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Samsung tears down their Galaxy Note, stays mum on CPU

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Samsung has been a bit coy when it comes to naming the make and model of the main processor found in the gargantuan Galaxy Note. We know it is a dual-core chip, we know it is clocked at 1.5GHz, but Samsung has never provided the specifics of the CPU even upon direct questioning. An official teardown posted to the Samsung Tomorrow blog doesn’t help solve the mystery.

The teardown still provides some great info on the construction of the Note. Of particular interest is the use of a Wacom chip to decipher the input from the handset’s S Pen. Wacom is about as good as it gets when it comes to pen controllers and digital drawing — their range of input devices for use with a stylus are widely used among professional artists and designers. Staring closely at the Note’s main PCB, however, won’t reveal any more details about the CPU. Zooming in won’t do much good and it even appears Samsung has whited out the manufacturer info on the chip. We can all guess the reason for this: Samsung had to use a different chip maker to provide the goods for the Note and is unwilling to admit outright that they did not use their in-house Exynos series of processors for the job.

You can check out the full teardown for yourself to see even more details on the Note’s display, battery, various sensors and doodads. It’s all at the link below.

[Samsung Tomorrow via AndroidCentral]

Kevin Krause
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13 Comments

  1. it won’t be long before ifixit will have all the info you need about it, and then some!

  2. Wait, so the Note doesn’t use a Samsung Exynos SoC?

    1. I suppose not.  But neither does a good number of the SGSII’s, including the Galaxy Nexus, they use the TI OMAP 4250 I believe.

      1. Depends on the GSII.  GNex runs the 4460.

    2. The international version does have the Exynos. The LTE versions coming to the US won’t because the Exynos isn’t LTE compatible.

    3. Exynos does not support LTE.

  3. I don’t care about the Note at all!

    but the Journal, come to papa.. hurry the adolF up too!

  4. Qualcomm S3 chip everyone knows it….

  5. I can’t wait for the Galaxy Note or a similar device to be released on Sprint.  This would be prefect for my needs.  I am especially excited about the note taking abilities as I would love to get rid of my meeting notepads and just have everything digitatlly stored.  A

    As for the column above, I think it’s a fair bet to say it’s a Samsung processor as they are known to build everything in-house. 

    1. No. They are not. Most of the time when possible, but definitely not everything.

  6. I’m not tech savvy, i own my Note since 6 months, interesting that the S Pen is based on Wacom, great, best drawing tablet ever, i use the s Pen every day as shopping list, scrap book, drawing ideas,  i bought Note for the big screen, fits in any pocket, no need to carry a bag as with bulky tablets, iLove it, but how do i download my pics and movies from Note to computer? how come they are not able to make it user friendly, an important part for consumers, is it the bug of Samsung or Android? thank you for …. reading … suggesting … helping … nice phorum

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