As much as I hate to admit it, I’m a closeted Apple fanboy.  Loyal customer doesn’t quite go far enough, but I’m just shy of Rabid Apple Fanboy status.  You won’t ever catch me waiting in a line on release day, but you can bet your ass I’m glued to my computer watching all the keynotes unfold live. 

My current list of Apple devices in daily use is as follows: Macbook Air, iPad, iPhone 4, iPod Nano (that I wear as a watch), iPod Classic that is permanently hooked into my car stereo, and an Apple TV.  Add into that my wife’s Macbook Pro, iPod Nano, and iPod touch, and we have nine different Apple devices in use on any given day.  Between the 24 Apple devices I’ve purchased in the last eight years and the incredible number of people I’ve converted to Mac and iOS devices over the years, I’ve single handedly put at least one Apple employee’s kid through grad school.

Knowing all that, it seems almost unthinkable that I’d end up with anything Android.  Until recently, Android was a dirty word.  So why the switch then? It really all came down to size and portability.  I wanted a device that was as capable as my iPad but in a form factor closer to a Kindle Fire. 

To be more specific, I wanted a 7” iPad with a screen resolution at least as good as its larger sibling.  Apple doesn’t make that device, and despite the occasional rumor to the contrary, it’s not likely to happen any time soon.  I toyed with a whole host of 7” tablets, and even briefly picked up a Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 plus from Best Buy, which I returned a week later.  I really liked the Galaxy Tab, but it just didn’t offer the same versatility and polished user experience of the iPad. 

Not wanting to add a third touchscreen device to my daily routine, I started to wonder if perhaps I should be looking for a replacement for the iPhone instead.  To usurp the king of the smart phones, however, any device I found would need to combine everything great about a modern smart phone with all of the multimedia advantages of a Kindle Fire-sized tablet while still being able to fit comfortably in my front pocket. 

Enter the Galaxy Note.  With it’s 5.3” display, the Galaxy Note has no direct competitors.  First and foremost it’s a phone, and a damned good one.  Compared to my iPhone 4, call quality is better with both the handset and speakerphone.  The GPS is very fast and incredibly accurate, and since it runs Android, I get access to Google Navigator, the free turn-by-turn navigation app with full spoken word functionality.  The 8MP camera with LED flash, while displaying noticeable shutter lag that seems absent gorgeous stills and video in various user-selectable resolutions up to 1080p. 

At this point, I’m sure many of you are thinking, “lots of smart phones have great call quality, cameras, and GPS capability, and they’re small enough to use with one hand.  Why would I possibly want to wrestle with something the size of the Galaxy Note every day?”

Undoubtedly, the Galaxy Note does lose out to smaller devices in terms of one-handed operation.  Someone with average size hands can easily touch every corner of the iPhone’s screen with their thumb.  The Note is way too big to reach the top half of the phone with your thumb, but you can easily reach all the keys for dialing and texting.  Thanks to a recent Samsung update, there’s now even an optional “one handed keypad” for both the dialer and keyboard that can shrink the keys down to near-iPhone size for easier typing.  A small arrow key allows you to instantly realign the keyboard to the right or left side of the device depending on which hand you’re using to hold it. 

Now let me dispel a common misconception that people who’ve never gotten their hands on the device often have.  It’s not too big to fit comfortably in your pocket.  The Note fits easily in every pair of pants I own.  Women might need to carry it in a purse, but if you’re a guy you should have no trouble fitting this in your pants pocket.  Your results may vary if you’re wearing skinny jeans, but in that case I’d suggest you’ve got bigger problems than the size of your smart phone.

Yes, people do stare and sometimes snigger when they see it pressed to the side of your head, but it’s still substantially smaller than your average land-line handset.  Given the increasing popularity of large screened cell phones, I don’t imagine it’ll take long before holding a device this size to your head seems fairly commonplace.  If that sort of thing really concerns you, get your Note in the less conspicuous black color.   

OKAY, IT’S NOT TOO BIG TO BE A PHONE, BUT WHY EXACTLY IS IT BETTER THAN AN IPHONE?

When the iPhone was first introduced, it promised to be the best iPod Apple had ever made combined with the best web browsing experience on a smart phone.  And it was.  For quite a while.  But it’s not anymore.  The simple fact is that the iPhone got a lot smarter and more powerful over the years, but the form factor didn’t evolve with it, and that has hamstrung the device. 

The iPhone’s screen is just too small. Browsing the web, reading books, watching movies, and editing documents are tasks that the iPhone is capable of doing, but not enjoyably.  Yes, you can browse the web if you’re looking for specific information, but it’s too small to make casual web browsing anything but an exercise in tedium.  Or try reading an iBook with page turns after every paragraph.  Need another example?  I watched an episode of Downton Abbey on my iPhone the other night in bed, and the screen was too small to catch the subtle facial expressions that make the show so great.  Half of the story is told with non-verbal emoting, and on the tiny iPhone screen, I missed a lot of it.

What it comes down to, essentially, is the difference between being able to use your phone in a pinch because it’s all you’ve got, versus choosing to use your phone because it’s actually great at handling the task. 

That’s what really distinguishes the Note from the iPhone and the rest of the cell phone market, and it’s all to do with the beautiful 1280x800 Super AMOLED HD screen.  Videos are gorgeous.  They look better on the Note than on any of the currently available 7” tablets.  With it’s near-retina display resolution, I’ve yet to find a color screen one-handed device that’s as perfect for e-reading.  PDF documents look great, and the web browsing experience is better than any other mobile device that you can stick in your pocket. 

The Galaxy Note won’t be for everyone, but it makes a compelling case for the existence of the Tablet Phone. It’s the best mobile device I’ve ever owned, bar none. 

UPDATE: TWO MONTHS WITH THE GALAXY NOTE

I’ve been using my international GT-N7000 Galaxy Note for just over two months now, and I thought I’d update this post to give you my longterm impressions.  For the most part, I’m making a comparison here between the Note and my previous device, an iPhone 4. 

SIZE

The Note no longer feels like a big device.  After a few weeks, the size melts away, as you quickly acclimate to the 5.3” display.  And once you get used to all that real estate, it’s hard to ever fathom yourself going to something smaller.  I tried using a friend’s iPhone the other day, and it felt like a child’s toy.  It’s just so small. 

CAMERA

My wife and I went to Costa Rica for two weeks with another couple, and I took a lot of photos and videos with the Note.  The other couple were iPhone 4S users, so we did some back-to-back comparison camera tests.  The Note seemed to return marginally prettier images, and has a better camera interface.  Despite this, the Note has serious shutter lag when taking stills, and a complete lack of image stabilization when taking video that really give the iPhone 4S the advantage.  Given the amount of processing power available in the Note, however, I’m optimistic that the upcoming Ice Cream Sandwich can solve these problems. 

GPS

The Note has great GPS.  It finds a signal very quickly, and has proven incredibly accurate.  The built-in Google Navigation functionality is an excellent value proposition, and while it’s not perfect, it does the job well enough to deter me from paying for an expensive standalone navigation app.

VIDEO / MEDIA

I use my Note as a media player with a decent amount of video and netflix watching.  A lot of that video watching happens in bed, next to my wife, who tends to go to sleep a lot earlier than I do.  The Note is the perfect size device for that situation, which is why it’s become my go-to device for video watching, a task that used to fall to my iPad. 

That said, there is a common issue on the forums with the blacks crushing when you’re watching dark video footage.  I’ve noticed this problem occasionally, usually when I’ve got the screen dimmed down all the way.  It could ruin your movie watching experience if you were watching something very dark and low contrast, but it hasn’t been a major problem for me yet, despite watching video on it on an almost daily basis.  Again, I’m hoping this gets fixed with a software update.

EXPANDABLE MEMORY

Apple charges $100 to jump from 16GB to 32GB, and another hundred to double that again to 64GB.  Buy the wrong phone, and you’ll always be stuck without enough space for your media.  The Note wins big here with it’s expandable memory.  32GB cards are about $30 on Amazon these days, and 64GB cards coming in around $80.  And if that’s not enough storage, you can buy as many of them as you like!  For a media junkie like me (my music library is pushing 70GB), expandable memory is a big win. 

S-PEN

At first, I used the S-Pen a lot to do completely unnecessary things like drawing pictures, editing phots, and other fun but gimmicky things that I knew wouldn’t be part of my daily use case once the novelty wore off..  My assumption was that the S-Pen would probably never get used after the first few weeks.

In practice, however, I find that the S-Pen is incredibly handy, and I use it all the time.  I always have a pen in my pocket, just in case I need to write down some little note.  My wife calls to give me a time and place to meet her, or what specific model code for printer ink to buy.  These are things that could technically use a typing-based note taking app on any phone to jot down, but it’s still easier to just write it down with a pen, or in this case an S-Pen.  That’s how the S-Pen really works into my daily use case, and I I’ve now come to really think of it as a killer app.

ANDROID 2.3.6 vs iOS 5

For every feature I love about Android, there’s one I dislike just as much.  The same goes for iOS 5.  In general, I’ve grown to really appreciate Android, and I think I’m actually starting to prefer it to iOS.  For me, the key features of Android are as follows:

1. -Notifications.  The pull down notification bar is much more useful than its counterpart in iOS.  Quick access to audio controls, incoming communications, and settings widgets make notifications much more powerful on Android.
   

2. -Centralized file structure.  I have always hated Apple’s hidden file structure and the need to copy files from one App to the next.  Android did it right.
   

3. -Desktop widgets.  Again, Apple just missed the boat here.  Why waste all of that screen real estate with nothing but applications.  Give me an app tray and space for widgets any day.
   

4. -Status Bar.  The Android status bar is filled with all sorts of useful information, including notification shortcuts.  Apple, if you’re reading this, stop wasting all that space in the status bar and put some useful information up there. 
   

5. -Syncing.  iTunes is a decent music player that has gotten incredibly congested with a half-realized store front, poor app management, and a really clunky sync setup for getting content onto your iDevice.  Android lets me connect to my make in more ways, including the preferred target disc mode, where my Note shows up like an external hard drive, and I can drag and drop to my heart’s content. 
   

6. -Dedicated Menu and Back buttons.  These took a while to get used to coming from iOS, but now they’re second nature, and my iPad seems strange by not having them.  The back button is especially useful, though I do sometimes wish for a “forward” button as well.  The menu button is less necessary, and the only real complaint there is that not every application makes use of it.  
   

That last issue is the real trouble with Android.  Not every app uses the tools in the same way, and it often gives the Android experience a disconnected, half-baked feeling.  Say what you will about Apple’s closed ecosystem, they really do give you a cohesive and very slick user experience.  I can do more on Android, but the things I can do on iOS are done smarter, and with less problems.  Select, copy, and paste are great examples of where Apple really nailed it.  So is the Mail app, which is leagues better than any of the dozen different email clients I’ve sampled on Android.  Regardless, what’s available on the Note is still good enough for a smart phone.  iCloud isn’t a killer app just yet, but it’s heading there fast.  When Mac OS 10.8 Mountain Lion comes out, the usefulness of iCloud will increase exponentially.  I miss iMessage too.  So many of the people I text on a daily basis are iPhone users, and since I don’t pay for an unlimited texting plan I find that I’m having a hard time staying within my text allowance. 

At the end of the day, though, iOS and Android go blow for blow in the battle for the better mobile OS.  They excel in different areas, but both are perfectly adequate on a smartphone.  Would I go back to iOS someday?  Sure.  If they made an iPhone XL with a screen that was big enough to actually work with.  But for now, the Galaxy Note stands alone in the smart phone world as the perfect device for carrying around.  It really is a smartphone and a tablet all at one time, and it fits comfortably in every pair of pants I own.