Samsung Galaxy Note 3 makes official debut with 5.7-inch 1080p screen and faux-leather back,

Samsung's annual IFA presser is typically its Galaxy Note coming-out party and this year is no different. JK Shin, the Korean company's President and CEO, has just announced the line's latest addition: the Galaxy Note 3. With a renewed emphasis on how it feels in hand, Samsung has built this Note with a faux-leather back, which should go a long way towards silencing critics of the company's former plastic-reliant ways. It also comes pre-loaded with Knox, the company's secure BYOD solution, support for super-fast LTE Category 4, runs Android 4.3 and touts integration with the just announced Galaxy Gear smartwatch.

The new Galaxy Note 3 stretches past the dimensions of its predecessor with a 5.7-inch Super AMOLED screen (vs 5.5-inches), 2.3GHz Snapdragon 800 or 1.9GHz Exynos Octa CPU, 3GB RAM, weighs 168 grams and comes in three distinct colors -- one of which is pink (!). On the inside, the Note 3's been imbued with a 3,200mAh cell -- hopefully, that's enough juice to carry on the line's phenomenal battery life. The rear camera is of the 13-megapixel variety and packs optical image stabilization for HD video recording. As for its release date, Shin did confirm that it will ship in 32GB and 64GB versions globally beginning on September 25th, and in October for the US and Japan.
As you might expect, no new Samsung device can be unleashed on the public without a slew of software features and this Note 3 doesn't disappoint. First up is Air Command which is an S-Pen features that pings up a menu wheel from which users can navigate through apps and actions; it also packs an additional feature, Pen Window, to let users draw the dimensions of floating onscreen apps. Action Memo does mostly what it says, linking your scribbled memos to specified actions like placing a call by scribbling a number. Whereas Scrapbook is a dead simple S-Pen feature: it lets you copy and save any content you draw a circle around. There's also S Finder, a feature that uses keywords to effect searches across your device; an updated S Note, which has been given a UI overhaul to be much more intuitive for users; and My Magazine which is Samsung's Flipboard-like solution for browsing large-screen content. Oh, and as a bonus for new Note 3 adopters, Samsung's throwing in a year of Premium Evernote access to sweeten the deal.

But that's not the end of the Note 3's feature-load. The company has also beefed up its Multi-Window app, now making multitasking even more harried by allowing a single app to be duplicated onscreen. The S-Pen's functionality has also been extended so users can easily drag and drop links and content across the two available app windows. Last, but not least, the Note 3 includes a curious group feature, dubbed Multi-Vision, which allows for a single image to displayed in totality across a number of the devices side-by-side.

Engadget