[AT&T Samsung Galaxy Note I717] littlewierdo:
The negatives to know about...

The Note does not yet have NFC (Near Field Communication) but there is a custom software fix to enable it (requires root and CWM to install).

The screen also has 2 issues, what some have called black crush, and another completely separate issue called banding. The banding was my issue (I havent noticed any of the "black crush' issues people have been mentioning). I found a setting under the display options to disable saving screen power and it took a day or two and the banding began to disappear (it wasnt an immediate fix).

The last thing about the display is that it is a pentile display. Colours arent 100% accurate so if you are super sensitive to this, you'll notice. The display is a high contrast and slightly over saturated with colour as well so expect this.

The phone does not have the same high quality sound processor that the Captivate had. In fact, its quite lousy. I mean, it works but the experience will be very similar to a built in sound chip on a motherboard rather than having a dedicated sound card.

The phone also does not have a quadcore processor because ATTs LTE does not yet work with quadcores (dont ask me why).

Some have argued that the video chip on the Note is not as fast as Qualcomms.

The last over all issue is the size. Its huge. Its massive. It took nearly a week for me to get used to the size. The biggest problem with the size is that it will occasionally require two hands to reach certain screen locations. You should be aware of this if you occasionally need to do something with your phone and need one free hand (driving for example).

Touchwiz sucks.

On the dev side, things are moving rather slowly compared to other phones, primarily because we still dont have any source code yet (based on my understanding anyway). Once source code is floating around, most of the software issues will be resolved (like Touchwiz).

Now, it may seem like I just trashed the phone. Honestly, I believe in knowing all the negatives up front. Personally, I like my Note. Every phone has its own problems, not one of them is perfect.

Most of the display issues (which are the bulk of the problems) I personally am ok with but Im not super picky in this regard. The sound chip does bother me, Im more of a sound person as I am a musician. The phone having a dual core is fine considering I rarely utilize half of this phones processing power. NFC doesnt bother me because I simply dont have a use case for it.

Would I get a different phone? Probably not.

But if you are considering a different phone specifically due to size, take a look at the Galaxy S2 (the sky rocket on ATT but every carrier has their own branded version). The Galaxy S2 doesnt have most of the screen issues the Note has and is more manageable to people with smaller hands while still being a fantastically great phone (I have two Galaxy S2's).

I dont believe in looking to the future unless you are looking at most a month in the future. If you do, you'll never buy a new piece of hardware as there is always something better around the corner.

I believe the Galaxy S2 or the Note are both future proof thru the next 2 years. While there are better phones coming, these phones are getting to the point that 99% of users will never achieve more than 80% of these newer phones full potential. Processing power is more than enough for anything coming in the next couple of years. Hell, other than the screen size, my Samsung Captivate is more than capable of doing everything out right now and my Captivate is two years old.