On the 4th September,  Samsung will announce the new Note 3. But how does the original Note perform,  that is now nearly 2 years old.  The answer might surprise you.

Nearly 2 years ago I bought the Samsung Note on first day of release in the UK. Everywhere I went with it,  people starred in disbelief at its size. I got asked loads of questions.  Some people looked on in horror at its huge size.  Nowadays,  the Note is dwarfed by the Samsung Mega and Sony Z Ultra,  both over 6.3 inch screen devices. So,  I was very excited to receive in the post a second hand Samsung Note to see what had changed and how it felt against the current phones of 2013. 

The first major difference is the Note is running Android Jellybean 4.1.2 instead of 2.3.6. 2 years of software updates have made a big difference.  It is slightly faster than the original release,  and predominantly bug free.  I had no app compatibility issues.  Every single game and app installed and ran just fine.  With newly released phones you always get some apps or games that won’t work.  The next major plus is 16gb is enough with a memory card in this old phone. Why? Well apps can be moved properly to the memory card out of the box.  New android phones have less internal memory free and cannot out of the box move the entire app plus data to the memory card. 

However,  it is 2 years old,  so has less ram and a slower processor. However, it is still a dual core 1.4 GHz Arm Cortex A9 with a Mali 400 GPU. That means lag does exist and opening and closing apps is not a zippy affair.  But then it’s still acceptable. But the speed,  or lack of is the most noticeable difference compared to modern phones. It still includes a number of sensors – proximity, barometer, gyro and compass.

Flash.  Old phone.  Older Web browser that does work with Adobe flash versus Google Chrome that doesn’t.  Camera is a 5mp affair and perfectly useable, although not a patch on the Nokia Lumia 925 or Samsung S4.  In fact speed wise,  compared to the Nokia Lumia 925,  the Note is like a snail.

I am not worried about the battery as I just bought a new one.  Being removable helps! All accessories for the Note are now dirt cheap and extensive. Another bonus.

In terms of Samsung gimmicks,  it has a number of useful motion controls and Smart Stay. Multi Screen mode is available too. Blocking mode and Easy Mode have been added since launch software. S Pen software and gestures exist. But the nice thing is none of the tricks are over the top, and most I would use.

So apart from the slower speed, the screen is old tech. It is a 5.3 inch super amoled 800 x 1280, 285ppi. Not at 440ppi and 1080p but nonetheless perfectly acceptable. I also discovered it has USB Mass Storage mode, something the newer Samsung devices do not include, just USB OTG.

You can still buy the Samsung Galaxy Note N7000 new for £350. On eBay for around £200. And yet it remains a capable device even 2 years later. It has advantages over the memory and moving apps/games on the memory card properly, USB Mass Storage Mode and Adoble Flash support built in to the web browser. It is cheaper to buy including the accessories.

The negatives are its slight lag and delay between apps closing and opening. The screen tech is not the highest. Newer flagship include better S-Pen support, screens, processor, camera and often include other hardware like an Infra Red Blaster.

But overall, it really surprised me just how useable the Samsung Note is, even after 2 years.

However, with just 4 days left, I am now really excited to see what Samsung include with the Note 3. Are you?