At least that's what it appears Samsung learned, as they have cranked the productivity features up to 11 on its successor, the aptly named Samsung Galaxy Note II. The screen is bigger, up from 5.3-inches to 5.55; it's more powerful, complete with a quad-core 1.6GHZ Samsung Exynos processor; the S Pen now supports 1024 points of pressure sensitivity, up from 256 on the previous stick; and there are a ton of Galaxy Note II software features, not to mention Android Jelly Bean 4.1.
The Galaxy Note II is certainly "more" than the Galaxy Note, but is it better? One knock on Samsung is that while its devices are feature-rich, those features often either lack polish or are implemented poorly (see the Samsung Galaxy S III and S Voice). Let's find out in this full Samsung Galaxy Note II review.
Build and Design
The Samsung Galaxy Note II is big, and probably the biggest mainstream smartphone release ever, at least judging by corner-to-corner screen size. It's a phablet, for lack of a better term, that straddles the line between smartphone and tablet -- though it's more the former than the latter.
The device measures 5.95 x 3.17 x .37 inches (HWD), and weighs 6.35 ounces. It's taller than the original Galaxy Note to account for the 0.2-inches of added display, but thinner and lighter too.
As with other recent Galaxy devices, the Note II is heavy on the glossy plastic, which lends itself to the relatively light build, but isn't especially grip friendly. The back plate is removable, allowing users access to the battery, SIM card and SD card slots, and Samsung offers a variety of colorful flip-cover accessories that work well with the design.
In
use, the Note II's large size presents a few issues. It's large, thin,
and the glossy plastic makes it somewhat hard to grasp effectively for
extended phone calls. The flip cover works very well to alleviate that,
however, providing added grip. It's surprisingly pocket friendly, though
-- at least compared to any other high-end smartphone not named the iPhone or Droid RAZR M, which are both around four inches.Consider that the Samsung Galaxy S III has a 4.8-inch display, and the benefits of the added screen real estate from the extra .7 inches outweigh any issues from the overall added size, in the pocketability regard at least. Still, I suspect many users will find the Note II unwieldy as a smartphone, particularly those moving up from 3.5- and 4.3-inch devices.