Today Samsung mobile introduced their latest smartphone offering at the IFA 2012 in Berlin, Germany, the Galaxy Note 2 and it is insanely fast and much better since they had time to improve on first one. The first Galaxy Note came to market with mixed reviews and was dubbed a phablet, a smartphone and tablet combined due to its large size with a 5.3 inches screen.
However, customers immediately felt in love with it and Samsung sold over 10 million units worldwide in the first year. The Galaxy Note 2 looks to not only repeat this phenomenon, but eclipse its predecessor.
The new Galaxy Note 2 is not that much bigger than the first one and surprisingly slimmer as well; the Galaxy Note 2 has a 5.5-inch HD Super AMOLED screen (1280 x 720 pixels), but it is more longer diagonally. This allows the device to have better display for today’s video wide-screen format style at 16:9, instead of the first Galaxy Note at 16:10, making the display kind of portrait like which some customer did not like.
In addition to the bigger screen size, it also comes with a much improved S-pen (stylus pen) that has new added features such as the hovering ability where a user hovers over a picture folder and it automatically expands, displaying the content inside. This also works for video as well expanding on the frame’s time line for more detail or playback all without the S-pen actually touching the screen. Another feature neat feature for those absented minded people out there, and there are many of you who forget stuff, the Galaxy Note 2 will notify you if you move away from the pen too far reminding you not to forget it.
The S-pen itself is also thicker and longer with a more solid rubber feel to it making it like a real pen. Some customers’ complaints with the first Galaxy Note regarding the S-pen was that using the pen on the smartphone surface felt too slippery, but now with the new Galaxy Note 2 there is a drag on the motion giving that realistic pen feel.
And in terms of specs, the Galaxy Note 2 is a powerhouse with a 1.6Ghz quad-core Exynos Samsung processor with 2GB of RAM running on Android Jelly Bean 4.1. The battery is 3,100 mAh giving you that extra power to run all of the Galaxy Note 2’s features with ease. It has a 8MP main camera and 2MP front-facing.
Coming in three colors from what we see, marble white and titanium grey with a curvy look similar to that of the Galaxy S3, it’s beautifully designed and definitely does not look like an iPhone so we think Samsung is pretty safe on this one from a legal point-of-view as they recently loss a court battle in California for patent infringements on some of their smartphones.
Our only compliant is that we would have like to see a more power camera, maybe 12MP to 16MP, but Samsung probably wanted to play it safe for now and improve on the software offering while boosting some hardware specs and keeping what have work well for them with the first Galaxy Note and translating it to the new Galaxy Note 2.
So at the end of the day who is this smartphone (phablet) geared for, well anyone who does not mind talking into a giant brick, but aside from that the Galaxy Note 2 is for people who don’t’ want too many devices from a smartphone to a tablet and want to do work on the go as with the amount of power currently under the hood, it can rival some desktops. Unfortunately there is no release date yet for North America, specially Canada, but we probably expect to see it sometimes in late October or near the end of 2012.
Samsung Galaxy Note 2 Specs
- Processor 1.6Ghz quad-core Exynos Samsung processor, 2GB RAM
- Display 5.5-inch HD Super AMOLED screen (1280 x 720 pixels)
- Platform Android Jelly Bean 4.1
- Camera 8 MP camera on the back and a 1.9 MP one on the front
- Video 1080p Full HD video recording & playback
- Multi-input Full touch, + S Pen (Advanced smart pen)
- Memory Support for both HSPA+ and 4G LTE. Will have 16GB, 32GB and 64GB storage options with a microSD card slot available on each of them
