Hello everyone. OK, here we are with the Samsung Galaxy Note 2
hardware.
This is Samsung's latest and greatest phone
coming in with a 5.5 inch super amoled RGB screen
it really is a monster.
This is one big phone compared to something like the Samsung Galaxy S3 or
the iPhone 5 you're really going to notice the size of this phone.
That's not to say that it's too big
but it won't suit certain people.
You're going to find it's too difficult to hold in your hand I'm afraid, for a long period of time.
Now, other than the huge, 5.5inch screen
they've put a 1.6Ghz quad core
Exynos processor backed up with 2gig of system RAM
and you've got a choice of 16, 32 or 64 gig of storage.
This is a big
beefy phone.
A 1.6Ghz processor, quad core...
it absolutely
flies for gaming
and for practically anything else you can throw at it as well for that matter.
Anyway, on the front of the device we have a
1.9meg pixel front facing camera,
a couple of sensors,
and the grille for your earpiece.
On the bottom we have a
physical home button.
I know a lot of people prefer soft buttons as dictated by Google for Jellybean.
It does make a bit of a difference having a physical home button there though.
Because you've got double click options, long press, etcetera which just seem to
feel a little bit more solid.
Using soft touch buttons on the
Nexus 7
or on the Galaxy Nexus, sometimes it just doesn't feel right, having that physical
button there does make a bit of a difference.
The side of the phone
is very very thin.
It's about the same thickness
as the Samsung Galaxy S3 and so
feels good in the hand. If you've got big hands, you'll be more than comfortable
holding this device.
The tapered edges again really aids the feeling that it's
sitting comfortably within your hand and sitting within the palm of your hand properly
not kind of just raised up on the edges or anything like that.
It makes for a very pleasurable holding experience.
On the left hand side of the device are the volume rockers
volume up, volume down
On the other side of the device
is your power button, which for my liking is a little bit on the small side maybe
and also just on this edge here
you can see the back cover pop.
Get a fingernail or something into the corner there and pop.
Back cover is a little bit on the stiff side.
On the top of the device
you have your 3.5mm headphone jack,
and a small noise cancelling microphone.
And on the bottom of the device, a micro usb
and another noise cancelling microphone.
On the back, an 8 megapixel shooter which is exactly the same as the
Samsung Galaxy S3
and an LED flash which for my opinion is slightly on the blue hue side
when you're using it, not the best flash in the world but it gets the job done.
At the bottom of the device is your speaker grille, which is actually
covered over by more than 50% by a small piece of plastic effectively
in the back cover, a bit of an odd design decision there but this speaker is very very loud anyway.
Certainly much louder than the Samsung Galaxy S3
and probably around twice the size of the S3 although it is buried in the plastic.
And then we have the S Pen which is
available at the bottom of the device and this provides
touch control using a pen stylus device. It's actually a digital stylus
meaning that it's actually communicating with
the phone
simultaneously and we'll get on to those features in another part of the review.
Inside the back cover of the device
we have a very very large 3100mAh battery.
That's going to be driving the device for really a good two days on
standby general usage
and so if you are just checking your email
playing the odd game and so on, two days is very viable out of this battery.
However, if you are really hammering your phone, making lots of phone calls, wifi turned on, gps,
running the screen at the highest brightness settings,
then about a day out of the battery is what you are going to get.
But for a device of this size, with a 5.5inch screen that's
still pretty spectacular, it has to be said,
One interesting thing to note is they have actually moved the nfc chip
from the battery
onto its own back cover,
so now the nfc is part of the back cover, not the battery. If you want
to go and buy aftermarket battery, third party, you no longer have to worry about
does it have nfc built in.
Now the nfc connectors are there
and that powers the nfc chip.
The SIM card tray is here, underneath the battery, you will need to take the battery out to get to the SIM
but crucially
no longer do you have to take your battery out to get to the micro SD you can now
pop the memory card in as and when you want to.
Pull the back cover off,
pop card in,
put back together.
And here you can see the speaker.
Big chunky speaker, but if you look at this piece of plastic here,
you can see effectively they have covered it over.
Little bit odd. Big speaker
tiny hole. Bit of a shame.
Other than that though, this really is a beautifully well made piece of kit.
Some people complain that the back cover is a bit flexible, I would probably agree with you
but
bearing in mind that there's plenty of really good quality back
covers out there with various extra features on there,
much much simpler.
Whether we'll now have to also be keeping our eyes out for nfc chips
built-in
or if someone is going to be enterprising and come up with a way to remove those
and attach it to your back cover, I'm not sure,
but all in all, a stonking piece of hardware, certainly this is the
cutting edge right now
of mobile phone design and specs.
A truly beautiful piece of kit.