**The Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3: A Device with Great Potential, but Room for Improvement**

One of the most exciting features of the Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 is its massive 6.3-inch display. While this may seem like a lot to take in at first, it's actually a big plus when it comes to getting things done on your phone. With a screen that's almost as large as some tablets, you can fit an awful lot of content on the device, making it perfect for watching videos, browsing the web, and reading emails. In fact, we were able to load up the full website of The Verge, which is no small feat considering its 720p resolution.

The display itself is a key part of the Mega's appeal, and Samsung has done an excellent job in terms of color accuracy and brightness. While it may not have the same level of pixel density as some of its more premium competitors, such as the Galaxy S4, it still manages to deliver a sharp and clear picture that's perfect for everyday use.

**Performance: A Surprisingly Capable Device**

When it comes to performance, the Mega 6.3 is surprisingly capable considering its relatively modest specs. While it may not have the same level of processing power as some of Samsung's more flagship devices, such as the Galaxy S4, it still manages to hold its own in terms of multitasking and general use.

One of the key factors that contributes to this performance is the fact that the Mega 6.3 has a quad-core processor clocked at 1.9 GHz, compared to the dual-core processor on the Mega. This difference may not seem like a lot, but it makes all the difference in terms of overall performance and responsiveness.

**Display: The Mega's Crown Jewel**

The display is undoubtedly one of the Mega 6.3's standout features. With a resolution of 720p, compared to the 1080p display on the Galaxy S4, there may be some who argue that it's not as sharp or detailed. However, we found that this wasn't necessarily a problem in practice.

In fact, we were able to read tiny text and view websites without any issues, even when zoomed right up close. This is a testament to the display's quality and brightness, which made it easy on the eyes even in bright lighting conditions.

**Size: A Love-Hate Relationship**

One of the biggest debates surrounding the Mega 6.3 is its size. While some may see it as a major drawback, we found that the device was actually quite comfortable to hold and use, despite its massive screen size.

The fact that the phone is so thin and lightweight makes all the difference in terms of ergonomics and usability. The angled edge on the back also provides a nice grip, making it easier to hold onto when you're not using the phone.

**Design: A Well-Executed Take on the Mega Concept**

Overall, we were impressed with the design of the Mega 6.3. It's clear that Samsung has put a lot of thought into creating a device that's both functional and comfortable to use.

The fact that the buttons are positioned in a way that makes them easy to access is particularly noteworthy. We also appreciated the fact that the phone is relatively thin and lightweight, making it easy to carry around without feeling too bulky.

**Camera Capabilities: A Solid Effort**

When it comes to cameras, the Mega 6.3 delivers a solid effort. The 8-megapixel camera on the front is paired with an impressive quad-core processor, which makes for fast and accurate performance.

We were particularly impressed with the rear-facing camera, which delivered great results in both daylight and low-light conditions. This is a testament to the phone's ability to handle high-quality photography, making it a great option for those who want to capture life's special moments.

**Conclusion: A Device that's Worth Considering**

Overall, we think the Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 is a device worth considering, especially if you're looking for a larger screen size without breaking the bank. While it may not have all of the bells and whistles of some of its more premium competitors, it still delivers a solid performance and impressive display.

That being said, we do think that there's room for improvement in certain areas, particularly when it comes to processing power and software features. However, we believe that these issues are minor compared to the device's overall strengths, making it a great option for anyone looking for a larger screen size without sacrificing too much in terms of performance or value.

**So, What Do You Think?**

We'd love to hear from you! Is the Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 something that you're considering, and do you have any thoughts on its pros and cons? Let us know in the comments section below!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey guys mike here the detroitborg with a look at the samsung galaxy mega so the mega is a new line of android smartphones from samsung now the mega refers to the large screen size so this is the 6.3 inch model there is a 5.8 inch model 6.3 obviously is the more higher spec version but the interesting thing about the mega series is that right now they are not high spec phones and kind of price in the mid range so although you get a very large screen you actually get a fairly mid-range phone priced accordingly it's kind of an interesting product right now it's not sold in the us i don't expect it to come to the us but it is sold globally for example i have the french version here french language version this will be sold in the uk for example so you can pick this up if you're in europe and if you're in the us you can pick this up of course from third party sellers and this will work on each or gsm carriers like att and t-mobile we'll work on hspa plus here and we'll work on lte in the global market so let's go ahead and take a look to see what we get now in terms of specs you're gonna have to excuse my friends here but we have a 1.7 uh gigahertz dual core snapdragon 400 processor an adreno 305 gpu we also have 1.5 gigs of ram or 8 and 16 gig capacities internally you can also expand that thanks to a micro sd card slot up to 64 gigs you have an 8 megapixel camera uh with a 1.9 megapixel secondary camera so pretty good cameras nfc technology a very large 3200 milliamp hour battery it also supports gps and glonass we have a micro usb port for charging which also supports mhl so you can output hd video through your usb port thanks to a dongle which you have to purchase separately we have our model number here which is the gti 9205 and we have android 4.2 running on here so this is the latest version of android also supporting the latest version of touchwiz ux which is very similar to what you get on the galaxy s4 so let's go ahead and unbox this thing just crack the seal lift the lid and there is our galaxy mega gps nfc 1.7 gigahertz processor hd super clear lcd this is actually a 720p display uh and there we go that's our android branding lift it up as you can see this is the black version you can get this in white although it wasn't shipping at the time i purchased mine normally i prefer white so let's set this aside for just a moment looks exactly like a gs4 just blown up quite a bit and let's take a look to see what we get inside this box let's flip this around here so you can see we have our manuals in french i wonder if there's an english version in here i don't think so nope just french now they've also included a 4 gig micro sd card so right there and they also give us an adapter for using this with our computer so i'm not sure if all versions shipping will include this but that's kind of a nice bonus we have our european wall adapter here for charging our device so white doesn't quite match the black foam that's okay i also have our micro usb charging cable we have our set of headphones so these are the samsung headphones in-ear headphones with those uh gels that fit into your ear let's see if they've included any other yep there they are they're just kind of slotted in here so these are the other gels you can put in your ear find the right fit we also have that very large battery in here again 3200 milliamps milliamp hours let me see if i can get this out a little tab here there you go definitely the largest battery i've seen so let's go ahead and take a look at the phone so we can pop the battery in alright so let's get back to the phone itself we're gonna peel off some plastic but first you can see we have some illustrations here demonstrating how to install the battery so that's pretty obvious let's peel this off you can see that sort of plastic this is we still have that glossy plastic again very much like the galaxy s4 you can see it kind of has a weave pattern to it looks very sharp especially in these bright lights let's go to the front here and peel off the front panel it goes right off that's a lot of glossy glass right there looks very sharp so along the side you see we have that chrome bezel again very evocative of the gs4 this is not metal this is still plastic but it looks very sharp we have our volume rocker on this side we have our sleep wake power button on the right side you can see it's still placed in a convenient spot for your thumb so it's a pretty natural location it's not all the way up here for example same with the volume rocker down here find that usb charging port as well as a microphone actually you can see i have more plastic on here we have to peel it off you can see we have an ir blaster we have another microphone noise cancellation or other other microphone we have our headphone jack and that's about it so let's go ahead and start peeling off this plastic so as you can see just like the gs4 they like to wrap it and lots of little pieces of plastic around the bezel so it doesn't scratch in transit alright so i think that is the last piece of plastic so let's go ahead and take a look at the front so we have our home button again very familiar to any samsung foam you can see we have that weave pattern along the front carried over on the front panel up here you can see we have our earpiece as well as our ambient light sensor and proximity sensor as well as our camera now what you don't see here what you get in the gs4 is an rgb sensor for adjusting the display so kind of stripped down a little bit from the gs4 let's go ahead and take off the back panel you can see we also have our speaker down here again a lot like the gs4 we have our led flash 8 megapixel camera they do not have a piece of plastic over the lens like they do with the gs4 so that's good so let's go ahead and peel off this back panel again you have a little thumb port here for popping off the panel comes right off so you pretty much have a very large slot for the battery now something interesting here is that we actually have a combined micro sd and micro sim slot so they're stacked on top of each other so that's kind of interesting so you can see below here we have our sim up here we have our uh sd card slot now like the gs4 the battery itself contains the nfc technology not the back panel so if you look inside you'll see there are no antennas here for nfc so let's go ahead and install the battery just drop it in and put the back cover back on so it snaps into place pretty familiar for any samsung phone and it fits on pretty snugly all right so let's boot this up for the first time just going to tap and hold the power button you feel a little vibration samsung galaxy mega gti 9205 you can also see we have a led notification light up here now during the setup process samsung kind of coaches you on some of the features available through touchwiz that includes s beam so if you tap on s beam you'll get a little illustration on how that works same with air view we're pretty familiar with air view basically you can hover the finger your finger over your display and it will detect the presence and act accordingly so certain apps can take advantage of that we'll demonstrate that in a bit we have smart state technology as well so it's able to see your eyes and will act accordingly so it won't turn off the screen that sort of thing we have easy mode so you can enable easy mode if you want a simpler user experience and we have adapt display basically turn it adapts the display to the uh ambient lighting conditions all right so let's go to next now i can name my phone here so it wants to do michael kucalika gala let's fix that and just call it the galaxy mega all right so let's go and take a look at this giant display again 6.3 inches 720p resolution good for 233 pixels per inch certainly not as pixel dense as something like the galaxy s4 which is a 1080p display over a 5-inch display so that's gives us a pixel density well north of 400 so not the pixel sharpness of the galaxy s4 but still pretty impressive the thing that really jumps out to me is that although this is an lcd display has very rich contrast very rich colors so it still looks absolutely fantastic so as you can see we have that touchwiz user experience again very similar to gs4 i really like that lock screen i really would like to be there right now so you just swipe up unlock it you can also swipe down from the lock screen to access your quick toggles up here so you see all the familiar toggles you're familiar with from the gs4 such as smart stay air view nfc s beam wi-fi hotspot multi windowing air screen mirroring power saving mode blocking mode blocking mode basically uh is a do not disturb feature mobile data bluetooth screen rotation lock sound gps and wi-fi which you don't see here is smart scrolling which this phone does not have like the gs4 you also have your brightness controls and you have your ongoing notifications so if we swipe to unlock you can see we have a pretty familiar touchwiz user interface this is the default configuration so you can see all the apps they've included on the home screens so you can see also we have these widgets we have our calendar widget we have our story album which is a app for organizing your photos on your device you also have your widget here for your samsung music player you have your weather widget your search widget you have email camera gallery samsung app store and the play store as well as the internet android browser which is interesting here so it's not the default browser is not google chrome it's the android browser that samsung put together messaging contacts foam they do include chrome i believe i don't know if this installed when i restored it for my account but chrome is there in the app drawer so again you just go through the app drawer and you'll find even more apps and you can also use this little scrolling gesture here to scroll between screens now you can do that also on the home screen and you can manage it just by pinching out like this so if you want to change your home screen you just tap the home button at the top of each screen and you can move them around by dragging it around and you can add other home screens like that or you can tap and hold them and remove them there you go works also the same with apps so for example i don't want to use this browser so we can go up to remove we can go to the app drawer gets chrome chrome here and drop it down there you go now because this is such a large screen we now have rotation for landscape and portrait mode so it's kind of similar to samsung tablets we haven't really seen this on their smartphones now there is a lot we can do from the lock screen thanks to android 4.2 which now supports lock screen widgets so for example we can swipe across this uh clock face and get to one of our screens i've already added one widget here and i can go and add another widget to another screen just by hitting this plus button so here i can add gmail so i'll add gmail to my lock screen and it's asking me what i want to see in gmail so let me just go to my inbox so now you can see it's loading that so if i go lock unlock swipe i get google now and now i get to my gmail so i can quickly look through that without unlocking the phone now we have two options here for the right lock screen so whatever is to the right of the home lock screen you can get two options you can either get the camera or you can get this series of apps so you can modify this by going to the edit button and you can remove them just like that or you can add them from your list of available apps now because this is android 4.2 we have two ways of accessing the drop down menu so you can use the single swipe to access your notification panel along with your quick settings toggles or you can use the two finger swipe to get right to your quick settings toggles and you can also jump between them with this little button in the top now if you're under your quick settings here you can also edit them takes you to the notification panel settings so here you can rearrange them so for example if you want smart stay up here you can do that and it bumps wi-fi back down here if you want to put it back there you go now like all samsung devices we still have our off-screen menu controls so we have our menu button back button as well as our home button now these do have dual purposes so for example if we tap and hold the home button we do get our recent apps so here we can swipe them out of the way to close them or we can tap on any one of them to launch them we can also go to our manager here so we can manage our active applications so we can end them download apps we can manage our ram so we can clear some of that memory and we have storage so we can see how much storage we're taking up now you can also get to google now from here so if you hit the g i'll take you to google now so we can do we can use google now what's the weather like tomorrow in rochester hills michigan tomorrow's forecast for rochester hills is 75 degrees with a chance of storm now we can also double tap the home button to get to s voice what's the weather like tomorrow in rochester hills michigan you'll hear some thunder on saturday now you can activate multi windowing mode by tapping and holding the back button here so this is the multi-window tray and basically you can scroll through the available apps for this mode you can also edit what appears here so if you don't want for example hangouts to be here you can just drag it out of there or you can drag it back in now you can also move this from left to right sides if you want it on the left side there you go you can also tap it to hide it automatically hides itself after you don't after a period of inactivity you can also work use this in landscape mode so if it goes to landscape you can see it's either on the left or right hand side and again you can move it around from the left to right side if you wish now multi windowing allows you to run two apps at the same time so for example we can launch chrome and then we can grab another app so for example let's see if we can grab the youtube app drop that here so there you go you have the full the verge website up here which i can scroll through and then you have youtube down here and you can see it's also coaching me on how to use youtube here so for example i can go ahead and launch one of my at one of my uploads and watch it in the background so let's go ahead and launch this one portable and powerful so there we go and you can scroll it up or down i can take it with me wherever i go and you can also switch between those screens they do go to the bottom or top screen now because this is such a large phone samsung has added something called one-handed operation which we've seen with the note 2 so if you go to settings go to my device you'll see one-handed operation you can toggle all of these on or off they're off by default so if you go to learn about one handed operation it basically illustrates it for you so it kind of aligns the keyboard to the left hand or right hand side of the screen so you can use your thumb let me just demonstrate that for you so i've enabled this if i go to my phone dialer you can see right now it's orientated toward the left if i want to use it on the right should do that you can see it's within thumb typing distance so that's very useful with a phone so large now one of the more interesting apps here is s translator which also launched with the galaxy s4 basically you can speak in one language and they will output in another so this is great if you're traveling you get lots of languages so for example i have german selected but you can select a brazilian english uk english to the us french german italian japanese korean simplified chinese and spanish so basically i can speak in english how old are you you'll translate it in text so v alt cincy and we can have it speak it so you can use this to interact with other people so it's kind of a nice sort of live translator this also means that another person could speak in their language and it will translate it into english so for example so there you go that translates into i have a headache in english another big app here is watch on which uses the ir blaster on the phone to control your av equipment now it's very easy to set up basically you tell the device your location automatically find your channel listing based on your service and it populates it with the currently broadcasting shows so that means you can basically tap on any one of these to launch the show so it makes it very easy to discover your content without having to go to the menu on your tv to figure out what's going on this is definitely a much nicer user interface so you can also set this up to control your av equipment your tv your av receiver your dvr that sort of thing uh so for example if i want to tap on any one of these shows like law order if i click watch now it will change the channel for me you can see it's flashing the ir code right now and then i can go to my remote control and control it so i can control the volume the channel the source i can mute it i can also go to my tv and dvr controls for navigation as well as play pause reverse that sort of thing so works pretty well i definitely like having this on my phone kind of beats having the remote control uh somewhere else in the room so you at least always have it with you now something watch on support which i can't demonstrate is that it can actually broadcast video from your smart tv specifically your samsung smart tv to your phone so you can basically continue watching your show from your tv on your smartphones if you walk away to the kitchen you always have your show with you on your phone and you can resume it back on your samsung smart tv when you get back to your entertainment room now a really neat app here is group play so group play basically works across samsung devices so if you have group play installed on that device you can share music files photos etc between devices pretty easily but first you have to create a group and so you have to have one host device to do this so we're going to go create a group say the password so it's going to turn this on so now i have several options here i can share music share pictures share documents or play games what i'm going to do is show you how sharing music works which is kind of neat so we're going to go to share music now i'm going to share my one music file here which is included with the device we're going to click done so now i have my host device playing the music so now i have my galaxy s4 here which also has the group play app installed it also has nfc technology so all i have to do in order to get the music to play here and here is touch the phones together so there we go automatically launches the group play app we're gonna select join group enter in my password go to share music so there you go so there you go the devices are in sync and playing the track together so basically you have your right speaker and your left speaker so you get this kind of dynamic surround sound audio sounds pretty good and of course you can add several devices to get multiple speakers in theory you can generate a 5.1 surround sound system so it works pretty good so again this device controls it you go up here to toggle between your controls pause it play it you can also control volume right from the host device it controls the volume across all devices in fact you have specific control over the volume of each device from that control as well now air view is also a feature we're familiar with from the galaxy s4 it only works with some apps so for example the email app basically if you hover your thumb over one of these messages here you can see you get a little preview this also works in the gallery app and the calendar app so let me go to the calendar and show you so in the calendar i have to do is hold your finger over the event and it gives you some more detailed information now this also works in the gallery i'm sure just hold your finger over any one of these albums and gives you a little preview of what's in them now if you're in the album view just hold your finger over any one of these images and you get a larger one you can also tap on it to enlarge it now as we've seen before the video player also has a pop-out video player so for example we play this video clip i recorded quite a while ago now has to load it but basically what i can do is pop it out into a separate window you can see it floats over whatever i'm doing so right now i'm on the home screen it's still loading the video but i can move it around i can also resize it i can pause it or i can close it so this only works with the embedded video player not third-party video players now safety assistance is interesting i actually haven't seen this before it doesn't appear on my gs4 or other samsung devices so i'm not sure if this is available in other markets or if it's a version of the software that's yet to be pushed out but safety assistance basically allows you to set up an emergency alert system automatically all you have to do is hold the volume up button for three seconds and it will set this into motion so what will happen is it will take photos with both cameras it will record your location and send an emergency message to your contacts so you can also designate your emergency contacts just by adding them i'm not going to do that because i don't want to reveal them but that gives you an idea so you can add as many contacts as you want so it's kind of like a way of contacting people in a difficult situation in which you can't pick up your phone and call on anybody of course it's maybe not as useful if it's in your pocket at least the photos aren't but you can also toggle that feature on and off so it's kind of interesting now the camera app is something we're pretty familiar with as well from the gs4 it's actually very similar software you also have that mode function here which allows you to select between different modes one of them is beauty face so it enhances the facial features automatically when taking portrait pictures best photo we'll take a series of pictures and then select the best one to save continuous shot best face sound and shot basically you take a single photograph and you can record sound with it rich tone hdr panorama mode sports mode for quick photography night mode for higher exposure automatic mode etc etc so you can quickly cycle between them you can also use the grid view here instead i'm not going to demonstrate all those there's a lot of them you can also record video and you can also snap a photo while you're taking your videos you can see it's silent while it's doing that you can pause it and resume recording now we also have voice control so we can do things like shoot cheese record video now we also have our filters down here we have a little arrow if you look here see a little arrow here indicating our filters you can activate them and they appear live on screen now if you look at our benchmark scores you can see the gs4 really pulls ahead of the mega and that makes sense we're dealing with a quad core clocked at 1.9 gigahertz versus a dual core clocked at 1.7 this also has two gigs of ram this has a next generation snapdragon 600 processor we also have an octa-core out there as well so performance is definitely much better on the gs4 you also have to keep in mind that this display is much higher resolution so 1080p versus 720p save a lot more pixels here to drive than on the mega so performance isn't the best on the mega but of course you're paying less for it now of course the big story here is screen size which means you can get a lot on this screen at once so for example we've loaded the full the verge website and although it's not a high pixel density uh screen like the gs4 you can still read very tiny text without zooming in so for example if we zoom all the way down to these uh thumbnail articles you can see the text is actually pretty sharp it's pretty legible if we focus in here so you can see it's not as sharp as it could be but it's surprising considering this is only 233 ppi now just to do a size comparison here we have the eight inch note we have our mega 6.3 inch our 5.5 inch note 2 our galaxy s4 and then our relatively tiny iphone 5 so you can see there's a huge difference in size between these devices so size is the big story here so in conclusion the mega is kind of a in-between device it seems like they need to go a step further to bring it up to more exciting levels so it'd be nice to have a phone this size but have really current generation specs but of course you'd get much higher price tags at that point so it's kind of nice that they're exploring this sort of category and maybe eventually we'll see even higher end versions of phones this large now in terms of size it is very large phone most people aren't going to like this i have a very large hand so it works for me but still a two-handed device it's not something i'm going to use comfortably with one hand at all times you have to shuffle around that sort of thing but it's actually very thin and lightweight so that really makes this size more manageable that's a big imp that really impacts the overall feel of this phone or the overall ergonomics of this phone like for example the note to me feels like a heavy brick in my pocket it's a little too thick it just doesn't feel like a very comfortable phone to use with this phone design you have a nice angled edge which gives you a more grippable surface area all the buttons are in the right location they're very ergonomically placed and overall it just feels like a very well-balanced phone they've done a good job handling the size the display again lcd i prefer lcd technology because it's brighter it's more color accurate particularly useful for taking photographs you want a more accurate view of your photographs oled tends to exaggerate colors it tends to look very good with user interface elements you know with vivid solid colors but i really prefer more accurate color reproduction than uh kind of the over saturated look of the oled displays it's also more brighter whites are a lot brighter they're more white so the blue or washed out so it looks pretty good to me i really like this display certainly not the density of those displays but overall very sharp and i can't complain at 233 ppi that's pretty good now performance is actually pretty good and i think part of that is the fact that this device is using or pushing less pixels than the gs4 the gs4 has a lot more pixels to push with that 1080p display than the 720p display here so it actually performs pretty well doesn't feel as sluggish as maybe the gs4 does from time to time also despite having these really impressive specs in the phone versus the lower end specs in the mega this actually does a pretty good job keeping up with the new and pretty feature packed touchwiz the cameras are also pretty good so that 8 megapixel camera maybe not a 13 megapixel sensor but it does a pretty good job again very similar to the gs3 we're familiar with and also the rear facing camera also is pretty good it's pretty much the same camera you get with the uh gs4 alrighty guys i really want to know what you think about the galaxy mega is this phone just too big or is this something you actually want to see so let me know in the comment section below and i'll see you again in the next onehey guys mike here the detroitborg with a look at the samsung galaxy mega so the mega is a new line of android smartphones from samsung now the mega refers to the large screen size so this is the 6.3 inch model there is a 5.8 inch model 6.3 obviously is the more higher spec version but the interesting thing about the mega series is that right now they are not high spec phones and kind of price in the mid range so although you get a very large screen you actually get a fairly mid-range phone priced accordingly it's kind of an interesting product right now it's not sold in the us i don't expect it to come to the us but it is sold globally for example i have the french version here french language version this will be sold in the uk for example so you can pick this up if you're in europe and if you're in the us you can pick this up of course from third party sellers and this will work on each or gsm carriers like att and t-mobile we'll work on hspa plus here and we'll work on lte in the global market so let's go ahead and take a look to see what we get now in terms of specs you're gonna have to excuse my friends here but we have a 1.7 uh gigahertz dual core snapdragon 400 processor an adreno 305 gpu we also have 1.5 gigs of ram or 8 and 16 gig capacities internally you can also expand that thanks to a micro sd card slot up to 64 gigs you have an 8 megapixel camera uh with a 1.9 megapixel secondary camera so pretty good cameras nfc technology a very large 3200 milliamp hour battery it also supports gps and glonass we have a micro usb port for charging which also supports mhl so you can output hd video through your usb port thanks to a dongle which you have to purchase separately we have our model number here which is the gti 9205 and we have android 4.2 running on here so this is the latest version of android also supporting the latest version of touchwiz ux which is very similar to what you get on the galaxy s4 so let's go ahead and unbox this thing just crack the seal lift the lid and there is our galaxy mega gps nfc 1.7 gigahertz processor hd super clear lcd this is actually a 720p display uh and there we go that's our android branding lift it up as you can see this is the black version you can get this in white although it wasn't shipping at the time i purchased mine normally i prefer white so let's set this aside for just a moment looks exactly like a gs4 just blown up quite a bit and let's take a look to see what we get inside this box let's flip this around here so you can see we have our manuals in french i wonder if there's an english version in here i don't think so nope just french now they've also included a 4 gig micro sd card so right there and they also give us an adapter for using this with our computer so i'm not sure if all versions shipping will include this but that's kind of a nice bonus we have our european wall adapter here for charging our device so white doesn't quite match the black foam that's okay i also have our micro usb charging cable we have our set of headphones so these are the samsung headphones in-ear headphones with those uh gels that fit into your ear let's see if they've included any other yep there they are they're just kind of slotted in here so these are the other gels you can put in your ear find the right fit we also have that very large battery in here again 3200 milliamps milliamp hours let me see if i can get this out a little tab here there you go definitely the largest battery i've seen so let's go ahead and take a look at the phone so we can pop the battery in alright so let's get back to the phone itself we're gonna peel off some plastic but first you can see we have some illustrations here demonstrating how to install the battery so that's pretty obvious let's peel this off you can see that sort of plastic this is we still have that glossy plastic again very much like the galaxy s4 you can see it kind of has a weave pattern to it looks very sharp especially in these bright lights let's go to the front here and peel off the front panel it goes right off that's a lot of glossy glass right there looks very sharp so along the side you see we have that chrome bezel again very evocative of the gs4 this is not metal this is still plastic but it looks very sharp we have our volume rocker on this side we have our sleep wake power button on the right side you can see it's still placed in a convenient spot for your thumb so it's a pretty natural location it's not all the way up here for example same with the volume rocker down here find that usb charging port as well as a microphone actually you can see i have more plastic on here we have to peel it off you can see we have an ir blaster we have another microphone noise cancellation or other other microphone we have our headphone jack and that's about it so let's go ahead and start peeling off this plastic so as you can see just like the gs4 they like to wrap it and lots of little pieces of plastic around the bezel so it doesn't scratch in transit alright so i think that is the last piece of plastic so let's go ahead and take a look at the front so we have our home button again very familiar to any samsung foam you can see we have that weave pattern along the front carried over on the front panel up here you can see we have our earpiece as well as our ambient light sensor and proximity sensor as well as our camera now what you don't see here what you get in the gs4 is an rgb sensor for adjusting the display so kind of stripped down a little bit from the gs4 let's go ahead and take off the back panel you can see we also have our speaker down here again a lot like the gs4 we have our led flash 8 megapixel camera they do not have a piece of plastic over the lens like they do with the gs4 so that's good so let's go ahead and peel off this back panel again you have a little thumb port here for popping off the panel comes right off so you pretty much have a very large slot for the battery now something interesting here is that we actually have a combined micro sd and micro sim slot so they're stacked on top of each other so that's kind of interesting so you can see below here we have our sim up here we have our uh sd card slot now like the gs4 the battery itself contains the nfc technology not the back panel so if you look inside you'll see there are no antennas here for nfc so let's go ahead and install the battery just drop it in and put the back cover back on so it snaps into place pretty familiar for any samsung phone and it fits on pretty snugly all right so let's boot this up for the first time just going to tap and hold the power button you feel a little vibration samsung galaxy mega gti 9205 you can also see we have a led notification light up here now during the setup process samsung kind of coaches you on some of the features available through touchwiz that includes s beam so if you tap on s beam you'll get a little illustration on how that works same with air view we're pretty familiar with air view basically you can hover the finger your finger over your display and it will detect the presence and act accordingly so certain apps can take advantage of that we'll demonstrate that in a bit we have smart state technology as well so it's able to see your eyes and will act accordingly so it won't turn off the screen that sort of thing we have easy mode so you can enable easy mode if you want a simpler user experience and we have adapt display basically turn it adapts the display to the uh ambient lighting conditions all right so let's go to next now i can name my phone here so it wants to do michael kucalika gala let's fix that and just call it the galaxy mega all right so let's go and take a look at this giant display again 6.3 inches 720p resolution good for 233 pixels per inch certainly not as pixel dense as something like the galaxy s4 which is a 1080p display over a 5-inch display so that's gives us a pixel density well north of 400 so not the pixel sharpness of the galaxy s4 but still pretty impressive the thing that really jumps out to me is that although this is an lcd display has very rich contrast very rich colors so it still looks absolutely fantastic so as you can see we have that touchwiz user experience again very similar to gs4 i really like that lock screen i really would like to be there right now so you just swipe up unlock it you can also swipe down from the lock screen to access your quick toggles up here so you see all the familiar toggles you're familiar with from the gs4 such as smart stay air view nfc s beam wi-fi hotspot multi windowing air screen mirroring power saving mode blocking mode blocking mode basically uh is a do not disturb feature mobile data bluetooth screen rotation lock sound gps and wi-fi which you don't see here is smart scrolling which this phone does not have like the gs4 you also have your brightness controls and you have your ongoing notifications so if we swipe to unlock you can see we have a pretty familiar touchwiz user interface this is the default configuration so you can see all the apps they've included on the home screens so you can see also we have these widgets we have our calendar widget we have our story album which is a app for organizing your photos on your device you also have your widget here for your samsung music player you have your weather widget your search widget you have email camera gallery samsung app store and the play store as well as the internet android browser which is interesting here so it's not the default browser is not google chrome it's the android browser that samsung put together messaging contacts foam they do include chrome i believe i don't know if this installed when i restored it for my account but chrome is there in the app drawer so again you just go through the app drawer and you'll find even more apps and you can also use this little scrolling gesture here to scroll between screens now you can do that also on the home screen and you can manage it just by pinching out like this so if you want to change your home screen you just tap the home button at the top of each screen and you can move them around by dragging it around and you can add other home screens like that or you can tap and hold them and remove them there you go works also the same with apps so for example i don't want to use this browser so we can go up to remove we can go to the app drawer gets chrome chrome here and drop it down there you go now because this is such a large screen we now have rotation for landscape and portrait mode so it's kind of similar to samsung tablets we haven't really seen this on their smartphones now there is a lot we can do from the lock screen thanks to android 4.2 which now supports lock screen widgets so for example we can swipe across this uh clock face and get to one of our screens i've already added one widget here and i can go and add another widget to another screen just by hitting this plus button so here i can add gmail so i'll add gmail to my lock screen and it's asking me what i want to see in gmail so let me just go to my inbox so now you can see it's loading that so if i go lock unlock swipe i get google now and now i get to my gmail so i can quickly look through that without unlocking the phone now we have two options here for the right lock screen so whatever is to the right of the home lock screen you can get two options you can either get the camera or you can get this series of apps so you can modify this by going to the edit button and you can remove them just like that or you can add them from your list of available apps now because this is android 4.2 we have two ways of accessing the drop down menu so you can use the single swipe to access your notification panel along with your quick settings toggles or you can use the two finger swipe to get right to your quick settings toggles and you can also jump between them with this little button in the top now if you're under your quick settings here you can also edit them takes you to the notification panel settings so here you can rearrange them so for example if you want smart stay up here you can do that and it bumps wi-fi back down here if you want to put it back there you go now like all samsung devices we still have our off-screen menu controls so we have our menu button back button as well as our home button now these do have dual purposes so for example if we tap and hold the home button we do get our recent apps so here we can swipe them out of the way to close them or we can tap on any one of them to launch them we can also go to our manager here so we can manage our active applications so we can end them download apps we can manage our ram so we can clear some of that memory and we have storage so we can see how much storage we're taking up now you can also get to google now from here so if you hit the g i'll take you to google now so we can do we can use google now what's the weather like tomorrow in rochester hills michigan tomorrow's forecast for rochester hills is 75 degrees with a chance of storm now we can also double tap the home button to get to s voice what's the weather like tomorrow in rochester hills michigan you'll hear some thunder on saturday now you can activate multi windowing mode by tapping and holding the back button here so this is the multi-window tray and basically you can scroll through the available apps for this mode you can also edit what appears here so if you don't want for example hangouts to be here you can just drag it out of there or you can drag it back in now you can also move this from left to right sides if you want it on the left side there you go you can also tap it to hide it automatically hides itself after you don't after a period of inactivity you can also work use this in landscape mode so if it goes to landscape you can see it's either on the left or right hand side and again you can move it around from the left to right side if you wish now multi windowing allows you to run two apps at the same time so for example we can launch chrome and then we can grab another app so for example let's see if we can grab the youtube app drop that here so there you go you have the full the verge website up here which i can scroll through and then you have youtube down here and you can see it's also coaching me on how to use youtube here so for example i can go ahead and launch one of my at one of my uploads and watch it in the background so let's go ahead and launch this one portable and powerful so there we go and you can scroll it up or down i can take it with me wherever i go and you can also switch between those screens they do go to the bottom or top screen now because this is such a large phone samsung has added something called one-handed operation which we've seen with the note 2 so if you go to settings go to my device you'll see one-handed operation you can toggle all of these on or off they're off by default so if you go to learn about one handed operation it basically illustrates it for you so it kind of aligns the keyboard to the left hand or right hand side of the screen so you can use your thumb let me just demonstrate that for you so i've enabled this if i go to my phone dialer you can see right now it's orientated toward the left if i want to use it on the right should do that you can see it's within thumb typing distance so that's very useful with a phone so large now one of the more interesting apps here is s translator which also launched with the galaxy s4 basically you can speak in one language and they will output in another so this is great if you're traveling you get lots of languages so for example i have german selected but you can select a brazilian english uk english to the us french german italian japanese korean simplified chinese and spanish so basically i can speak in english how old are you you'll translate it in text so v alt cincy and we can have it speak it so you can use this to interact with other people so it's kind of a nice sort of live translator this also means that another person could speak in their language and it will translate it into english so for example so there you go that translates into i have a headache in english another big app here is watch on which uses the ir blaster on the phone to control your av equipment now it's very easy to set up basically you tell the device your location automatically find your channel listing based on your service and it populates it with the currently broadcasting shows so that means you can basically tap on any one of these to launch the show so it makes it very easy to discover your content without having to go to the menu on your tv to figure out what's going on this is definitely a much nicer user interface so you can also set this up to control your av equipment your tv your av receiver your dvr that sort of thing uh so for example if i want to tap on any one of these shows like law order if i click watch now it will change the channel for me you can see it's flashing the ir code right now and then i can go to my remote control and control it so i can control the volume the channel the source i can mute it i can also go to my tv and dvr controls for navigation as well as play pause reverse that sort of thing so works pretty well i definitely like having this on my phone kind of beats having the remote control uh somewhere else in the room so you at least always have it with you now something watch on support which i can't demonstrate is that it can actually broadcast video from your smart tv specifically your samsung smart tv to your phone so you can basically continue watching your show from your tv on your smartphones if you walk away to the kitchen you always have your show with you on your phone and you can resume it back on your samsung smart tv when you get back to your entertainment room now a really neat app here is group play so group play basically works across samsung devices so if you have group play installed on that device you can share music files photos etc between devices pretty easily but first you have to create a group and so you have to have one host device to do this so we're going to go create a group say the password so it's going to turn this on so now i have several options here i can share music share pictures share documents or play games what i'm going to do is show you how sharing music works which is kind of neat so we're going to go to share music now i'm going to share my one music file here which is included with the device we're going to click done so now i have my host device playing the music so now i have my galaxy s4 here which also has the group play app installed it also has nfc technology so all i have to do in order to get the music to play here and here is touch the phones together so there we go automatically launches the group play app we're gonna select join group enter in my password go to share music so there you go so there you go the devices are in sync and playing the track together so basically you have your right speaker and your left speaker so you get this kind of dynamic surround sound audio sounds pretty good and of course you can add several devices to get multiple speakers in theory you can generate a 5.1 surround sound system so it works pretty good so again this device controls it you go up here to toggle between your controls pause it play it you can also control volume right from the host device it controls the volume across all devices in fact you have specific control over the volume of each device from that control as well now air view is also a feature we're familiar with from the galaxy s4 it only works with some apps so for example the email app basically if you hover your thumb over one of these messages here you can see you get a little preview this also works in the gallery app and the calendar app so let me go to the calendar and show you so in the calendar i have to do is hold your finger over the event and it gives you some more detailed information now this also works in the gallery i'm sure just hold your finger over any one of these albums and gives you a little preview of what's in them now if you're in the album view just hold your finger over any one of these images and you get a larger one you can also tap on it to enlarge it now as we've seen before the video player also has a pop-out video player so for example we play this video clip i recorded quite a while ago now has to load it but basically what i can do is pop it out into a separate window you can see it floats over whatever i'm doing so right now i'm on the home screen it's still loading the video but i can move it around i can also resize it i can pause it or i can close it so this only works with the embedded video player not third-party video players now safety assistance is interesting i actually haven't seen this before it doesn't appear on my gs4 or other samsung devices so i'm not sure if this is available in other markets or if it's a version of the software that's yet to be pushed out but safety assistance basically allows you to set up an emergency alert system automatically all you have to do is hold the volume up button for three seconds and it will set this into motion so what will happen is it will take photos with both cameras it will record your location and send an emergency message to your contacts so you can also designate your emergency contacts just by adding them i'm not going to do that because i don't want to reveal them but that gives you an idea so you can add as many contacts as you want so it's kind of like a way of contacting people in a difficult situation in which you can't pick up your phone and call on anybody of course it's maybe not as useful if it's in your pocket at least the photos aren't but you can also toggle that feature on and off so it's kind of interesting now the camera app is something we're pretty familiar with as well from the gs4 it's actually very similar software you also have that mode function here which allows you to select between different modes one of them is beauty face so it enhances the facial features automatically when taking portrait pictures best photo we'll take a series of pictures and then select the best one to save continuous shot best face sound and shot basically you take a single photograph and you can record sound with it rich tone hdr panorama mode sports mode for quick photography night mode for higher exposure automatic mode etc etc so you can quickly cycle between them you can also use the grid view here instead i'm not going to demonstrate all those there's a lot of them you can also record video and you can also snap a photo while you're taking your videos you can see it's silent while it's doing that you can pause it and resume recording now we also have voice control so we can do things like shoot cheese record video now we also have our filters down here we have a little arrow if you look here see a little arrow here indicating our filters you can activate them and they appear live on screen now if you look at our benchmark scores you can see the gs4 really pulls ahead of the mega and that makes sense we're dealing with a quad core clocked at 1.9 gigahertz versus a dual core clocked at 1.7 this also has two gigs of ram this has a next generation snapdragon 600 processor we also have an octa-core out there as well so performance is definitely much better on the gs4 you also have to keep in mind that this display is much higher resolution so 1080p versus 720p save a lot more pixels here to drive than on the mega so performance isn't the best on the mega but of course you're paying less for it now of course the big story here is screen size which means you can get a lot on this screen at once so for example we've loaded the full the verge website and although it's not a high pixel density uh screen like the gs4 you can still read very tiny text without zooming in so for example if we zoom all the way down to these uh thumbnail articles you can see the text is actually pretty sharp it's pretty legible if we focus in here so you can see it's not as sharp as it could be but it's surprising considering this is only 233 ppi now just to do a size comparison here we have the eight inch note we have our mega 6.3 inch our 5.5 inch note 2 our galaxy s4 and then our relatively tiny iphone 5 so you can see there's a huge difference in size between these devices so size is the big story here so in conclusion the mega is kind of a in-between device it seems like they need to go a step further to bring it up to more exciting levels so it'd be nice to have a phone this size but have really current generation specs but of course you'd get much higher price tags at that point so it's kind of nice that they're exploring this sort of category and maybe eventually we'll see even higher end versions of phones this large now in terms of size it is very large phone most people aren't going to like this i have a very large hand so it works for me but still a two-handed device it's not something i'm going to use comfortably with one hand at all times you have to shuffle around that sort of thing but it's actually very thin and lightweight so that really makes this size more manageable that's a big imp that really impacts the overall feel of this phone or the overall ergonomics of this phone like for example the note to me feels like a heavy brick in my pocket it's a little too thick it just doesn't feel like a very comfortable phone to use with this phone design you have a nice angled edge which gives you a more grippable surface area all the buttons are in the right location they're very ergonomically placed and overall it just feels like a very well-balanced phone they've done a good job handling the size the display again lcd i prefer lcd technology because it's brighter it's more color accurate particularly useful for taking photographs you want a more accurate view of your photographs oled tends to exaggerate colors it tends to look very good with user interface elements you know with vivid solid colors but i really prefer more accurate color reproduction than uh kind of the over saturated look of the oled displays it's also more brighter whites are a lot brighter they're more white so the blue or washed out so it looks pretty good to me i really like this display certainly not the density of those displays but overall very sharp and i can't complain at 233 ppi that's pretty good now performance is actually pretty good and i think part of that is the fact that this device is using or pushing less pixels than the gs4 the gs4 has a lot more pixels to push with that 1080p display than the 720p display here so it actually performs pretty well doesn't feel as sluggish as maybe the gs4 does from time to time also despite having these really impressive specs in the phone versus the lower end specs in the mega this actually does a pretty good job keeping up with the new and pretty feature packed touchwiz the cameras are also pretty good so that 8 megapixel camera maybe not a 13 megapixel sensor but it does a pretty good job again very similar to the gs3 we're familiar with and also the rear facing camera also is pretty good it's pretty much the same camera you get with the uh gs4 alrighty guys i really want to know what you think about the galaxy mega is this phone just too big or is this something you actually want to see so let me know in the comment section below and i'll see you again in the next one\n"