Samsung Galaxy Note II Review

Introduction:

The smartphone stylus pretty much went the way of the Dodo bird with the introduction of the original iPhone that reinvented the touchscreen paradigm, yet a lot of folks have apparently been missing it.

Samsung really caught up to that trend, and introduced a stylus-laden Galaxy Note handset, but instead of putting the pen there for the precision it allows you in some tasks (like hitting tiny X buttons on small-screened WinMo handsets), it took a counterintuitive at first look approach. The Note was equipped with the gigantic for a phone 5.3” screen to doodle on - a pretty logical idea if the intent is for more useful tasks than chasing interface elements unoptimized for touch. Such a huge phone was a gamble, though - Androids were growing in screen size at the time, but the flagships topped out usually at 4.3”, and the iPhone was still at the palm-friendly 3.5” size, so a 5.3-incher raised quite a few eyebrows.

Whether because of the top-notch specs at introduction, because of the marketing push Samsung put behind the Note, or simply because people heard about the Note and said “Bril, I can now jot down the grocery list when out of the door, or scribble an address while on call”, but the monster handset carved a brand new niche for itself, and more than 10 million units have been sold so far.

Now we have its successor, the Note II, which transitions the Note family feel from the I’m-with-dork to an oversized-Galaxy-S-III-with-stylus impression. It also ups the ante with a much more ergonomic S Pen stylus that learned new tricks, a larger 5.5” screen in a thinner, narrower body, die-shrunk quad-core processor, and 2GB of RAM. Are there other improvements in store? Read on our review to find out...

Design:

A 5.5-incher doesn’t bat an eye these days, and it’s not only Samsung with the first Note to blame. Calling from smartphones is pretty down the list of the most used features now, with web browsing and media consumption knocking it off its perch. Thus, people have been increasingly game with sacrificing pocket and in-hand comfort for having an ever-increasing portable window to the world - what a smartphone screen has become today.



You can compare the Samsung Galaxy Note II with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

Despite the larger screen, the Note II is about the same weight as its predecessor, but is not as wide, making it a tad less unwieldy in the hand. It is still a giant, messy thing to deal with, especially if you have smaller hands, but has been slimmed down, and received the gradual curves and rounded corners of the Galaxy S III, meaning that it is a bit more comfortable to handle than the Note. The design similarity with the GS III is strikingly obvious, with the notable exception of the stylus silo bottom right, which hints at the Note II’s other main selling point.

The chassis build material is the same polycarbonate plastic used for the S III, with gradient colors in the non-white version, and the only gripe about it is that it is a bit slippery to hold - a slightly textured surface might have been a better choice. We don’t have a unibody design here - just the good old paper thin battery cover, under which you find a microSD and micro SIM slots, as well as a removable battery, so the Note II earns starting points for expandability right there.

The first thing you notice when you take the Note II in your hands is that juggernaut of a screen that Samsung has managed to fit in a more compact body than the Note. It occupies almost the entire front, with a significantly slimmer bezel underneath, where the home key is – the bottom bezel is thinner than not only the one on the Note, but also on the Galaxy S III.


Display:

The biggest news with the Note II’s 5.5” 16:9 screen is not just that it is the largest ever put in a phone, but that it is the best AMOLED display Samsung has ever produced, too. Granted, it’s listed as an HD Super AMOLED display, which should still mean a PenTile pixel matrix arrangement, right?

Wrong. Microscopic examinations of the Note II display show that PenTile’s peculiar way of achieving higher resolutions with ⅔ the subpixels of the usual RGB matrix, is gone now. What we have in the Note II is not a “stripe” RGB matrix either, as the blue subpixel is perpendicular to the red and green, instead of parallel, but still we have all the subpixels per pixel present now, though arranged in an alternative to “stripe” manner. Not that PenTile made that much difference compared to RGB at such high resolutions, but its alternative “screen door” matrix irked some screen purists, and we are done with that now - solid green or red looks, well, solid.


Because of this new HD Super AMOLED, one would argue that the 1280x720 (267 ppi) resolution of the Note II is actually higher on a subpixel level than the 1280x800 (285 ppi) one on the Note, yet you can’t really see much difference with the naked eye. What you can see, however, that the cold colors typical for Super AMOLED are almost gone now, and when displaying white the Note II is pretty close to a good LCD display, as it has largely disposed with the typical cold blueish tint.

More important than the geeky PenTile vs RGB argument is that the screen is also much brighter now, and might easily be the brightest AMOLED on a Samsung device yet, which, coupled with the low screen reflectance, makes for an excellent outdoor visibility, and the automatic brightness adjustment works like a charm.

Other than those, you get the usual wide viewing angles, extreme contrast, and saturated colors you would with other Super AMOLED displays, making the phone the best handset out there for enjoying video with this screen size.



S Pen:

The stylus sits very tight in the silo, almost too much so, making you put an effort while whipping it out in a brand new unit. The Note II makes a beeping noise and pops a warning when you walk away from the desk, and the stylus has not been inserted back in the silo.

Since the S Pen is longer and way thicker now, it feels much more ergonomic in the hand, and the button at the bottom is larger and easier to press compared to the original Note, too. The stylus on the Note II feels more solid, too, better than the thin, bendy unit on its predecessor.

Interface and Functionality:

Papa’s got ‘em Jelly Beans! The Note II comes with the newest Android 4.1.1 version, which many argue takes Android to a whole new level with the excellent Google Voice natural language recognition service, and the Google Now personal butler. Not only that, but the interface is silky smooth at 60fps with JB’s Project Butter, and with the zippy quad-core processor.



The 5.5” screen real estate is taken good advantage of in several of the default apps, like the Gallery or the YouTube app, where categories can be listed on the left, and their content on the right of the monster display, for much faster access and navigation.

Another groundbreaking feature is the multi-windows mode that Samsung introduced with the Note II, which splits the large screen in area sizes of your choosing, and you can run two apps at once there, so the productivity crown goes to Samsung’s handset for now.

Samsung insists to use its S Voice service, but frankly Google Voice in Jelly Bean is leaps and bounds ahead, to the extent that Samsung could not have bothered at all developing S Voice, which is only slightly above the level of Windows Phone’s TellMe voice recognition service. To its credit, Samsung gives you the option to use Google’s creation for your voice searches.

All the Nature UX features from the Galaxy S III like PopUp Play, Smart Stay or the AllShare Cast media streaming functions are here on the Note II, so you can check our S III review for the details, and we will focus on the stylus-specific apps instead.

S Pen apps and performance:

Starting with the improvements from what we already had in the first Note, we now have extra templates to choose from in the S Note app. Just like in the Note, the productivity tools include a formula section, where you can scribble a more sophisticated formula, and a pop-up browser will calculate it for you through Wolfram Alpha.

Handwriting is significantly improved, too, due to the reworked S Pen stylus, which is thicker, longer, and more ergonomic, with new technology inside, and with almost nonexistent lag when you write on the screen now. You can handwrite in emails, messages, or simply use it to convert the handwritten words to text automatically.

The S Pen has learned new tricks now, too, with the most intriguing one being Air View, which brings up previews of emails, image galleries and videos by hovering the stylus over them, or simply tells you what this or that button does with a pop-up label. In the S Planner calendar app, Air View makes the appointments pop, so they are now readable much easier if you have a crowded schedule.



The S Pen button now tells the device that selected content is to be copied or edited, and there is an Easy Clip feature to outline and crop while holding it. The cropped region than can easily be sent via email, inserted in a note, or simply put into the clipboard for later use.



Another stellar application of the S Pen is that pulling it out during a phone call evokes the S Note app. Not only you can quickly jot down addresses and other trivia from the caller, but make gestures on the screen, too, to do things such as initiating calls and bringing up emails, which can come pretty handy when you don’t have paper and pen lying around.



Processor and memory:

The best thing about the Note II silicon is that it will be the same quad-core endeavor everywhere, not replaced with S4 for LTE reasons in the US, for example. What we get is the same excellent Exynos 4412, which powers the international Galaxy S III without a hitch, but even more powerful, as the cores are clocked at a 1.6 GHz maximum now. In short, in terms of processing power, what we have on the Note II is the best Android can offer before the S4 Pro phones like Optimus G arrive, so the handset is pretty future-proof in that regard.

We have the respectable 2GB of RAM on the handset, and the basic Note II version with 16GB of internal memory has about 10GB of them user-available), which can be expanded via a microSD slot. There were also 32GB and 64GB versions announced.


 

Internet and Connectivity:

If you thought the browser on the Galaxy S III has been optimized, wait till you see what Samsung has done with the one in Jelly Bean. The iPhone 5, which is arguably with the fastest browser out there, scores 947 on the SunSpider JavaScript browser test (the lower, the better), while the Note II scored slightly above at 1028, showing that we have a record holder in Android land now, until we measure what the Snapdragon S4 Pro phones are capable of.

Fast, fluid, with no hiccups, the browser is a joy to use with this large screen. Unfortunately there is no Adobe Flash support in JB, so you’d have to hit the Play Store, or sideload the ICS browser APK if you need it.



The Note II sports 100Mbits LTE downloads, and 42Mbits HSPA+ ones, if your network supports those, plus the works when it comes to wireless radios - Wi-Fi, BT 4.0, A-GPS, Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA, and FM Radio with RDS. There is NFC, too, and the wired connectivity is covered by the MHL to HDMI video-out port.

Camera:

We’ve got an 8MP shooter on the back of the Note II, and the camera interface is the Nature UX one. Things like zero shutter lag, and burst shot when you keep the on-screen button pressed come standard, plus this thing is almost instantaneous when it comes to focusing and taking a shot. We also have 12 effects to choose from and a variety of scene and shooting modes like HDR, Best Shot, which takes eight shots is rapid succession and suggests the best one, Best Face, Panorama and smile recognition - the works.



The pictures turned out very good - sharp, with plenty of detail and decent dynamic range. The colors are a bit oversaturated, which makes them more appealing at first brush. Moreover, noise is kept in check very well, without resorting to aggressive suppression algorithms to smear the detail.



Video capture on the Note II is done with very fluid 30fps inside and out, and it features slightly boosted color saturation, plus plenty of detail to go around. You can digitally zoom in while shooting with a pinch, which we don’t recommend, since it degrades the quality significantly the more you zoom, and there is continuous autofocus and touch to focus. The captured audio, however, is strong, but pretty coarse and flat, and voices drown in the ambient sounds, despite the two mics for noise-cancellation.




Samsung Galaxy Note II Sample Video:



Samsung Galaxy Note II Indoor Sample Video:



Multimedia:

The Nature UX music player supports categorization by artists, albums and playlists, and has easy access to a plethora of sound modes like faux 7.1 channel surround sound and Concert Hall, as well as equalizer presets. You can share the tunes you are currently playing to your buddies with the AllShare Play app on the other Samsung phones around, and the Music Square tab places your discography in a mood matrix to choose from.




The loudspeaker here deserves special attention - it is very strong, stronger than on the original Note, and much stronger than on the Galaxy S III - but what is more, it sounds much fuller and with deeper bass than what we are accustomed to on smartphones.

The gallery takes a good advantage of the large screen real estate, splitting the screen in two while in folder view, offering easy access to all folders on the left, and swift scroll through the pictures they contain on the right. You can also preview the folder content with the S Pen stylus Air View functionality.

There is a choice of 3D views in the Gallery app - Timeline makes the pictures march towards you in an increasing order chronologically, and the Spiral View is suspiciously like the spiraling Gallery we saw prepped for Samsung’s Tizen OS. Individual photos can be edited with a pretty rich number of functions besides the usual crop, rotate, and annotate scenarios.

Call quality:

We enjoyed a very good call quality on the Samsung Galaxy Note II. The earpiece emits strong volume, to the extent that we had to tone it down halfway, so it didn’t blast our eardrum, and the voices sounded clean as a whistle.

On the other end they could hear us very well, too, with the sound having more than enough volume, and the dual microphone noise-cancelling setup relayed our voices loud and clear, with no audible distortions. It still feels dorky to talk with such a large slab, but as far as call quality goes, you are covered.

Battery:

Armed with a beefy 3,100mAh battery, the Galaxy Note II makes way only to the 3, 300mAh one in the MAXX and MAXX HD phones of Motorola, but here the unit is easily removable and replaceable.

There are no official talk times yet from Samsung, but we made one very unscientific test to check how the Note II stacks up against the Note and the Galaxy S III during the HD Super AMOLED’s most frugal consumption times - video playback. We charged all three phones to 100%, put them in airplane mode, pumped up the brightness to the max, and ran the same HD video for an hour. At the end the Note showed 83%, the Galaxy S III showed 87%, while the Note II’s monster battery discharged only 8%, bringing it down to 92%. If we can extrapolate from that, the Note II might very well reach the RAZR MAXX’s 14-hour video playback at half brightness with this battery.



Conclusion:

If the Galaxy Note II has attracted your attention in the first place, that means you know the downsides that come with its size, and are willing to sacrifice pocket comfort and one-handed operation for its sweet screen real estate, so the size can’t really be held against it.

It is not that much more compact, compared to the original, and it could hardly be, considering we have an even larger display now. That screen alone, however, is worth the upgrade - it is the best phone screen Samsung has ever produced, and addresses all weak points of Super AMOLED displays so far in one fell swoop.

The 24% increase in battery size alone is worth the upgrade, too, as it brings top-notch endurance to the handset, and the juicer is on top of that replaceable.

Or, if you are buying a Note for the fact that it sports a stylus silo, you’d be happy to hear that the S Pen is much improved now - easier to handle, with a more natural ink flow, and a number of handy new features like Air View and Pop Up Note.

These three in aggregate make the Note II worth it both for those that are upgrading from the original, and for first time buyers. When we throw in the very good pictures and video capture, the excellent loudspeaker, the good call quality, and the expandable memory, that subpar audio capture when recording video becomes just a small fly in a big bucket of honey. While we are at the sweet tooth metaphors - you get the latest Android Jelly Bean, too.

There is not much competition to go around in the gargantuan screen category, but the LG Intuition and the first Note, of course. The advantages before the original Note are apparent, as far as money is not a problem, since the Note II will come more expensive. Regarding the LG Intuition, its stylus is an extra you have to carry with you, it is stuck with Android ICS for now, and the squarish form factor makes it even more unwieldy to handle than the Note II.

Software version: JRO03C.N7100XXALI5