Samsung Galaxy Note bridges gap between tablet, smartphone

— -- It's a tablet. It's a smartphone. It's a phablet.

Samsung's new Galaxy Note is hard to pigeonhole. It resembles an oversize smartphone or an undersized tablet. Now throw in the fact that a key feature is a stylus-like pen —Palm Pilot redux? — and you're left wondering what gives.

For the record, Samsung positions Galaxy Note as a "super phone," one that goes beyond the usual multimedia and smartphoning capabilities and will also let you write and sketch as if you were using pen and paper.

The South Korean electronics giant insists Galaxy Note is a "mainstream product." To help get that message across, Samsung ran a commercial for Galaxy Note during the Super Bowl. My take though, after a few days of testing, is that it will likely have more niche appeal than anything, especially at $299.99 with a two-year AT&T contract. The handset, already available overseas, hits AT&T, Best Buy and other stores Sunday.

Hybrid devices haven't exactly fared well in the U.S., as Dell found out with the ill-fated Dell Streak, a small Android tablet. Despite the odds against Galaxy Note, much of what you find in the device is quite sweet. Its 5.3-inch display is gargantuan in comparison with most smartphones, and yet the device is thin, good-looking and well-proportioned.

It runs on AT&T's fastest 4G LTE network — now in 28 markets but clearly not in parts of northern New Jersey, where I conducted some tests.

Inside is a powerful dual-core processor and 16 gigabytes of storage, expandable via microSD by 32GB. It has an impressive rear-facing 8-megapixel autofocus camera that can capture stills and high-definition video, and a front-facing 2-megapixel camera for video chats.

In sizing up the smartphone market, many people already think state-of-the-art screens are plenty big enough, especially in the Android world where Galaxy Note plays. Several Android devices have 4½-inch or so screens. The Apple iPhone's screen is 3.5 inches.

The so-called HD Super Amoled display on Galaxy Note is not only expansive but beautiful, with a resolution of 1280x800 pixels. The payoff comes watching video, playing games, reading eBooks or surfing the Web — though I detected unwelcome video artifacts on the screen when watching movies.

Screen size is a balancing act, of course, and some will find the large display ungainly. Holding the phone to your ear might feel a bit dorky. I found it could easily fit in a coat pocket or purse, and surprisingly my front jeans pocket as well. But the size is simply not going to work for everybody. Galaxy Note weighs about 6.5 ounces, heavier than your typical smartphone.

For now it runs Android version 2.3 Gingerbread, though it will be upgradeable to Ice Cream Sandwich. It's a bummer that it doesn't run the latest version of the operating system from the start.

The phone has a large removable battery providing, Samsung says, standby and talk time of 10.4 days and 10 hours, respectively. I didn't run a formal battery test but got through a day of "normal" mixed use without a problem.