Tablet or phone?

Until a couple of years ago, smartphones and tablets were completely different things. They had similarities – you could swipe and poke your way around the interfaces on both – but smartphones were not designed for you to read or watch video on for extended periods of time.

Things have changed now, however. Smartphone screens are getting bigger and tablet devices are getting smaller, leading to the emergence of the “phablet.”

South Korea-based Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.’s Galaxy Note and its successor, the Galaxy Note II, have blurred the lines between the two device formats. The Galaxy Note II, with its sizable screen, is the closest thing to a real phablet so far.

But should you, as a financial advisor, buy one? And if you do, will you be able to forgo a tablet?

The biggest feature of the Galaxy Note II is its screen. At 5.5 inches, it is 0.2 inches bigger than its predecessor, the Galaxy Note, and almost three-quarters of an inch larger than Samsung’s other flagship Android-platform smartphone, the Galaxy S3.

Screen size isn’t everything; screen resolution also is important. The Galaxy Note II does pretty well here, too. It features a 1280- x-720 pixel screen, giving it a healthy pixel density of 267 pixels per inch. This level of resolution, along with the device’s bright, vibrant, active-matrix organic light-emitting diode screen, makes text very readable, so the device is a respectable ebook reader.

Unlike most ereaders, however, the Galaxy Note II has a stylus that allows you to write on it. This feature enables you to jot down your thoughts in between client meetings. In practice, however, I haven’t found this to be useful. The large screen may seem big for a smartphone, but it’s tiny for a notepad – especially one that doesn’t give you the tactile feeling of pen on paper.

I tried taking notes on this device during a couple of meetings and found the experience highly unsatisfactory. If you want your notes in digital form, it’s better to buy a Livescribe smartpen, which uses an infrared sensor with specially manufactured paper to digitize your paper notes as you write them. Alternatively, just scan your paper notes into an online note-taking system such as Evernote.

As an Android smartphone, the Galaxy Note II will go up against the Apple iOS bias that many advisors have. The iPad and iPhone have captured many an advisor’s imagination, and the streamlined, user-friendly nature of iOS is attractive. But, on the upside, the Android platform offers a more open, flexible interface for those willing to tinker.

Out of the box, the software features on the Galaxy Note II are alluring. The latest versions will come with Google Inc.’s Android 4.2 Jelly Bean software. (If your device doesn’t include this out of the box, it will receive an online update.) Jelly Bean includes Google Now, the company’s answer to Apple’s Siri, and features software-based “cards” that give you information related to your current location and are based on past activities. These include directions and times to your most likely destination, local weather, your calendar and nearby attractions. One such card that may be attractive to you as an advisor is the “next appointment” card, which shows you travel times to the next destination on your calendar.

The Galaxy Note II does all of this at high speed, thanks to a quad-core Exynos processor designed by Samsung, which enables the smartphone to work extremely quickly. The device also includes a huge battery, which (along with help from third-party battery-management software) makes the smartphone last a whole day. For a smartphone, that’s a respectable time window.

The battery is replaceable, which is another of the nice things about the Galaxy Note II. It is designed to let you get inside it to put extra technology in it. You can replace your battery when it loses its charge capacity, which increases the longevity of the smartphone.

The Galaxy Note II also includes an internal memory slot, allowing you to upgrade the existing internal memory, which can be up to 64 gigabytes. There’s plenty of upgradability here, then, which means that the smartphone will last you a long time.

The latest software update for the Galaxy Note II highlights multi-tasking even more. The software turns some of the device’s applications into multi-screen versions, meaning you can run two applications on the same screen. So, you can surf the web while checking your email, for example, or review an office document while watching a YouTube video.

Could this smartphone replace a tablet device? I find myself turning to my Galaxy Note II far more than my first-generation iPad for everything from accessing notes to reading and listening to music and podcasts.

The one thing the Galaxy Note II doesn’t handle well is magazines, which may put off some users.

I also found the soft keyboard installed on the device to be difficult and cumbersome to use. Typing emails on this device initially was painful in a way that it wouldn’t be on a tablet with a 10-inch screen. I quickly switched to a third-party keyboard application called Swiftkey, with which entering text was much easier. I potentially could get away with writing an article on this keyboard, but the process would be far from optimal.

The other process in which the Galaxy Note II would fall short is presentations. If you are the kind of advisor who likes to show flashy animated presentations on an iPad, this smartphone would not serve as a replacement. A screen of 5.5 inches is still a squint-inviting size when you’re trying to show graphics and illustrations to someone else, unless you know them extremely well.

At the end of the day, the Galaxy Note II blows the 7-inch tablet format out of the water. Neither would you want to buy a Google Nexus 7 or iPad Mini with a Galaxy Note II already in your pocket. Would you want a nine- or 10-inch tablet to complement this device? I keep eyeing them in Future Shop, but can’t help thinking that they would never leave my bag now that the Galaxy Note II is in my pocket.