Verizon’s Samsung Galaxy Note II 4G Android smartphone currently tops the Amazon bestseller list for all mobile handsets they offer. Quite an impressive achievement considering the literally hundreds if not thousands of smartphones offered by the world’s largest online retailer, but one other statistic is even more telling. Some variant of the Samsung Galaxy Note II phablet currently sits in four out of the top eight slots on the respected Top 100 Bestselling Smartphones list that Amazon updates frequently. Verizon’s Galaxy Note II is currently retailing for around $99 on contract at Amazon.
The Galaxy Note II was the first Samsung smartphone to launch with Jelly Bean’s 4.1 Android operating system out-of-the-box, and delivers a huge, high-resolution display. That screen can also be split into two equal windows using the Samsung Multi-Window feature, effectively enabling you fluid multitasking between two separate applications or activities. Despite cries from industry analysts and mobile marketing mavens that the original Galaxy Note display was too large at 5.30 inches, that handset/tablet went on to become a bestseller and flagship device for the carriers that offered it.
The Galaxy Note II has been selling at an even better clip than the groundbreaking Galaxy Note, and the screen is even larger than the original. The 5.55 inch True HD display is protected by a second generation of scratch resistant Corning Gorilla Glass, and is laid out in a 16 to 9 aspect ratio. Resolution runs 720 x 1,280 pixels, delivered at the rate of 265 pixels per inch. Despite the large display size and powerful hardware package, the phone is slim, measuring just 0.37 inches (9.3 mm) in thickness.
The Jelly Bean OS mentioned earlier meshes with the Samsung TouchWiz UI and accepts multitouch, capacitive gestures for device navigation. On the Verizon 4G LTE network in the United States, you can expect up to 15.0 hours of talk time from a single charge of the handset’s oversized 3,100 mg battery. Standby time runs approximately 12.0 days, the Galaxy Note II handset offers NFC support out-of-the-box, and a Stereo FM radio with RDS display capabilities joins a YouTube video player in the multimedia package.
The Galaxy Note II for Verizon uses a quad core 1.6 GHz CPU to power the handset, and also offers a quad core Mali 400 MP4 GPU for graphics processing. The handset employs a full 2.0 GB of RAM memory to enhance multitasking and provide simultaneous voice and data access, and the 16 GB of built-in data storage are accentuated by an accompanying microSD slot. The Galaxy Note II delivers a front facing chat cam and rear facing camcorder, with that rear 8.0 megapixel snapper recording video in 1,080P HD resolution.
