Samsung Galaxy Note vs Galaxy Note II (Note 2)
Samsung has always been a company that was willing to take a risk in testing their new products and concepts. One such product they introduced sometime back was Samsung Galaxy Note. It was a controversial smartphone for many who believe a smartphone should be small, but its 10 million sales tell us a different story. Galaxy Note created a class of its own and stood like a boss against the constant criticism pointed at it. The name ‘Phablet’ was used to identify this monster combination of a phone and a tablet. Although it was controversial at first, the concept is been used widely now. The prominent examples would be HTC One X and Samsung Galaxy S III where they have bigger screens with powerful performance enhancements that make you rethink about your decision, to purchase a tablet.
This evolution was initiated by Galaxy Note, and today Samsung announced a successor for Note at Berlin. Imagine what Galaxy Note II can do to reshape the market? Our bet is that it can do a lot to reshape the market with the best performance seeing in a smartphone. It is both bigger and faster than the original Samsung Galaxy Note and maintains its glory as the Ace among the Kings. Most analysts weren’t expecting a successor to Galaxy Note just yet because it wasn’t even outdated yet. However, here we are with Samsung Galaxy Note II emanating the same glow that is surrounded by Galaxy S III. At the first glance, it’s like a big brother to Galaxy S III, but since actually it’s the big brother to Galaxy Note, we will compare them first.
Samsung Galaxy Note II (Note 2) Review
Samsung’s Galaxy line is the prominent and flagship product line that has earned much respect towards the company. It is also these products that have the highest return for Samsung’s investments. Hence Samsung always maintains the quality of these products at a very high level. At a glance, Samsung Galaxy Note II isn’t any different to that image. It has a majestic look that closely resembles the looks of Galaxy S III with the same Marble White and Titanium Grey color combinations. It has a 5.5 inches Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen with vibrant color patterns and the deepest blacks you could ever see. The screen was viewable from very wide angles, as well. It features a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels at a pixel density of 267ppi with a 16:9 widescreen. Samsung promises that the screen is more optimized to today’s visually oriented apps. It goes without saying that the screen is reinforced with Corning Gorilla Glass 2, to make it extra scratch resistant.
Following the footsteps of Galaxy Note, Note II is slightly bigger scoring dimensions of 151.1 x 80.5mm and has a thickness of 9.4mm and a weight of 180g. The layout of the buttons hasn’t changed where it features the big home button at the bottom with two touch buttons on either side of it. Inside this housing has the best processor that is featured in a smartphone. Samsung Galaxy Note II comes with 1.6GHz Cortex A9 Quad Core processor on Samsung Exynos 4412 Quad chipset with Mali 400MP GPU. The powerful set of hardware components is governed by the brand new Android OS Jelly Bean. It also features a 2GB RAM with 16, 32 and 64GBs of internal storage and has the option to expand the capacity using a microSD card.
The information on network connectivity is bound to change given the unit produced didn’t feature a 4G. However, when it is introduced to relevant market, necessary changes would be introduced to facilitate 4G infrastructure. Galaxy Note II also features Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n with DLNA and the ability to create Wi-Fi hotspots to share your internet connection with friends. It also has NFC along with Google Wallet. The 8MP camera has become a standard in the smartphones these days and Note II features a 2MP camera on the front for the use of video conferencing. The back camera can capture 1080p HD videos at 30 frames per second with image stabilization. One of the specialties in Galaxy Note series is the S Pen stylus provided with them. In Galaxy Note II, this stylus can do a lot more compared to the conventional styluses featured in the market. For instance, you can flip over a photo to get its virtual backside and scribble down notes just as we do on actual photos sometimes. It can also act as a virtual pointer on the Note II’s screen which was a cool feature. Galaxy Note II also has the function to record your screen, every key stroke, pen marking and stereo audio and save it to a video file.
Samsung Galaxy Note II features a 3100mAh battery that may be able to survive for 8 hours or more with the power hungry processor. The increased mileage of the battery will suffice for the bag of tricks introduced with the Galaxy Note II compared to the original Note.
Samsung Galaxy Note Review
This beast of a phone in an enormous cover and with radiant power inside burst out a year ago at the IFA 2011. At the first glance, everyone wondered whether it’s even a smartphone, as it’s big and bulky, perhaps a little larger due to the screen size. The specialty of the Galaxy Note starts with the 5.3 inches Super AMOLED Capacitive touchscreen that comes in either Black or White flavored cover. It has a super resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels and a pixel density of 285ppi. Now you have the true HD resolution in a 5.3 inches screen, and with the high pixel density it has, the screen guarantees to reproduce crystal clear images and crisp text that you can read even in the broad daylight. Not only that, but it also comes with the Corning Gorilla Glass reinforcement making the screen scratch resistant. Galaxy Note also introduced S Pen Stylus which is simply a great addition if you have to take notes or even use your digital signature from your device.
Screen is not the only aspect for greatness in Galaxy Note. It comes with 1.5GHz ARM Cortex A9 dual core processor on top of Qualcomm MSM8660 Snapdragon chipset. It is backed up by a 1GB RAM and the whole set up runs on Android v2.3.5 Gingerbread. Though the device was initially shipped with Android v2.3.5 Gingerbread, it is upgradeable to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Even at a glance, this can be seen as a state of the art device with cutting edge specifications. In depth benchmarks have proved that heuristic assumption even better than we had anticipated. Galaxy Note comes in either 16GB or 32GB storages while giving the option to expand up to 32 GB using a micro SD card. A micro SD card worth 2 GB is available with the device.
Samsung hasn’t forgot the camera either for Galaxy Note comes with 8MP camera with LED flash and autofocus along with some additional features like touch focus, image stabilization and Geo-tagging with A-GPS. The camera can also capture 1080p HD videos @ 30 frames per second. It also has a 2MP front facing camera bundled with Bluetooth v3.0 for the delight of video callers. The Galaxy Note is ultra-fast in every context. It even features HSPA+21Mbps / LTE 700 network connectivity for high speed internet along with Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n for continuous connectivity. It also facilitates to act as a Wi-Fi hotspot and the built-in DLNA enables you to stream rich media content to your big screen wirelessly. In terms of music, Samsung Galaxy Note has stereo FM radio with RDS allowing users to listen to their favorite music stations on the go. A 3.5 mm audio jack is also available. An MP3/MP4 player and a built in speaker are also on board. Users will be able record quality audio and video with good quality sound with the active noise cancellation with dedicated microphone. The device is also complete with a HDMI out.
Applications for Samsung Galaxy Note can be downloaded from Google Play. The device has a good collection of custom applications pre-loaded in the device. As mentioned before, video editing and photo editing applications will be a hit among users. NFC connectivity and NFC support is available optionally, which is a great value addition. NFC capability will enable the device to be used as a mode for electronic payments via E wallet applications. The document editor on board will allows serious work using this powerful device. Productivity applications such as organizer are also available. Other useful applications and features include YouTube client, Email, Push Email, Voice commands, predictive text input, Samsung ChatOn and Flash support.
The powerful processor and RAM combination enable the handset to multi task seamlessly; you can browse, email, and stream a YouTube video while talking with your friend on the phone. It also comes with a new set of sensors like Barometer sensor beside the normal accelerometer, proximity and Gyro sensors.
A Brief Comparison of Samsung Galaxy Note II and Samsung Galaxy Note
• Samsung Galaxy Note II is powered by 1.6GHz Cortex A9 Quad Core processor on top of Samsung Exynos 4412 Quad chipset with Mali 400MP GPU and 2GB of RAM while Samsung Galaxy Note is powered by 1.4GHz Cortex A9 dual core processor on top of Samsung Exynos chipset with Mali 400MP GPU and 1GB of RAM.
• Samsung Galaxy Note II runs on Android OS v4.1 Jelly Bean whereas Samsung Galaxy Note runs on Android OS v2.3.5 Gingerbread and is upgradable to v4.0 ICS.
• Samsung Galaxy Note II is slightly bigger, bulkier, yet thinner (151.1 x 80.5mm / 9.4mm / 180g) than Samsung Galaxy Note (149.9 x 83mm / 9.7mm / 178g).
• Samsung Galaxy Note II features a bigger screen of 5.5 inches, featuring a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels at a pixel density of 267ppi while Samsung Galaxy Note features a 1280 x 800 pixels resolution at a pixel density of 285ppi in a 5.3 inches screen.
• Samsung Galaxy Note II has 3100mAh battery while Samsung Galaxy Note has 2500mAh battery that can work up to 13 hours in 3G.
Conclusion
Conclusions are rather straightforward when it comes to comparing a pair of successor-predecessors. Ideally it stands to reason that the successor is always better than the predecessor and Samsung Galaxy Note II proves that. The only bargain we have to talk about is the trade-off between value and money. Samsung hasn’t announced a price for this flagship yet, but we can safely assume that it’ll be well over the price of Galaxy Note and will be anchored in a range equivalent to Galaxy S III. Hence it is time for us to look back and understand what the differences in specs actually do in real life. As of now, we are positive that no application would lag in either of the Note phablets. However, when you go in to benchmarking level, Galaxy Note II is probably going to excel. This doesn’t mean we would sense that as regular users. Hence, the performance gap as of now would be of relatively low importance. Other than that, Galaxy Note II also has a slightly bigger screen, and if that fits to your taste, then Note II will do a better job in satisfying your needs. Other than that, they are fairly the same beast in two different housing with different price tags. So we are positive that, whichever the model you’re going to choose would not disappoint you in any way.
Comparison of Galaxy Note II and Note Specifications