One phone, more than one year, more than one hand.
Chaitanya Narula (May 6, 2014)
on Gadgets 360
When the first galaxy nexus came out, there was a hue and cry in the geek world that the only android phone that performed as well as the iOS counterpart (at that time) was impossible to fit in one hand or the pocket of your favorite jeans, perhaps. People were still trying to get used to the sheer beast of a screen that it possessed while Samsung went ahead of itself and announced the original Note series, followed by the even meatier, Note 2.
Specs: Arm A7 based Exynos QuadCore SoC at 1.7GHz and Mali GPU. 2GB RAM, 16 GB Internals, No LTE, Wacom Active Digitizer, S Pen Support, 5.5 inch Super Amoled Non Pentile Display.
The galaxy note 2 created its own niche of phablets as soon as it hit the markets. being one of the first devices to offer 4.1 JB out of the box, it was one of the smoothest device to operate, still is. It happens to be one of the very few Samsung devices that possesses enough power to not be crippled by the feature laden, heavy touch wiz UX. While I have a very few complaints with how the GPU handles the animations, every bit of interface is otherwise buttery smooth. All apps run incredibly well and look amazing on the large 5.5 inch display. A few people might think that 720p screen is a buzzkill but considering that the GPU needs lesser power to handle fewer pixels, It's a blessing in disguise. Battery is huge. Despite the powerful cpu and a large display, the phone can easily last a day with heavy usage. I have been able to extract over 7 hours of screen on time with a single charge, 3g running in the background all the time. It may not be as power efficient as the new era of phones containing Snapdragon 801 but its certainly amazing. Coming to the non pentile display, its a way of arranging sub pixels. In simple words, a non pentile display will show crisp content in a better way, more aligned. The screen is vibrant, huge and contrast is a little on the warmer side. I would have liked it to be a tad brighter because it gets hard to read it in sun if you have a matte screen guard on. The camera is sufficient. It performs well outdoors and is plagued in low light like all other samsung phones. The camera interface is minimalistic hence a good thing for most people. Images are nice and details while videos look nice. The sound on captured videos might not be of f everyone's liking. I don't use the S pen a lot but I have to tell you, it is a fabulous pass time. It is accurate, fun and productive. The only thing that lacks is dedicated applications. It is also sensible of samsung to have included multi window and one handed operation for better accessibility.
While it's hard to say bad things there are a certain areas where it just gets beatun up.
Build Quality: Cheap plastic, flimsy back panel. Looks exacly like other lower end phones, loudspeaker wrongly positioned and not too loud, camera takes bad shots in low light, s branded apps take up only space.
Good: Amazing performance, screen, outdoor camera performance, battery.
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