Why Samsung's Galaxy Note has to be truly special to take on the competition
- South Korean company offers so many different options of its top-of-the-range model that they are almost same as its once distinctive big-screened device
The American technology company Apple may be credited with inventing the modern smartphone, but it was its South Korean rival Samsung's Galaxy Note in 2011 that laid the foundation for the big-screened devices that many people use today.
The Note popularised the concept of making mobile devices bigger while the rest of the industry was making them smaller and more portable.
With so many Samsung choices already available when it comes to screen size, storage, and camera quality, it's unclear what the next-generation Note will offer that the S10 doesn't already have – besides the S Pen stylus
With its bigger screen – which came with its own stylus – and increased memory and storage capacity, the Note proved to be a favourite among many people, especially power users.
Yet in 2019, it could be harder than ever for Samsung to differentiate its Note from the Galaxy S line – especially now that the Galaxy S10 comes in four different versions at various sizes and price points.
Samsung typically unveils its Note around August and September and it looks as if that will probably be the case again this year since the firm just sent out invites for an event on August 7.
The Note's massive screen used to be one of the key characteristics that distinguished the Note from its Galaxy S cousins. However, there are fewer differences between screen sizes and other features these days.
Apart from Samsung's S Pen stylus, the major differences between last year's Galaxy S9 Plus and the Galaxy Note 9 are the Note's slightly larger screen and battery and the option to buy it with a lot more storage and memory than the S9 Plus.
The Note 9's screen is only 0.2 inches (0.5 centimetres) larger than the screen of the S9 Plus; the two phones offer the same functionality when it comes to important features such as the camera.
That was not the case several years ago when the Note was still relatively new. The Galaxy Note 2, which made its debut 2012, had a 5.5-inch display, making its screen 0.7 inches larger than the 4.8-inch display on the Galaxy S3 Samsung, which was released that same year.
At the time, Samsung did not release its Galaxy S smartphones in different sizes, making the Note an attractive option for those people who wanted a device with a screen that was noticeably larger than most smartphones.