Samsung Electronics launches Galaxy Note

Samsung Electronics, the world's second-largest manufacturer of mobile phones, said Monday that it launched its latest smart mobile gadget Galaxy Note in South Korea in a bid to take the lead in a new phase of the mobile phone market. The Galaxy Note, which was first introduced in September at IFA 2011, the consumer electronics fair held in Berlin, was Samsung's latest Galaxy lineup, combining the portability of a smartphone with the larger screen of a tablet computer, according to Samsung. The device ensured portability and grip with 9.65-millimeter thin, 182 grams in weight and a rounded back design, while featuring a 5.3-inch super active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) display. The function of "S Pen," or a digital pen, was added to the device in a bid to enable users to draw, paint and crop images by writing on the screen, Samsung said. Featuring Android's 2.3 Gingerbread platform, the gadget was powered by a 1.5-gigahertz dual core processor supplemented with fourth generation (4G) long term evolution (LTE) network service. "Galaxy Note is a revolutionary product opening a new category in the market. It will deliver a whole new mobile experience beyond feature phones, smartphones and tablet devices," said Shin Jong-kyun, president and head of Samsung's mobile communications business. In addition, Samsung launched Galaxy Nexus, the world's first smartphone running Android's 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. The latest Android operating system (OS) combined the benefits of smartphones and tablet computers, according to Samsung. The smartphone, which was first introduced in Hong Kong last month, offered quicker multi-tasking and faster web browsing than previous models, while the near-field communication (NFC) function allowed users to easily share contents with other users by tapping their devices together, Samsung said. With the updated Ice Cream Sandwich, the Galaxy Nexus offered facial recognition technology, which unlocks the phone by identifying the user's face.