I have had the Samsung Galaxy Note for a couple of months now. I don’t use it as a phone as the phone part of it is not very good but as a small handheld computer it is excellent. I use it most for browsing or using twitter while in bed.

I’m not a big fan of the Android operating system so I won’t speak about it here. I do want to speak about a few of the phones capabilities though.

Samsung have been creating decent phones of late. It used to be a few years back that their phones were best avoided but a few years on they have released some excellent devices and they are now really the devices to beat when manufacturers release new models.

The Galaxy Note sits in a small niche in between a phone and a small tablet or PDA. A bit too big to be a comfortable phone though due to its long and wide bulk. It is not bulky in thickness thankfully. For a device of this size it is very thin and light which is deceiving as it appears heavier than it is.

This model is 16Gb although most of that can only be used by photos, videos and music. There is a limitation of 1Gb for apps which is odd although this can easily be overcome by using a micro SD memory card for app installs.

The screen is excellent with vivid colours and a decent resolution making photos and videos vibrant. Apple bark on about retina screen displays so you don’t see pixels but in all honesty I cannot see pixels in this screen either.

This bright and vivid screen is also a great aid for the 8 megapixel camera built in. With the larger screen it feels easier to frame photos and so far it does not appear to be affected by glare from the sun, although that is easy in England as sun in 2012 is rarer than hens teeth.

There is a minor issue with this phone that can happen randomly at any time. For some strange reason the battery will all of a sudden have a life of only 2-3 hours standby after working perfectly. It loses battery so quickly that you can see the battery meter dropping. Until Samsung fix the issue there is a temporary fix. All you have to do is turn phone off, take battery out and hold it in your hand for one minute then pop back in and switch on. I had the deleting battery issue a few weeks ago and this trick fixed it for the time being. I have only had to do it once so it works for quite a while. Hopefully this can be fixed with an update.

If someone asked me if I would recommend this phone I’d say definitely as long as you really are happier with a bigger screen as that is the main selling point.