Samsung Galaxy Note II N7100

Today we’ll be reviewing the Samsung Galaxy Note II N7100. At the current time, this phone, or tablet, or “phoneblet” ( as I’ve seen mentioned in a few places before ) is the most powerful device available at the moment. Well, available is a strong word. It is available for pre-order in some countries, if I’m not wrong, but other than that I don’t think it can really be classified as “Available” yet.

Up until this phone was announced, there was a tight competition between the two top dogs available : the Galaxy S III and the One X. However, since those two titans were announced, other flagship phones came out that tend to be much more powerful than them. The LG Optimus G E973 for instance. This has been a good year for LG, by the way, as they managed to release not one, but two excellent flagship phones. Fortune clearly favors them.

However, it has been a very good year for Samsung as well, despite all the talk about the trial with Apple. They too have managed to release more than enough high quality and powerful devices. This phone, the Galaxy Note II, is their second great accomplishment in phone development this year and promises to push the boundaries of mobile technology even further.

They decided to release the Samsung Galaxy Note II N7100 and thus bringing cheer and joy into all the lives of the people that enjoyed the original Galaxy Note phone. Not only does this new improvement of the Galaxy Note address and fix all the previous problems of the Galaxy Note 1, but it also has a ton of improvements. One of those is the fact that it is just as the Galaxy S III, only with slight improvements. You have already noticed from the image that it looks just like it. That is true, they chose the same design for it but increased the screen size to 5.5 inches and added a more powerful S Pen.

SUMMARY

As I promised I would do a long time ago, let us kick start this review with a brief summary of the good and less than ideal features of the Samsung Galaxy Note II N7100. First of all, know that I won’t be posting any Solid information here, since if you truly want to know what’s what, you will keep on reading. This part is intended mostly as a general guideline, or a trailer if you will. I will also try and sum up in a few short words the good points and the bad of the device, however, that will prove rather difficult since this device seems to not have any bad points at all.

Every single aspect of the Samsung Galaxy Note II N7100 is good. The device seems to lack any and all bad points. While some aspects may seem to be less than ideal and could use a bit of improvement, it has too many good points and with the over compensation it cancels the others out. Aside from those few spots where something better could have been placed, the Samsung Galaxy Note II N7100 is perfect.

Perhaps the only few downsides of this device are the facts that it doesn’t have Adobe Flash or any sound enhancement whatsoever on it, be it software-based or hardware-based.

GENERAL

Not only is this a very powerful device, but it also has support for all possible networks ( not the CDMA ones ), including the 4G ones. those networks are as following : 2G ( GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800 and GSM 1900 ), 3G ( HSDPA 850, HSDPA 900, HSDPA 1900 and HSDPA 2100 ) and even 4G ( LTE 700 MHz Class 17 and LTE 2100 ). The Samsung Galaxy Note II N7100 was announced in August 2012 and will be coming out somewhere around October 2012.

BODY

The body of this device is pretty large, but that is only because it has to house a 5.5 inch screen. The size of this device is around : 15.1 x 80.5 x 9.4 mm. The weight of the device is around 180 grams. The device also has touch sensitive controls instead of frontal buttons. I’m not sure that is even worth discussing with the devices of today, considering it isn’t really an original feature anymore since most Android device have it.

DISPLAY

The screen of the Samsung Galaxy Note II N7100 isn’t your average Super AMOLED. While it may bear the same name as an average one, it is all but that. It is an enhanced version of the Super AMOLED which provides better performance and looks even better and brighter. Just get the phone and see for yourself if you don’t believe me. I think it is needless to say that the screen is capacitive and it has 16 million colors.

Also, while on the notion of needless stuff to say, ever noticed how many new things manage to become Usual in technology nowadays. For instance, 4G is relatively new to the mobile tech world and so is the NFC connection. You will find  yourself asking in an year or so : why does my phone not have those? With the technology we have nowadays you tend to appreciate things much less and take them for granted. You see it around enough times and you get used to it and start questioning devices which do not have it.

Anyway, coming back to the matter at hand. The screen size of the Samsung Galaxy Note II N7100 is around 5.5 inches, as I’m sure I’ve already mentioned. The resolution reached by this screen is around 720 x 1280 pixels. The pixel density of this device is around 267 ppi. Normally that’s not altogether that bad, but it may be a tad noticeable for such a large screen. It may be a tad difficult to add more for such a large screen, so the problem cancels itself out – therefore we will not talk about it.

The Samsung Galaxy Note II N7100 has a very effective means of screen protection installed on it – Corning Gorilla Glass 2. This protection method is much stronger than the first Gorilla Glass. If you want to get an idea of how resistant it is, picture this. The Gorilla Glass 1 ( the official one, not bad Made in China replicas ) could withstand several hammerings from a full grown muscular man ( and that’s saying something – it is glass after all ). The device also has TouchWiz UI on it. It also has Multitouch, although, not the freakish kind that can support more than 2 fingers.

SOUND

The audio of this device, as I’ve already mentioned, is pretty basic. The device has no sound enhancement whatsoever on it – no software based one and no hardware based one. The Alert Types are the basic ones ( Vibration, MP3 and WAV ) and the Samsung Galaxy Note II N7100 also has a default Loudspeaker an 3.5 mm jack.

MEMORY

The memory of this device is phenomenal. This is the stuff that legends are made of. The Samsung Galaxy Note II N7100 is available in 3 different versions : one with 16 GB, one with 32 GB and one with 64 GB. All three of them have a Micro SD card slot that can use any card of up to 32 GB. The RAM of the Samsung Galaxy Note II N7100 is really awesome as the device has 2 GB of RAM, instead of the 1 GB of RAM that we have all grown so accustomed to. This is a good thing. I always say – as long as the technology is available, why not use it ?

DATA CONNECTION

The connectivity of the Samsung Galaxy Note II N7100 is really good, really good indeed. Despite being a 4G phone ( note that those device usually lack these things ), this phone has both GPRS and EDGE. While it isn’t mentioned what Class they each are or what speed they can both reach, we do know that they exist and that is plenty enough. The Speed per say of the device is measured as following : HSDPA at 21 MB/s, HSUPA at 5.76 MB/s, LTE Cat 3 of 100 MB/s Download Speed and 50 MB/s Upload Speed. The WLAN of the Samsung Galaxy Note II N7100 is a Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n with dual-band, DLNA, Wi-Fi Direct and Wi-Fi hotspot. The Bluetooth of this device is a v4.0 one with A2DP and EDR. This phone also has NFC, which makes it even better. The USB port of this device is a Micro USB v2.0 ( MHL ) one with USB On-The-Go. The MHL over there means that it requires no HDMI port.

CAMERA

The main camera of the Samsung Galaxy Note II N7100 is an 8 MP one that can photograph at resolutions of around 3264 x 2448 pixels and record in 1080p full HD at around 30 frames per second. The features of this camera are as following : autofocus, LED flash, geo-tagging, touch focus, face and smile detection and image stabilization. The Samsung Galaxy Note II N7100 also has a secondary 1.9 MP camera with no further features of its own. However, a 1.9 MP camera is pretty impressive considering that the frontal cameras of all devices are of up to 2 MP in strength. Even so, I do believe that with its hardware it will be able to record in HD, or at least close to HD.

BATTERY LIFE

Sadly, I don’t have all that much information about the battery. I would like to apologize since I cannot offer more information for this part than I have found. The only thing I can say for sure about the battery of the Samsung Galaxy Note II N7100 is that it has a Standard Li-Ion 3100 mAh battery. Again, I apologize for not providing more useful information, but I am suffering from the same lack of information as you are, dear reader.

HARDWARE

The hardware configuration of this device is marvelous indeed. The Samsung Galaxy Note II N7100 may not have Tegra 3 technology, but it does have its equivalent in strength. Actually, as far as the processor goes, it has its superior as well. Granted, it isn’t superior by much, but with Quad-Cores every 100 MB helps. The processor of the Samsung Galaxy Note II N7100 is a Quad-Core 1.6 GHz Cortex-A9 CPU. This device also has an Exynos 4412 Quad motherboard / chipset and a Mali-400MP graphics card / GPU. This Mali-400 is the Quad-Core one. I had to mention that since people tend to not realize it all depends on the chipset.

SOFTWARE

The software of the Samsung Galaxy Note II N7100 is the latest version of Android OS – Android OS v4.1 Jelly bean. That being said, there isn’t much point in discussing any upgrade-ability of the device’s OS since it is the latest at the current time. You won’t have to worry about any new serious version for at least an year ( which is a long time for mobile devices, mind you ).

FEATURES :

The Samsung Galaxy Note II N7100 is packed full of all sorts of features and is capable of quite a bit. The sensors of this device are plenty and some are quite rare and found only on few devices. Those sensors are : Accelerometer, Gyro, Proximity, Compass and Barometer. The messaging on this device is done via : SMS ( with Threaded View ), MMS, E-Mail, Push Mail, IM and RSS. The Browser of the Samsung Galaxy Note II N7100 uses HTML5, but has no support for Adobe Flash, fact which could prove problematic. You can always download it from certain places, but it won’t run so well. The radio of this device is a Stereo FM one with RDS. The GPS of the Samsung Galaxy Note II N7100Samsung Galaxy Note II N7100 has built in support for A-GPS and GLONASS. This phone also has Java through Java MIDP emulation. The colors in which this device is available are : Titanium Gray and Marble White.

Here is brief list of what the Samsung Galaxy Note II N7100 is capable of :

• S Pen stylus
• Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
• TV-out (via MHL A/V link)
• SNS integration
• MP4/DivX/XviD/WMV/H.264/H.263 player
• MP3/WAV/eAAC+/AC3/FLAC player
• Organizer
• Image/video editor
• Document editor (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF)
• Google Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Calendar, Google Talk, Picasa integration
• Voice memo/dial/commands
• Predictive text input (Swype)

This concludes our little review of the Samsung Galaxy Note II N7100.  Thank you for reading this review. I hope it has been as helpful as possible. If you feel that anything is lacking from this review feel free to leave your suggestions in the comment section below for things which should be added and I will be sure to take them into consideration when writing my future projects. In the meantime, I sincerely hope you had as much fun reading my little review as I had writing it.