Samsung officially retires the iconic Galaxy Note brand

Shawn Knight

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In brief: Samsung has officially put the Galaxy Note brand out to pasture. Roh Tae-moon, head of Samsung’s smartphone division, told reporters at Mobile World Congress 2022 that the Galaxy Note will henceforth be released as “Ultra.” Tae-moon is of course referring to the Ultra version of the Galaxy S, the most recent of which debuted as the Galaxy S22 Ultra earlier this month.

The admission isn’t all that surprising given the rapidly evolving landscape of the smartphone industry.

Samsung introduced the original Galaxy Note at IFA Berlin in 2011. The handset featured a massive (for the time) 5.3-inch display and came bundled with a stylus that Samsung referred to as the S Pen.

Some questioned why Samsung would make a smartphone with such a large screen, but the doubters were soon quieted as consumers proved that excess was in. Less than two months after launch, Samsung announced it had shipped more than a million Note devices.

The Note proved to be a commercial success that paved the way for modern handsets with even larger screens. A smartphone with a 5.3-inch display is considered small by today's standards.

Rumors of the Note’s demise surfaced in mid-2020, with some saying Samsung wanted to shift its focus to foldable smartphones. It was all but confirmed last August when Samsung said there would be no Galaxy Note device at its next launch event. A month later, someone noticed Samsung hadn’t renewed its trademark for the Note line.

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RIP note. I loved my note 4, didnt love the lack of a carrier free option.

Would have been great if the note had been kept around as a thicker model witha replaceable battery for professionals and users willing to pay for a long lifespan device. Better then just getting rid of it.
 
Merging it with the S line was the only logical option at this point.
Yes, especially since the Fold seems to be their flagship in price at least now. S2x Ultra are huge anyway, much larger than the early gen Notes. With the ridiculous size of flagship phones now, the Note's attraction has bean lost entirely if you add stylus support.
 
RIP note. I loved my note 4, didnt love the lack of a carrier free option.

Would have been great if the note had been kept around as a thicker model witha replaceable battery for professionals and users willing to pay for a long lifespan device. Better then just getting rid of it.

I still have my 8 year old Note 3 as a backup phone. It is on its third battery and Android 11 through LineageOS. Not a single thing has malfunctioned after years of heavy use and the performance is acceptable still.

I want to slap people when they blabber about sustainability with sealed batteries, locked storage and fewer ports.
 
I still have my 8 year old Note 3 as a backup phone. It is on its third battery and Android 11 through LineageOS. Not a single thing has malfunctioned after years of heavy use and the performance is acceptable still.

I want to slap people when they blabber about sustainability with sealed batteries, locked storage and fewer ports.
If my note 4 had an unlockable bootloader or a carrier free OS I'd still be using it. I miss my zerolemon battery with its 10,000 mah capacity and while the screen was large it still fit in your hand better then modern phones.
 
Might as well. I mean, once you started having tablets that have a SIM slot and call support, some smaller tablet models, and giant tablet-sizes phones, at that point you really might as well have one product line.
 
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