The Samsung Galaxy Note phablet befuddled supposed industry experts who exclaimed the screen was too big for a smartphone, thereby making the device too large overall for the average smartphone shopper. Evidently, Samsung had done their homework, and the device was extremely popular, selling 5 million units in its first five months of availability. It appears the native handwriting recognition technology and smart stylus S Pen are still a hit, as the second generation Galaxy Note II recently tallied 3 million sales in just over one month of availability.
The handset was first released in Samsung’s home country of South Korea, and then launched in the tech hungry United States in October. In the early part of the all-important holiday sales quarter, Samsung seems poised for big results. Industry analyst and research firm IDC says their numbers indicate Samsung and competitor Apple control nearly half of the entire smartphone marketplace, with Samsung more than doubling Apple’s sales in the July to September third quarter of this year. Samsung shipped 56.3 million units to 26.9 million iPhones shipped for Apple.
And previous to the arrival of the original Samsung Galaxy Note, industry experts and analysts had good reason to be skeptical about the huge screen size. With a 5.3 inch display, the handset was significantly larger than other 4G smartphones. But after its arrival, competing smartphone manufacturers began to make displays larger and larger, and the new 5.55 inch display on the Samsung Galaxy Note II is not pushing the dimension envelope quite as much as did its predecessor.
The Samsung Galaxy Note II 4G was officially announced in mid-September, and debuted on the T-Mobile wireless network in the United States on October 24. T-Mobile has stated that on their HSPA+ network speeds up to 42 MB can be obtained. The handset is offered in either titanium gray or marble white, and delivers the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean operating system out-of-the-box. Display resolution runs 720 x 1,280 pixels, and a second generation layer of Corning Gorilla Glass 2 protects the screen against scratching and chipping.
Almost double the average battery performance is delivered, at 15.00 hours of talk time offered from a single battery charge. The handset is also one of the first quad core smartphones in the US, with a quad core 1.6 GHz Cortex A9 central processor. 2.0 GB of RAM system memory are on board, double the average offered by a 4G smartphone, and the 16 GB of built-in storage is accentuated by a microSD slot accepting memory cards up to 64 GB in size. An 8.0 megapixel camcorder provides video capture at 1,080P HD resolution. Facebook, YouTube, Picasa and Twitter have been pre-installed, and Near Field Communications (NFC) support is also present out-of-the-box.
Buy the Samsung Galaxy Note II and save $120 off the retail price starting at 299.99.
