The follow-up to the sneakily successful Galaxy Note phablet was announced on September 19, and is offered in titanium gray or marble white colors. The handset arrived on the T-Mobile HSPA+ network with T-Mobile claiming speeds up to an incredible 42 megabytes per second (Mbps). Those speeds are made possible because of the quad core processor on board the Samsung Galaxy Note II Android smartphone, and T-Mobile was the first United States wireless carrier to debut the big new handset/tablet.
With a larger screen than the already mammoth 5.3 inches offered by the original Galaxy Note, the Galaxy Note II delivers a 5.5 inch Super AMOLED display with 720 x 1,280 pixel resolution. That is delivered at an above average 265 pixels per inch, and the new device returns the popular smart stylus S Pen technology which delivers user handwriting recognition and note taking capabilities. Overall dimensions run 5.94 x 3.16 x 0.37 inches (151 x 80 x 9 mm), and the phablet weighs 6.3 ounces (179 g). That display is protected against scratching and chipping with a layer of Corning Gorilla Glass. A total of more than 16 million individual colors are used to render visuals.
Talk time on the Samsung Galaxy Note II 4G is a very impressive 15.00 hours after a single charge of the 3,100 mA extended life battery on board the device, and standby time runs approximately 12.0 days. A Samsung Exynos 4412 chip package is on board, delivering one of the first quad core processors to a US smartphone, an ARM Cortex A9 CPU clocked at 1.6 gigahertz. An ARM Mali-400 MP4 graphics processing chip is also on board, and the handset is one of the very limited number that contains 2.0 GB of RAM system memory. 16 GB of data storage are built-in, and additional microSD, microSDHC and microSDXC cards up to 64 GB are supported for extra storage.
Up front facing the user is a 1.9 megapixel chat cam which provides video call support, and the rear facing 8.0 megapixel camcorder allows for video capture at 1,080P HD resolution and 30 frames per second. That rear device contains a built-in LED flash, back illuminated sensor (BSI), autofocus, burst mode, panorama mode, preloaded scenes and special effects package. On board the Galaxy Note II is a built-in stereo FM radio with RDS display functionality, and a proprietary YouTube video player has been pre-installed. Popular online destinations Facebook, Picasa and Twitter are also present out-of-the-box.
