When Samsung announced the first Galaxy Note in 2011, it was met with confusion, disbelief, and some snickers. The idea of a phone with 5.3 inch screen seemed absurd. We were just getting used to the idea of 4” 4.3” 4.5” 4.65” phones, and here was a phone that seemed to be questioning whether it should be called one at all. The Note was mockingly called a “phablet,” half phone, half tablet, with no hope of finding an audience. It’s doubtful even Samsung thought those naysayers would be proven as wrong as they turned out to be. Samsung sold 10 million Galaxy Notes in its first nine months of availability, even as it took almost half a year to hit a single U.S. carrier, barely showing at all on a second. An unqualified success, the Galaxy Note II has been shipping over the last two months to 5 million users worldwide, with versions now available from AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon.
I’ve been testing the AT&T version, but from design to specifications to software, Samsung has built almost exactly the same device worldwide, with only some pre-installed apps differing between the carriers.
First Impressions
The Galaxy Note II manages to have an even larger screen than the original Galaxy Note, while being less comically large than the previous edition. The 5.3” screen is taller and less wide, and the phone’s body is thinner, making it easier to hold and use one-handed. A potential purchaser’s biggest question is if the phone can be comfortably held, making an in-store tryout a non-optional pre-purchase requirement. But if you could stand the original Note, you’ll find the Note II more comfortable and an improvement in many other ways. The Note II’s design follows Samsung’s current design ethos, with the smooth, natural, and rounded feel of the Galaxy S III, only larger, with the major differences coming on the software and features side. Ignoring those elements, you could be confused that this is a larger S III. While the Note II is more than that, from a looks perspective, it isn’t. The Note II is beautiful, doesn’t make an effort to rip off designs from its competitors, and is more solidly built than previous Samsung phones. While the Note II is mostly plastic and glass, the body feels like one solid block, with no flex or cheap feel. The phone even allows for a removable back cover for access to the battery, an increasing rarity with modern smart devices.
Samsung has kept things simple, with a single physical home button on the front, flanked by two capacitive buttons on either side, with Menu on the left and Back on the right. Google’s grand plan for Android involves eliminating the search and menu buttons, implementing their functions in software, while using only buttons for Back, Multitasking, and Home. Samsung ignores this. While I didn’t miss the multitasking button, which is better handled by a long press on the Home button on the Note II, I did miss the Search button. Samsung’s desire to have a big Home button requires an odd number of buttons, and something had to be left out to keep things simple. The capacitive buttons get bright, but there is a setting to disable the backlighting on them completely, which I did within minutes of turning on the device. Along the left side is the volume rocker, while the right side has nothing but a power button. The 3.5 mm headphone jack takes up is positioned at the top of the phone, while the bottom has the Micro USB port and the S Pen holder (more on that later).
The back cover has the camera, an LED flash, a small but decent speaker, and on most devices, a small carrier logo. Verizon’s version of the Note II has a ridiculously large Verizon 4G LTE logo, plus a Verizon logo on the Home button, which is a source of annoyance for many buyers. That annoyance has led to the creation of a tiny sticker you can buy to cover up the branding. Behind the back cover, which is mercifully removable, you’ll find the 3100 mAh battery and slots for Micro SIM and Micro SD cards. There are also contacts for NFC, and on mostly international versions, wireless inductive charging. The box contains nothing but a USB cable, USB charger, manuals, and the phone itself.
Display and Size
There’s no denying that this phone is much, much bigger than most. At 5.95” x 3.16” x 0.37”, the Galaxy Note is barely smaller than the original Note (about three percent smaller, by volume), while packing a larger screen (5.5” to 5.3”) and battery (3100 mAh to 2500 mAh). The fact that Samsung managed to design more phone into less of a case makes for a significant upgrade in usability. Considering how many people use two hands for things like typing, or hold their phones with one hand and tapping with the other hand, many with tiny hands might not mind having such a large phone. More importantly, it’s easy to appreciate the benefits of a larger screen without the drawbacks of the even larger screen on a tablet.
Samsung has gone to great lengths to add unique features to the Note II to make it seem like more of an advantage over devices both smaller and larger than it. To compete with smaller, more convenient phones, a number of UI elements have been customized with “one-handed operation” modes, like the keypad in the phone dialer, the calculator, and even the keyboard. Samsung takes advantage of all that screen space to compete with tablets, with its two-pane email app (not unlike Outlook on the desktop) and apps that can run at the same time, on the same screen as other apps. You can watch a video in a pop-up window while reading a webpage or composing an email with an update already on the European edition and a select few U.S. editions that lets even more apps split the screen. Samsung also added a number of new features to Android, which are a mixed bag. For example, there are features to keep the screen on when looking at it for long periods of time and to keep it from rotating when your body is equally rotated (like lying down in bed), wallpapers that stream news headlines, home screen pages that dynamically appear only under certain circumstances, tons of gestures, a wholly unique and surprisingly advanced keyboard, and more. The sheer amount and uniqueness of the UI customizations can be covered in depth in an article all to themselves.
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