Under pressure
The new S Pen is also more sensitive compared to the original and can now distinguish between 1024 different levels of pressure. You can feel and see the difference this makes and you now get extremely fine control over line thickness.
Superb video player
How does it work as a phone? Superbly, thanks to a size that puts speaker and microphone closer to ear and mouth than smaller devices can manage and very good active noise cancellation. Also, that huge and removable battery proved capable of more than eight hours of HD video playback, and an easy 60 hours of call and data intensive general use.
To conclude on some peripheral features the loudspeaker is powerful and composed and put my Nexus 7 to shame when it came to listening to music or video sans headphones. The MicroUSB port supports HDMI-out and USB OTG and you get a very nice pair of earphones. To cap it all, the Note 2 also comes with 48GB of Dropbox storage free for two years.
Winning combination: the Note 2's mix of handset and tablet works out well despite being a large form factor
Verdict
For a pound less than a 16GB iPhone 5 with its piddly 4in screen, terrible maps app, dodgy Wi-Fi reception and scratch-prone body, the Galaxy Note 2 is something of a bargain if you are after the ultimate mobile phone. It has the physical presence of an A380, the power of Concorde and the stamina of a U-2, and is packed with more features than a Swiss army knife. ®
Thanks to Clove Technology for the loan of the review handset.
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Samsung Galaxy Note 2 review
COMMENTS
"It's basically a bigger S3 with a better quality screen"
You say that like its a bad thing
Re: unsatisfying review :(
Top of page 3 "How does it work as a phone? Superbly, thanks to a size that puts speaker and microphone closer to ear and mouth than smaller devices can manage and very good active noise cancellation".
I'll bite...
"Quad core is overkill when few applications are massively multi-threaded, just optimise your OS or stop using hooky interpreted Java code."
Damn right AC, this processor is far too fast. Why the hell do we want fast processors in the latest iterations of smartphones and pads? We should have been happy with the 500Mhz processors we had back in the days of iPaq. Goddamn kids.
Hook line..
...and sinker, the dig is there to bring you out to make posts like this, predictable? apple has made billions out of the same type of people.
"It's basically a bigger S3 with a better quality screen."
Just like the original note was basically a Galaxy S 2 with a bigger screen. That only sold in the millions!
"Oh and why in the conclusion are you having a dig at the iPhone 5 which you gave such a good score? be consistent please."
Because the iPhone 5 has proven less than perfect since release? Maps, case scratching, and today I read that there are big software-related battery drain problems for some devices.
If you want a big screen phone with working maps out of the box then the iPhone 5 is out for the moment, and the Note 2 definitely fits the bill.
I think your fanboi is showing...
