When Samsung released the original Samsung Galaxy Note late last year, the massive smartphone slash tablet hybrid instantly became a hit because of its impressive specs sheet and massive screen real estate. It got all the attention it deserved from the smartphone-buying population and went on to become one of the more popular Samsung devices to hit the market despite its being a niche device. after all, niche devices are not that popular in the market. Take the case of the Dell Streak 5 for example. It was the first smartphone slash tablet hybrid to be released but our smartphone-crazed brethren never really warmed up to the device because of the identity crisis it suffered from – it got confused whether it was an undersized tablet or an oversized smartphone.
However, it looks like the Samsung Galaxy Note could be headed for retirement anytime soon especially that its predecessor, the Samsung Galaxy Note II, has already been announced by Samsung at the manufacturer’s pre-IFA conference. Well, we have heard all sorts of rumors and speculations about the second-generation phablet from Samsung and the announcement pretty much confirms most of these.
In terms of its design and aesthetics, the Samsung Galaxy Note II pretty much looks like a Samsung Galaxy S III on steroids. It is a bit bigger than the original Note but only because it packs a slightly larger 5.5-inch display compared to 5.3-inch display of its predecessor. The phablet will be released in a Marble White and a Titanium Gray paint job and hopefully, the build issues we have seen on the Samsung Galaxy S III will not be present on the Samsung Galaxy Note II.
The S-Pen stylus of the Samsung Galaxy Note II also got redesigned making it thicker and longer so you can easily grab it. Not only that, it also comes with several tricks up its sleeve and of these is called Air View. This feature of the S-Pen enables a user to however the stylus over say for example an email and the phablet shows a preview of the contents of that particular email without having to actually open the said email. Pretty neat, eh?
As for its resume, the Samsung Galaxy Note II will launch with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean for its operating system and this will draw power from the Exynos 4412 Quad chipset of the phablet. With this SoC in its internals, the phablet can rely on a quad-core 1.6 GHz ARM Cortex-A9 processor and 2GB of RAM to deliver the computing power it needs. It will be released with storage space ranging from 16GB to as much as 64GB with the option to further beef this up using its memory expansion slot. Its display on the other hand got bumped up to 5.5 inches and is the same SuperAMOLED HD panel as that of the Samsung Galaxy S III with the same 1280 x 720 resolution. The camera department is the same as that of the Samsung flagship with its rear 8MP shooter and front 1.9MP video call and self-portrait camera.
