Samsung recently announced its Galaxy Mega as the latest entrant in its series of smartphones and with a screen size of 6.3 inches, it is certainly their biggest one too. With this announcement, Samsung seems to be moving closer, inch-by-inch (pun intended) to bringing to the market the ultimate fusion of a tablet and a smartphone.
The Samsung Galaxy Mega looks just like the Galaxy S4, but is much bigger, bigger even than the Note 2. The chassis is classy and durable with a metallic rim around the edges. For a device that looks this big and actually measures 167.6 mm in length, it is surprisingly comfortable to hold in your hand and also weighs much lighter than you’d expect. Many feel that large devices are a bit awkward to make voice calls with, but like the Galaxy Note has shown, users don’t seem to see this as an obstacle.
Its 6.3 inch display is an LCD TFT capacitive touch screen with 233ppi pixel density and 720presolution ensures an astonishingly clear and sharp image whether you are playing videos or surfing the internet. Apart from resolution, the display is great and the viewing angles are reasonable. It is one of the few phones that do not use Samsung’s signature AMOLED display.
This device runs on the Android 4.2 Jelly Bean operating system which is backed up by a dual core Snapdragon 1.7GHz processor or the 1.4 GHz processor for its short twin, the 5.8inch Galaxy Mega. Both these variants come with a 1.5GB RAM and 16GB internal storage which is expandable to standard 32GB with a micro SD card. However, the performance of this device is not comparable with that of Galaxy S4 or even Note 2 considering the processor and multitasking is a bit of a worry with this one, but these are still early days to give a final verdict for the device.
Like the S III, the Galaxy Mega comes with an 8MP rear camera with a 1.9MP front camera. The rear camera takes great pictures with a resolution of 3264×2448 pixels. The camera mode has also been upgraded to include the drama mode and Eraser mode- which allows you to choose the best picture after erasing moving objects from five successive frames, along with the usual panorama, night and sports modes. Sound and shot captures a photo and also records the ambient noise- like car engines at a race or the crashing waves on the beach. This phone also comes with the latest version of TouchWiz music player with many new features and options for customization and supports a wide variety of file formats. This phone also comes with a Music Square feature that rates songs as calm, joyful, melancholy, etc and plots these along a square- then using Air View you can see the songs each corner holds and choose to play them depending on your mood.
It also packs some advanced features that the Galaxy S4 already has notably the Air View- which allows the phone to detect your finger hovering over it which enables you to preview the information- including your contacts, albums and even videos. The Smart Stay feature prevents the screen from locking as long as you are facing the front camera, while the Smart Rotate feature uses the orientation of your face rather than the accelerometer to decide how to rotate the screen. Samsung’s answer to Apple’s Siri, the S Voice has new features too with this release.
With the Galaxy Mega, Samsung seems to be going where no phone manufacturer has gone before and is making a niche for itself with its smartphone-tablet hybrids. How successful this risk is, only some sales figures will tell.
