Last week, pretty much out of the blue, I was contacted by a PR company representing Samsung. They asked me whether I’d be interested in testing the new Galaxy Note 2 smartphone. Their reasoning is that the Note, Samsung’s largest, almost tablet-like phone, is a device you need to experience. It’s easy to dismiss as simply being “too large”, but the Note’s big screen has obvious advantages too. Whether or not those outweigh the pocketability issue is a personal decision.

There’s been some controversy over this “Be creative” promotion on Twitter, so I want to be absolutely clear about why I decided to join. The deal is very simple: Samsung sends me the phone, I try it for two weeks, and get to keep it. In return, I tweet, post to Facebook and blog about my experiences. Positive or negative. If you’ve been to this blog before or follow me on Twitter, you’ve probably noticed that I do this about new gadgets anyway. Essentially, I would not have to do anything I normally wouldn’t. My old Desire was starting to fail, so the timing was perfect too.

Had this been a serious tech news website run by professional journalists, I probably wouldn’t have accepted Samsung’s offer. But it’s not. This is my personal blog. Run by a lone gadget enthusiast with a broken phone. My Note 2 arrived yesterday, and I’ll certainly keep you posted.