Samsung Galaxy Note 2 : Review and Price

You'll need deep pockets: not just to buy the device, but to carry it as well.
The Galaxy Note is back and this time, it’s packed with more features, such as the ability to preview e-mails, events, videos, and images without even touching your stylus tip to the screen and the ability to rotate the phone’s screen depending on the orientation of your head.In almost every way, the Galaxy Note II is like the Samsung Galaxy S3. It uses the same front face, button and rear styling. So what’s different? How about the addition of a stylus, some software ... and oh yes, the much bigger size.

A handset handful

Having found the 4.8-inch Samsung Galaxy S 3 too big, it is expected to find the 5.5-inch Samsung Galaxy Note II annoyingly huge. 

Having said that it’s more comfortable to carry, however, there’s a glaring exception: when thumb-typing one-handed, We have to position things carefully to ensure there was no risk of dropping the phone. But this is ideal as a hold-in-one-hand-type-with-the-other gadget, and using that setup it’s as safe as can be.

The likelihood that any woman could keep the Note II comfortably in jeans or trouser pockets is slim, but in a man’s trouser pocket, or in a jacket pocket or handbag, it causes zero problem whatsoever even though it’s a hefty 183 grams. That weight, though, also means that the Note II has a heft and thickness that feels robust.

Screen 

One other aspect I is noticed that while carrying the Note II around was that the screen is brighter than the Galaxy S3 in daylight. Given that this is one of the S3’s weak points, It also makes it almost alarmingly bright if you use it at night.

The screen may be bigger, but it’s not any higher resolution: both the S3 and the Note II use 720 x 1280 pixels. On the S3, this gives an overall pixels per inch around 306, which is nice and sharp. The 5.5-inch screen drops the pixels per inch on the Note II to a less impressive 267. It’s still sharp, but noticeably less so when the two handsets are held side-by-side. This really only makes a difference when looking at images, however. For text, to notice the difference in sharpness you have to get close enough to the screen that your eyes start to water. I don’t recommend that.

The screen doesn’t fingerprint readily, but it does attract a few smudges over time. 
Classy Camera
The eight-megapixel camera comes armed with the usual mid range accouterments  such as autofocus and LED flash. But it also has BSI  for improved imaging in low light conditions and it comes with a smorgasbord of extra features, including tilt-to-zoom, Best Photo (eight quick-fire shots from which you can pick the best one), Best Group Pose, burst shot and face detection.

Quality is pretty good overall, though if anything it suffers a little more when there's too much light than too little. It can record video in 1080p HD quality and there's a pretty good two-megapixel camera on the front for video calls too.
Performance
The quad-core 1.6GHz processor backed by a mighty 2GB RAM has a lot of work to do but steps up to the mark admirably. This is a fast device, whipping smartly between apps and browsing web pages with no sign of slow-down. It delivered an AnTuTu benchmark rating of 13,619 -- that's higher than the Samsung Galaxy S3 and even higher than the recent Galaxy Note 10.1, essentially a full-size tablet, making it the highest benchmark of any handset we've yet tried.

It also has 4G capability, which will only be of use to you if you're on Everything Everywhere at the moment, but it's useful future-proofing for the 4G revolution that's underway.

It's running the brand spanking new, up to the minute 4.1 Jelly Bean version of Android -- one of the first devices to do so out of the box. 

The 5.5-inch screen (0.2-inches bigger than Galaxy Note) looks simply stunning. With its 1280x720 pixel resolution, the Super Amoled display is pin-sharp and packed with detail. Arguments that Amoled tends to be vivid but not necessarily accurate with colours fade into insignificance as you feast your eyes on HD video which looks bright and textured, but not overpowering.
Stylus and Software
Big it may be, but in truth, it's not hugely bigger than Samsung's hero handset, the Galaxy S3. But what makes the difference, and distinguishes this phone from virtually all the others, is the S-Pen. This latest version is a marked improvement over the original. Yes, the pressure-sensitive stylus lets you do doodles and drawings with a selection of different pen nibs and colours. You can make notes of course -- usefully, the notes page pops up as soon as you remove the S-Pen from its dock -- but also add captions and annotations to documents, pictures and web pages.

Handwriting recognition is really very impressive overall, and it did a sterling job of translating our handwritten scrawl. Even when it isn't sure, it offers a selection of similar words to choose from, predictive text-style, so you can simply tap on the one you want and keep writing.

There are handy drawing tools too, like Shape Match, which corrects outlines and makes them straight. You can record your sketches or notes and play them back to show how they took shape and automatically search for items you've written.

Samsung's new "Air View" feature allows you hover the S-Pen over items like emails, calendar appointments and gallery pictures, as well as menu icons to give you a quick preview without having to open them.

It also has the Multi Window option that we saw on the Galaxy Note 10.1, which allows you to have two windows open on the screen at once. So you could be checking your emails at the same time as watching a video, or keep a webpage open while you're drawing a picture or making notes. The screen's just about big enough to make it viable, and the processor showed no signs of struggling with multiple screens.
Conclusion
The Samsung Galaxy Note 2 offers a range of improvements over its predecessor with a bigger screen, beefed-up processor, the latest version of Android and a bigger battery. This really is a go-anywhere device that you can use for work or for fun in equal measure, a Swiss Army Knife of a handset that can do virtually everything you might want it to.

Selection and Price in India
The Galaxy Note 2 seems to have checked all the boxes, and if you’re confused whether to buy the iPad and use a compact phone, or choose the well priced 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab, your decision-making process just got more complex. The Note 2 is a compelling device that allows you to do almost everything, except type a huge document or work on a complex Excel spreadsheet, but that’s something that takes some effort even on an iPad. In the presence of other large-screen devices, you won’t stand out in a crowd with the new Note 2 even when you have this phablet against your ear. The Galaxy Note 2 is priced (on 5th December 2012) at Rs 35,999/- ; you will need deep pockets not just to buy the device but to carry it too.


Source: Pcworld.co.nz, Gqindia.com, Wired.co.uk

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