Decision to go the Galaxy Note way...

It's been 1.5 years since I bought my Samsung Wave 8500 mobile phone in India. That was a time when the Android started to get popular and the iPhone remained something I thought was an expensive proposition for a mobile phone. I started to notice that Samsung was starting to do great stuff in the mobile space and decided to bite the bullet and put my money on Samsung's Bada OS. I knew there wasn't much of apps in the Samsung Bada store. I'm glad to have made that decision as I've discovered the quality and attention to detail that Samsung has seemingly been after.

Today, the mobile market is far mature than what it was, and I decided to make a change.
Though a long time Nokia user (before the Wave took over!), I've not considered Nokia this time due to various reasons. The two brands I've been contemplating over are Apple and Samsung. Having had no other Apple product other than the 2nd generation iPod and iPod shuffle, I've always craved for an iPhone and the Mac. But the price of the iPhone seemed extremely prohibitive for me, given the discoveries I made.

To put things straight, I settled in for the Samsung Galaxy Note which I also got at a decent 16% discounted rate on one of the online deals site! I was contemplating between the iPhone 4S that got released recently and the Samsung Galaxy S2. I wasn't too inclined with the S2 either because it was already getting a year old (since its release). This is about the time when my eyes caught the newly released Samsung Galaxy Note.

But the real challenge I had in going in for an Android based mobile was the fear of the device not being compatible with Android 4.0, better known as the Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS). Thankfully the next morning (Dec-20th), I saw this update on Samsung's blog that ICS was going to be made officially available on a lot of Samsung devices that included the Samsung Galaxy S2 and the Galaxy Note!

That solved my problem of choice between Apple iPhone 4S and Samsung Galaxy devices. But the next to confuse me was the choice between Samsung Galaxy S2 and Samsung Galaxy Note. After pouring over the technical specifications and reading a lot, I got convinced with the Samsung Galaxy Note. Here are three reasons why I chose the Galaxy Note over S2 -

1. I've been eyeing (on and off) at the Wacom Bamboos for quiet a long time now, and felt the Samsung Galaxy Note had at least some features of the Wacom tablets (and hope it will have more apps that will aid to it becoming more complete)
2. Being a very heavy user of phones for talking and also for micro-blogging (Twitter and Facebook specially) and more, I found the 2,500mAh battery and the 1.4 Ghz processor was just perfect for this purpose
3. I love phones that offer me good real estate for typing and viewing. Being a user of Treo 650, Nokia E90 in the past, I don't mind the size as log as it meets my primary needs

I was crazily eyeing the iPhone 4S for the Siri digital assistant feature and of course the new A5 chipset (which is really good!). And, I was constantly having the nagging itch to throw away all my "R&D" to the trash and order the Apple iPhone 4S, only until I came to know of Vlingo. This software is Siri's peer and seems to be doing a better job of a digital assistant than what Siri does! And, Vlingo is free! Hard to believe? Watch these videos for yourself -

Siri vs Vlingo - Part I

Siri vs Vlingo - Part II

Siri vs Vlingo - Part III

Vlingo has been acquired by Nuance, and this was made public on Dec-20th (the same day Samsung gave the news of ICS being available for its Galaxy devices!). Not sure if this is just co-incidence or something else. I'm just glad to have learnt all of this and thought it will be useful for many others who are contemplating between the Apple iPhone 4S and the Samsung Galaxy Note.

Share your thoughts and feedback too. As always, Stay Inspired and Stay Tuned!