As we all know, paper has been produced mainly from Bamboo and due to usage of paper for various purposes the exploitation of natural resources has been increased due to which it is affecting our environment around us. Since, last couple of years human beings are trying to replace pages and ink to save our mother earth.A time was there when we all used to use symbian mobile devices which only had some basic operations, but  in present situation where there are many technological development due to which  emergence of android based smartphones came which can be used for many purposes, but to replace paper and ink still eludes us.
It doesn’t mean we haven’t tried to do this, we had PALM PILOT in 90’s and those chunky Sony Ericsson with flip down keyboard 10 years ago but nothing to date has felt like pen and paper.
Samsung thinks it’s cracked it through with Samsung Galaxy Note II . As the name suggest it is the 2nd generation of GALAXY NOTE smartphone and falls somewhere between the smaller (but still huge) GALAXY S3 and 10.1 in Note Tablet.
Samsung adds another feather in to his cap as GALAXY NOTE  is the first product to has a Android 4.1 JELLY BEAN OS with a massive 5.55″ screen and a S-Pen stylus that makes this one stand out of the crowd.

DESIGN AND FEEL:-

Samsung Galaxy Note II

As we know, 4.8″GALAXY S3 is too hard to handle it in one hand but the NOTE 2 has opened many eyes and made to think in different way. If we  Stop thinking of the Note 2 is a huge smartphone, and more as a pocketable  tablet that can make calls and send messages then we end up with a device which makes sense.

Forget about using it in one hand (even with TouchWiz interface can be adjusted) use it with both hands  better still, and crack out S-Pen stylus. It is a device which replaced conventional tablet and smartphone.

Below that headline grabbing screen is a central home button flanked by two capacitive  touch buttons one for back option and another for call up more options. A long press of the home button gives the list of apps currently multitasking, a double press launches S-Voice (Samsungs answer to Siri on iOS) and finally a long press to option button launches the Google Now.

Above the screen it has earpiece, proximity and ambient light sensors, a notification light and front facing 1.9 MP camera.

It has phone lock/ power button on right edge, volume rocker on the left (both of which are low enough to reach with one hand), on the top edge it has 3.5 mm jack and micro USB port at bottom for syncing and charging.

And very next to the USB port it houses S-Pen stylus, while in back side It houses a 8MP camera with LED flash light and 1080p (FULL HD) recording as it features in Samsung Galaxy S3 Smartphone.

When it comes in appearance, Samsung didn’t mind to give it a new look rather than using the same glossy plastic look which it has been to Samsung Galaxy S3 too and nowadays Samsung has started using the same finish in almost every product. So the consumer may get fed up with this look and even Note2 is no exception.

I don’t mind having the glossy white such as the mattle white finish of the HTC One X, but the fake chrome edge is as with the S 3 is cheap.

If the chrome bezel was cold to the  touch and had some weight added to it then ok, but Samsung has give Note 2 a pieces of plastic that is reflective beyond its belief, it attracts our fingerprints and at least the scratches and chips to reveal the black plastic underneath it.

With poor design selection by Samsung this product fails to attract the consumer to him to some extent. And we hope that in future the Samsung will definitely try to overcome this backdrop.

It’s obvious that Samsung has borrowed much of the the S 3′s design, hardware and software for Note 2.

It weights 183g but 50g heavier than GALAXY S 3, but lighter by 71g with thinned new Iphone 5 as both of this phones are praise for their lightness. And quite amused that Note 2 doesn’t weights more with its massive look.

HARDWARE AND CONNECTIVITY:-

Samsung Galaxy Note II

Galaxy Note 2 has Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n with the ability to become a Wi-Fi hotspot,Bluetooth 4.0 with A2DP for streaming music to wireless speakers, NFC for swapping contacts with a tap. 4G LTE (where available) and a microSD card slot.

The Galaxy Note 2 comes with 16, 32, 64 GB storage capacity and it can be expanded upto 64GB by using the SD slot under the rear cover along with (micro SIM slot).

As with S3, Note 2 has a wide range of party tricks aimed for making it more easier for use. Using the accelerometer some menus can be navigated by just tilting the device and it can be used to zoom in and zoom out any object.

Along with accelerometer  the Samsung has  crammed in a compass, gyroscope, proximity sensor, ambient light sensor and ,bizarrely, a barometer.

For syncing and charging it uses a USB port which is at the bottom edge of the device, and finally for audio it has 3.5mm jack at top.

OPERATING SYSTEM AND PERFORMANCE:-

Samsung Galaxy Note II

Galaxy Note 2 is without any doubt one of the fastest and most powerful smartphone on the market. Powered by a 1.6 GHZ quad core processor and a 2GB of RAM and shrugged off any thing which we have to throw into it.

Intense 3D gaming, HD  You Tube Video, live TV steaming, Social networking acting as a hotspot …the lot.

One of the greatest feature of Note 2 is that it never encourages any form of lag or slowdown no matter what we did to it and it responds to the command just about instantly as compared to GALAXY S3, HTC One X, iPhone 5.

The only annoyance was with the Home button,. Because a double press launches S-voice there is a small pause between a single press and the device reacting, while it waits to see if you press twice. It’s can be unnoticeable as rest of the system is soo quick and responsive

Being one of the product to come with Google’s brand new Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, but Samsung’s TouchWiz UI skin changes so much, casual users wil be hard pressed to tell the difference between the Note 2’s software and the Galaxy S3 and the Note 10.1 tablet for that matter.

The another fault about this phone is it sometimes fail to lock. A press to the lock button would turn the screen off, only for it to come back to life  (unlocked) a couple of seconds later.

The Note has a huge 3,100 mAh battery which can last upto 2 days of average use with the screen at around 50 percent brightness. If you stream a video then the battery drop less than 20 percent. Hence it has the best battery life of any phone till date.

S- PEN:-

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As we all know that the idea of pen stylus was first introduced by mobile maker MOTOROLA. But it didn’t brought much success to it, den after soo many many the touch screen revolution came which was brought by APPLE through there iPhone 3, but it didn’t had such stylus and finally the Samsung has brought it through there Note 2 and i want to say only one word that is “AWESOME”!

The S Pen off course what makes Samsung Galaxy Note 2 more attractive and Samsung has been busy trying to improve the plastic stylus which they had in earlier generation’s Note.

Now, longer, thicker and more comfortable to hold, the S-Pen feels more natural than before and thanks to its 1,024 level pressure sensitivity, using it to write and draw is so easy.

Sliding the stylus out causes Note to vibrate and if it is unlocked then it shows new home screen with links to quickly write a note.

While the S-Pen can be used to navigate just about all of the TouchWiz user interface, only the capacitive button below the screen cannot be used with the stylus and there are very few apps which uses stylus to its full ability.

Writing on the Note’s screen is much more natural than you would imagine first and the screen can tell the difference between the nib of the S-Pen and the slide of your hand, so learning on the phone to write will not cause unwanted scribbling basically as the screen responds to the style only when it is couple of centimeters away from it.

The stylus is much more smarter than its plastic construction and would you believe; the Note knows when the stylus is out and it is within 2 centimeter away from the screen and a dot will appear on the screen to help you out where exactly the pen will touch the screen.

The hovering technology also helps you to preview the content without tapping on the screen. When you hover around any line or email then it will open an preview box automatically.

Another use of this hovering is while watchig video. Hover around the timeline and the preview box will open showing a frame from where you’re pointing the stylus- it’s a useful way of scanning the certain part of the video content without disturbing the video being played.

Once we selected the fine virtual point for the stylus we found writing on the Note2 to be much like writing with  pen and paper and of course the screen provides less feedback as that of paper but it can be trusted to make our notes.

As for handwriting recognition, the S-Pen and Note2 do a good job and even our illegible scrawl were understood and converted into text more often than not, though the time taken to convert the handwriting to text is few seconds.

Taking Note is a joy and the ability to quickly take a screenshot by just pressing a button on the side of the S-Pen is a bonus, the screenshot then can be drawn on. emailed or shared via social networks.

DISPLAY:-

The display measures 5.55 inches, has a resolution of 720 x 1280 and a pixel density of 267 per inch along with the stylus. It’s NOTE 2 massive screen which sets everything apart in the market.

It’s Super AMOLED display and, as was with the galaxy S3 has a slightly cool, blue tinge and because of this the high end Samsung product makes everything looks cooler than it is.

Despite the slight-off temperature balance, the screen of Note 2 is excellent. It’s clear, brighter and it’s response to touch inputs is also excellent, with wide viewing angle and contrast is also good. HD contents look fantastic and natural and being an AMOLED display means the blacks are impressively dark.

While the screen quality cannot be disputed, sheer size of it is definitely a love or hate choice. The extra size of screen makes browsing, watching videos and photos more better than any other smartphone, but typing and ideally navigating around user interface is difficult with one hand.

CAMERA:-

Samsung has fitted the Note 2 with an 8MP auto-focus, tap to focus, burst shooting, HD video recording and whole range of features and settings. The camera provided in Note 2 is same as that of GALAXY S3.

You can shoot photos of high dynamic range (HDR) to capture scenes of high an low lighting in the same frame, burst mode- which shoots eight photos then choose the best out of eight and it shoots the 8 photos in 3 seconds and usual range of monochrome and sepia effect.

White balancing, metering and ISO can be adjusted manually, or leave it to phone, there are 13 different scenes to choose from, ranging from sports and portraits, to shooting by candlelight or capturing fireworks. The resolution of photos can be lowered from 8MP to 3.2, 2.4, 0.9 or just 0.3 MEGAPIXEL if you wish.

As for videos the Note 2 shoots full 1080p HD and it can be lowered to 720p or lower if you need to save space while the white balancing and exposure can be adjusted and photos can be taken while shooting video.

The flash can be turned on to illuminate the scene while the recording and the phone usually shows in megabytes how large the current recording is and on left it shows how much space is left in the phone.

Lack of physical shutter button means getting good photo on tapping the icon on the screen can be difficult, compounded by the camera at middle of the phone rather than top corner, and the keys at lower often causes to eject to home screen while recording video.

At last, it becomes difficult to Note 2 with S3 as S3 is small but Note 2 has many new features than S3.

The stylus provided in Note 2 draws many attention. it is well built except the plastic finish, sleek and works much faster and it comes with an new iOS JELLY BEAN.

Being big in size and cannot be carried in your pocket and cannot be handled in one hand but still it remains crowd puller though GALAXY S3 can be carried in your pocket but Note 2 has many more features than S3.

Though talking with such biggy gadget in public makes an impression as if came out circus but still it remains an out and out performer in any smartphone till date.

But when you compare Note 2 with iPhone 4s and after using it for quite sometime you will feel that iPhone 4s is just an joy for you.

The Good:

• Huge screen
• Stylus is useful, not a gimmick
• Good camera
• Incredible performance
• Great battery life

The Bad:

• Huge screen
• Plastic finish feels cheap
• A couple of software issues to be addressed
• Not enough apps to use S-Pen with
• S-Voice still needs work

Thank you, for more articles stay tuned to Androidnova.org.