Samsung Note 2 Review

, January 23, 2013, 0 Comments

Unless you have an extreme addiction for large phones or have fingers skillful enough to stretch more than 3 inches without any strain, the Samsung Note II is not the phone for you. More commonly promoted as a “Phablet”, this phone measures 5.95 inches tall, 3.17 inches wide, 0.37 inches thick and weighs lighter than the first generation Note. The S-Pen is a neat stylus that  makes working with Note II an easy task and fingerprint free. This hybrid device manages to capture the elements of a tablet and the features of a smartphone packed in a ginormous phone that requires more than one hand to operate. Be it placing a call, punching in text or capturing a photo, this  samsung phone requires a pair.

The Note II comes in two colors – Titanium Gray and Marble White.  It runs on Android OS Jelly Bean upgradable to vs.4.1.2. The Note II also offers one of the best battery capacities unmatched by many in the market today.  One really interesting feature in this phone is how it uses active noise cancellation with a pinhole mic on top of the handset that picks up your voice and makes you sound clear to anyone you are talking to and not to forget, the hearing volumes are louder than the market average. Note II’s front and back facing cameras are also worth a mention. While the phone has an 8 MP main camera, its 1.9 MP front-facing one is what sets it apart from the rest of the crowd and makes video calling serious fun.

The colors on the Super AMOLED display look absolutely cool and it feels like they have finally toned down the harsh bright colors associated with most Samsung phones. Playing videos and games on this device is the best I’ve seen so far on any mobile.  While the humungous HD screen is great for videos, games and general browsing of the web, it doesn’t look that attractive in sunlight. This can however be rectified by adjusting screen brightness which makes it possible to use your phone in direct sunlight.

The pre-loaded Samsung apps however, are a disappointment. Luckily we have Google’s app store that saves the phone at the end of the day.  The S-Voice which is designed to compete with Apple’s Siri and Google’s voice search has not progressed as much since the S III.  At best, it can answer some basic questions like time which are also screwed up with server issues. However, one need not fret over this. Use Google’s Search app that comes with its popular voice search function and it makes one of the best voice assistants on any device.

Overall, the Samsung Note II does not disappoint if what you want is a smartphone and tablet in one XL phone. It is faster, lighter and far less messier than the first generation Note.