krait 400 CPU at 2.3 GHz per core

GPU

✖  Adreno 330 (featuring a 50% performance increase over the Adreno 320!)

RAM

✖  3GB LP-DDR3

There will probably be an Octacore international variant with the same specs as the Galaxy S4 (perhaps with a CPU speed bump of 0.2 GHZ)

SCREEN

Screen size has been flakey the latest rumours are saying 5.7", but previous sources have stated 6.1” and 5.99”
However, a 1080p super AMOLED screen is expected. The 5.7” screen will of course work in Samsung’s favour, bumping up the screen size by a steady 0.2” each year. In addition to this, Samsung will not want to cannibalize the Galaxy Mega sales so soon after it’s release.

Interestingly enough, it is known that sharp can make a 6.1” display with a resolution of 2560x1600 creating 494dpi, we'll just have to wait and see..

CAMERA

✖  13MP Rear

✖  2.1MP Front

S-PEN

✖  Improved grip and feel, perhaps with 2048 pressure levels.

BATTERY 

✖  Some sources are saying 3700 mAh but this is unconfirmed.

Software

Like the Galaxy Note II, the Note III will receive the latest version of android (Android 4.3 in this case) out of the box, since google is set to release android 4.3 in July.

Of course there will be a whole host of S4 features such as air scroll, air gesture, air view air AIR etc..
Let’s just hope it doesn't bog the phone down like it did for the S4, I trust that Samsung has learnt about efficiency this time round. 

Moving on, the camera may have Samsung orb. Similar to the 360 photosphere camera app in stock android 4.2. Aside from this, there will be a whole bunch of S-Note tweaks and the return of air view (with a stylus) and multi-window (Sweeet!) but apart from these, not much else is known.

What do you guys think if these specs are indeed true? Let me know in the comments section below. 

I'll leave you with a collection of leaked images. A video version of this blog post will be up soon :)