Hardware Design The Galaxy Note 3's design was intended to carry a more upscale, "premium" look in comparison to previous Samsung devices. Although it carries a similarly
polycarbonate-oriented design to other recent Samsung devices, the Galaxy Note 3 has a faux metallic bezel and a rear cover made of
plastic leather with faux
stitching. With a thickness of , it is slightly thinner than the Galaxy Note II, and is slightly lighter. The speaker is placed at the bottom instead of the back, while placed on the rear side on the Note 1, 2 and 4., in comparison to the back side speaker of the Note 1, Note 2 and Note 4. The Galaxy Note 3 was first made available in black, white, and pink. In December 2013, Samsung introduced three new color schemes for select markets; black with gold-colored trim, white with rose gold-colored trim, and red with silver-colored trim.
Display The display of the Galaxy Note 3 is a 5.7-inch
1080p Super AMOLED display, which is 0.2 inches larger than the 5.5-inch display of the
Galaxy Note 2, and a resolution upgraded from the Note 2's
720p display.
Battery The battery size of the Galaxy Note 3 is 3200
mAh, which is 200 mAh higher than its predecessor.
Chipsets and connectivity The
LTE version of the Galaxy Note 3 sold in Europe and North America uses a 2.3 GHz quad-core
Snapdragon 800 chip, while the
GSM-only model (N900) sold outside aforementioned regions uses an octa-core
Exynos 5420, consisting of four 1.9 GHz
Cortex-A15 cores and four 1.3 GHz
Cortex-A7 cores. Testing has shown similar performance for both models. Galaxy Note 3 Duos (N9002) is based on the LTE variant but adds an additional second SIM card slot.
Sensors The Galaxy Note 3 is equipped with the common sensors (
accelerometer,
gyroscope,
digital compass, front-facing
proximity sensor and a
barometer sensor). In addition, it has a sensor for the air hand gestures (
Quick glance,
Air jump,
Air browse and
Air call-accept) and a
hall sensor for detecting the closure of the
S-View Cover accessory. As the only Samsung flagship mobile phone next to the
Galaxy S4, it is equipped with
thermometer and
hygrometer sensors, mainly used by the Samsung
S Health app and some third-party
weather station software.
touch screen layer.
Camera The Galaxy Note 3 is equipped with a 13-megapixel (4128×3096) rear-facing camera capable of filming video footage in
4K (2160p) resolution at 30
frames per second (capped at 5 minutes per video) and in
1080p at 60 frames per second.
Slow motion video footage is recorded at
720p at 120 frames per second, but without audio track. Only the
Snapdragon variant can record in 4K. The
Exynos variant supports recording at up to 1080p only. Like the
Galaxy S4, released half a year earlier, the rear camera of the Note 3 uses the
Sony Exmor RS IMX135 image sensor. The camera software and user interface resembles that of the S4 as well. The Note 3 is the first Samsung mobile phone and one of the first mobile phones to support
2160p video recording,
1080p at 60 frames per second (compared to 30 fps) and
720p at 120 frames per second.
S-Pen As with other
Galaxy Note series devices, the Galaxy Note 3 ships with an S Pen
stylus, which has been updated to use a more symmetrical shape. Like on the predecessor, the
Wacom digitizer is able to distinguish between 1024 pressure sensitivity levels. Removing the stylus from its compartment or pressing its button whilst hovering over the display activates the new "Air Command"
pie menu which provides shortcuts to pen-oriented features such as Action Memos (on-screen
sticky notes that use
handwriting recognition to detect their contents and provide relevant actions, such as looking up addresses on
Google Maps and dialing phone numbers), Screen Write (an annotation tool), Pen Window (which allows users to draw pop-up windows to run certain apps inside), the search tool
S Finder, and Scrapbook (which allows storing and categorizing image and text excerpts from various apps). The multi-window functionality has also been updated with expanded app support, the ability to run multiple instances of a single app, and the ability to
drag and drop content between apps. The device also ships with a
news aggregator app known as My Magazine, accessible by swiping up from the bottom of the screen, and an updated version of S Note. The Galaxy Note 3 is the first mobile phone with the ability to open a supported range of applications into
floating pop-up windows. By default however, the feature is only accessible using the so-called
Air Command menu opened using the button on the stylus. The stylus allows accessing Samsung
Air View, which shows a preview of content when hovered above it, including albums in Samsung's precluded gallery software,
SMS messages, speed dial contact information, text boxes such as a browser's
URL bar and a preview bubble from the seek bar of the Samsung video player (as also known from the desktop websites of
YouTube and
Dailymotion). The Galaxy Note 3 is the only mobile phone in the
Samsung Galaxy Note series to support
Air View with both the stylus and floating fingers.
S-View Cover The '''
S-View Cover''' accessory is a horizontal flip
case with a preview window through which the Android
status bar (with battery and signal indicators, and notification icons), a clock, and the number of unread messages and missed calls can be seen. There are also interfaces for answering incoming calls and
snooze or stop a ringing alarm clock, music playback controls, title and artist name,
album cover and
playlist browser; the ability to create
Action Memos (digital
post-it notes), weather information,
S Health step counter (if activated), and a basic photo camera interface with the ability to browse recent photos. The size of the preview window has doubled compared to it on the
Galaxy S4, the earliest Samsung device to feature such accessory. Features listed above since music playback controls have been added. The accessory is attached replacing the default rear cover rather than covering it, and is detected through pins on its inner side rather than a
hall sensor used on the Galaxy S4.
Software update.
General The Galaxy Note 3 comes with
Android 4.3 "Jelly Bean" and Samsung's proprietary
TouchWiz NatureUX 2.5 user interface and software. Additional
pen-oriented features have been added to the Note 3's software. The Galaxy Note 3 has inherited
the interaction functionality of the Galaxy S4, such as
Air View, Air Gestures, Samsung
SmartScreen and on-screen motion gestures. The split-screen view is able to run select applications twice, and allows
dragging and dropping items in between. The
Samsung Group Play software introduced on the
Galaxy S4 has been extended by the ability to play back video across up to four Galaxy Note 3 units which form a larger screen surface together. Due to the large screen size of the device, a new feature that allows simulating a smaller screen size for single-handed operation has been added. An
FTP client feature has been added to the precluded "
My Files"
file manager, and a search feature has been added to the system settings. In addition to the camera functionality of the
Galaxy S4 from earlier that year, a spherical panorama and a "Golf mode" feature were added. Spherical panorama, which is referred to in the software as "photo sphere", merges pictures captured in all directions from a point, and "Golf mode" captures golf swings for forward and reverse playback. A subsequent software update inherited the "Virtual Tour" feature from the 2014
Galaxy S5, which can create 3D room tours with a map which tracks the direction.
Android 4.4.2 KitKat update On January 13, 2014, an update to
Android 4.4.2 "KitKat" was first made available through
Samsung Kies in
Poland for LTE models. The update adds user interface tweaks such as a camera shortcut on the corner of the lock screen, options for setting default launcher and text messaging applications, support for printing, and a new location settings menu for tracking and controlling the use of location tracking by apps. 4.4 also makes significant changes to the handling of secondary storage on the device for security reasons; applications' access to the SD card is now restricted to designated, app-specific directories only, while full access to internal primary storage is still allowed. Although this behavior has existed by default since
Android 3.0 Honeycomb, OEMs such as Samsung previously modified their distributions of Android to retain the previous behavior, allowing applications to have unlimited access to SD card contents. The update inherited functionality from the
Galaxy S5, including
Spherical Panorama and Virtual Tour in the camera software,
Download Booster and Samsung
Kids Mode.
Android 5.0 Lollipop update Samsung began rolling out an update to
Android 5.0 "Lollipop" in December 2014. Changes visibly affected the user interface, replacing
TouchWiz Nature UX 2.5 with
4.0. == Release ==