Back in the day when Korean electronics giant decided to change the smartphone landscape by unveiling its first generation phablet, the Samsung Galaxy Note, there were a lot of speculations from doubters regarding the capability of the device to make it big in the smartphone competition. After all, it was a niche device, a very massive device that blurs the line between smartphone and tablet and the smartphone-buying population wasn’t too sure if they were prepared to lug around a smartphone slash tablet hybrid like the Samsung Galaxy Note.
This changed though when the advantages of its massive screen real estate was realized by our smartphone-crazed brethren. Not only that, the Samsung Galaxy Note also came with impressive components under its hood which only added more to its appeal. From then on, the table got turned and the Samsung Galaxy Note became one of the best-selling devices of the Korean smartphone and tablet manufacturer racking in sales figures in excess of 10 million units since its release last year.
Because of the popularity of the phablet, it didn’t come as a surprise that its successor, the Samsung Galaxy Note II, is now eagerly awaited by the smartphone-buying public to hit the shelves. In US shores alone, it was already confirmed that most of the major wireless providers in our side of the world will be releasing their respective variants of the second generation Samsung phablet although details regarding price point and exact release date remain scant until this day.
Sprint though already made its own announcements regarding the addition of the Samsung Galaxy Note II to its lineup of Android-powered devices. And what’s more interesting is that the wireless provider also included the price point and specific release date of the phablet on its network. The announcement was made via a press statement wherein the carrier confirmed that the Samsung Galaxy Note II will become available in the shelves of Sprint starting October 25 which is just a couple of days from now. In addition to that, Sprint also confirmed that the phablet will come with a $299.99 price tag. However, you only get to take advantage of the carrier-subsidized price point of the Samsung Galaxy Note II if you will sign a new two-year service agreement with the carrier.
As for the Samsung Galaxy Note II, the phablet is expected to ship with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and this will draw power from the Exynos 4412 Quad chipset of the device. This SoC brings into play a quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor with a clock speed of 1.6 GHz along with a whopping 2GB of RAM. The standout feature of the phablet is still its massive screen real estate which is now a little bigger than that of its predecessor’s. The display of the Samsung Galaxy Note II is a 5.5-inch SuperAMOLED HD panel with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels while its camera department is a virtual twin of the one we see in the Samsung Galaxy S III with its rear 8MP shooter and front-facing 1.9MP snapper.
