The Galaxy Note II unveiled at IFA 2012 last month, amid a bevy of other Samsung-related news that dominated the popular trade show, and immediate reactions placed it somewhere between the original Galaxy Note and the Galaxy S III.
Well, those summarizations were spot-on.
SPECS
I recently sat down with Samsung at a media event in New York City to get a closer look at the global version of its “phablet.” At first glance, it is easy to notice the new Note’s lighter and thinner design, redesigned S Pen stylus, larger 5.5-inch display, faster 1.6GHz quad-core Exynos processor, and a slew of fresh software features layered over Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.
The 720p Super AMOLED display, which boasts a slight improvement over the original, carries a 1,280-by-720-pixel resolution, and Samsung U.S. Director of Product Marketing Ryan Bidan noted it is the company’s “brightest, sharpest, clearest screen.”
The Note II also features a shrunken bezel and a physical design akin to the Galaxy S III, including the same 8-megapixel camera, and even its user-interface mimics many of the S III’s core highlights. The phablet is notably different, however, due to its new S Pen-specific functions.
“The Galaxy Note II brings the design and software experience that we created for the Galaxy S III to the Note platform,” Bidan contended.
Additional specs include a “Magic Wand” homescreen, NFC, 16GB, 32GB or 64GB storage options, and 2GB of RAM. It ships in both Mountain White or Titanium Gray flavors and further touts a massive 3100mAH battery, which is 25 percent larger than the original Note’s, for 10- to- 12 hours of normal use.
A gallery is below.