Samsung Galaxy Note starts the tablet/smartphone hybrid race

Those of us at CES know have seen a million gadgets and gizmos in the last few hours. We’ve seen cool booths, inventive advertisements, and enough touchscreens to make our fingers bleed. There are many standouts at the show, one of which being the Samsung Galaxy Note.

Is it a small tablet or a large smartphone? Yes.

Samsung’s Senior VP Kevin Packingham described the vision behind the device. “With the Samsung Galaxy Note, we set out to create a device that enables people to do more while carrying less.”

Visitors to the Samsung booth were greeted by several caricature artists who were doing clever renditions of those who passed by. Their canvas: the Galaxy Note. Their brush: the “S-Pen”, Samsung’s advanced smart pen that comes with the Galaxy Note and harkens to a simpler mobile device day a decade ago when PDAs filled executives’ pockets and the familiar stylus helped them navigate.

This is different. It’s better.

The screen is pressure-sensitive, allowing the S-Pen to act very much like a real-world writing utensil. The harder you push on it, the wider the stroke. This combined with full HD video recording, 16 gigabytes of internal storage and an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera should make this a consideration when it’s released in the coming months.

The 4G LTE smartphone runs on Android 2.3. With a 5.3-inch Super AMOLED screen, it’s definitely not quite big enough to be considered a tablet as it’s still much smaller than even the Kindle Fire. Still, it’s big enough to have easier functionality than most smartphones and Samsung is hoping that people won’t mind having the wide device next to their face while talking on it.

If successful, this could spark a new tablet/smartphone hybrid race. Those who like the functionality of a tablet but the convenience of a smartphone may find that there’s room right in the middle between 5″-6″ that fits their needs. Why buy and carry two devices when one can fill both roles?