When the original Galaxy Note arrived, to say that it made a “big” impression is an understatement. Many industry analysts felt that the 5.3 inch display was much too large to be popular with the average smartphone buyer, but the integrated native handwriting recognition technology, powerful processor and high resolution display proved popular all around the world. The handset immediately became a flagship device for those wireless carriers which offered it.
Enter the Galaxy Note II big screen smartphone/tablet, which hit the Sprint 4G LTE system in the US on October 25 of last year. Samsung must have thought if big is good bigger is better, because they increased the screen size to 5.55 inches. The smart stylus S Pen returns in a thicker and longer format which feels more natural in your hand, and delivers some extra features not found on the first Galaxy Note. With a quad core CPU, quad core graphics processor and 720P display, the handset was an immediate hit.
Another feature the new Galaxy Note II delivers is the Multi-Window application which allows you to divide that large screen into two smaller active windows. This lets you watch a movie on one screen while you send e-mail on another, or download an application on one side of the display while you enjoy a chat session on the other. And regarding many of the phones announced at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona, Spain last week, it appears that the big-screen Galaxy Note II phablet was used as a guinea pig by many other smartphone manufacturers.
Multiple handsets are arriving from companies like LG and HTC with displays of 5.0 inches or larger, and most of them deliver a quad core processor. It seems the cross demographic popularity of the Samsung Galaxy Note II help solidify the trend towards larger displays that began with the original Galaxy Note smartphone. The Galaxy Note II is the first smartphone from South Korean manufacturer Samsung to provide the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean operating system out-of-the-box.
The 5.55 inch Super AMOLED screen delivers a resolution of 720 x 1,280 pixels, protected by a second generation layer of Corning Gorilla Glass. That screen is laid out in a 16 to 9 aspect ratio, considered the standard for true HD video viewing. Talk time runs as high as 15.0 hours from a single charge, and a Samsung Exynos 4 system chip powers the device. The hardware package includes 16 GB of built-in storage, a microSD slot, and a quad core 1.6 GHz ARM Cortex A9 central processor.
