250 things you should know about Samsung Galaxy Note 2 US version - Pros and cons of Samsung Galaxy Note 2 US version

"The most feature-rich, most customizable mobile gadget yet"

-GSMarena

Quad-band GSM

Quad-band 3G with 21 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA

LTE connectivity (carrier dependent)

5.5" 16M-color Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen of HD (720 x 1280
pixel) resolution

Corning Gorilla Glass 2

Android OS v4.1 with TouchWiz launcher

1.6 GHz quad-core Cortex-A9 CPU

Mali-400MP GPU

2GB of RAM

Exynos 4412 Quad chipset

S Pen active stylus

8 MP wide-angle lens

Autofocus

LED flash

Face, smile and blink detection

1080p HD video recording at 30fps

16/32GB internal storage

microSD slot

Dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n support

GPS with A-GPS connectivity

GLONASS

Digital compass

NFC support

Stereo Bluetooth v4.0

microUSB port with USB host and TV-out (1080p) support, MHL, charging

Accelerometer

Gyroscope

Proximity sensor

Standard 3.5 mm audio jack

Great audio quality

Slim only at 9.4mm

1.9MP secondary video-call camera

Doc editor

File manager

Rich video and audio codec support

Huge 3100 mAh battery

Large size makes single-hand operation uncomfortable

No dedicated camera key

All plastic

No FM radio (the N7100 has one)

Android 4.1 Jelly Bean on board

Google Voice Actions is capable of handling SMSs, email, voice call,
directions, taking a note or opening a site

Google Voice Actions can't toggle Wi-Fi or control the camera (but S
Voice can do them)

In the contacts department, there are two tabs. One is About and it
shows contacts photo and the other shows social updates of the
particular contact including Google Talk's

When the phone book detects duplicate entries it offers the option to merge them

Stand alone call history of relevant contacts

A built in Black Caller list

A contextual page that pops up automatically at the very instance you
pull out the legendary S Pen

Touch focus

HDR mode

Panorama

Burst shot with Best photo

Share shot

Face and smile detection with Best faces

Low-light mode

Digital image stabilization

Scenes and effects

Noise in vieos present, though its a second generation Note video
capture machine

Colors in vidz are a bit oversaturated

FullHD videos recorded as MP4 files

FullHD videos with a massive bitrate that ranges from 17Mbps to 19Mbps

The framerate of HD videos is an amazing 30fps

The audio of videos is in stereo at 48kHz rate and a bitrate of about 130Kbps

The print option, can print out photos directly through a Samsung printer

Wi-Fi Direct and DLNA

Bluetooth 4.0 LE (incorporated with Bluetooth 3.0 and the efficient
Low Energy mode is included

Supports the high-quality Apt-X audio codec

It weighs less than the Nokia Lumia 920

No dedicated camera key

A mighty 3100mAh battery

A non-PenTile screen

Front camera takes 1.9MP pictures and 720p video

Can add weather tags to a photo (in courtesy of AccuWeather)

Video player supports .WMV, .AVI (DivX and XviD), .MP4 and .MKV (H.264)

For the video player, Resolution doesnt matter. It plays FullHD files
and large files

Photos with people's faces; Galaxy Note II recognises faces
automatically or you can manually highligt them

When a face is recognized in a photo, Social tag brings their status
message and you can call or message the identified person in person

An option to OCR a photo and copy the text. This is smart if you are a
docholic but lacks a scanner and a computer in the range of approach

DLNA-enabled. You can play songs and videos (nearby devices) on
devices connected to your Wi-Fi network

An updated version of the TouchWiz music player

Equalizer presets (a custom one present)

Sound-enhancing

SoundAlive (features 7.1 channel virtualization)

Fits in a pocket

A 1.9MP front-facing cam

Proximity sensor

MHL adapter required for HD TV-out and the USB adapter that enables
the USB host functionality aren't inclusive in the box

Taller but narrower and slimmer than its predecessor

The original Note was 178g, the Note II weights at 180g

The grid view of the video player; all eight video thumbnails are
actually self playing entities

Pop Up (video) play which plays videos in a small moveable window.
These frames can be played with other active apps on the phone and
using pinch zoom you can adjust the size of these frames

SoundAlive audio enhancing in the video player

Can adjust video brightness, color tone and enable outdoor visibility

When connected to an active external amplifier, volume levels are average

Stereo crosstalk begins to have business in when a pair of headphones
is plugged in

If your more concerned about audio output, iphone 5 will be a better option

The video player scans for all subtitles and offers a list full of
subtitle packs to pick from. Thus the subtitle file doesn't have to
have the same name as the video file

Office document editor

All apps from the Google play store is not optimised to work with Jelly Bean yet

Screen recording which is activated by pressing and holding the Home
and Volume up buttons records virtual activities that is happening on
the screen in the real time including your S pen drawings and audio
commentary

With Paper Artist you can run color filters over photos and color
certain areas with the S pen further

There is a record button in the S note app to record what you draw

A floating window version of the S note app

S Cloud syncs contacts, calendar, S notes, back up logs, SMS, MMS and wallpaper

There's a limit to the size of the area you can cache in the Maps app

Vector maps of Google Maps are inherent in data efficiency

Samsung's Instant messaging service ChatOn

S Planner can sync with multiple calendars. It you feel like its
cluttered when synced them all, turn off the unnecessary

S Cloud can be incorporated with Dropbox (photos and videos)

You can even do that S cloud Dropbox merge over Wi-Fi to save data

No address searches in the cached maps

With S cloud you can choose not to back up some of things that it usually sync

Automated S cloud backups can be set with time periods

You cannot cache map data all around the world

Voice-guided navigation in certain countries

GPS receiver takes about a minute to get a satellite lock

A-GPS present which is brisk catching prompt satelite locks

Network positioning, which is a gross scale for an estimation of your location

3D buildings available for bigger cities

Two-finger camera tilt and rotate to get a better view in the 3D maps

A very sophisticated "Make available offline (cashing)" option in Maps app

An indicator that shows how much storage caching an area will take

Cached areas in the maps can be perused later or deleted if unnecessary

You cannot cashe a whole country but a city maybe. If the selected
area for cashing is bigger than what the Maps app can handle Maps tels
the area is too big

No folders in the messaging department

Tap to compose box is roomy to type

The default email app supports multiple Gmail accounts, but lacks a
unified inbox

The messaging section bears the same traits as phonebook when it comes
to "Swiping". A left swipe on a message header launches a new message
and swiping to the right starts a call to the sender

The titanic texting bed fits on the screen and carries 13 straight rows

Gmail app supports batch operations. It means you can archive, label
or delet multiple emails

A generic email app (beside Gmail app) for managing all other email
accounts and it handles multiple POP or IMAP inboxes. There messages
are displayed in the original folders that they are created online

A combined inbox, all your mails are centralized in a single folder.
Enables user to easily identify new mails

Handwriting recognition is amazingly accurate

A clipboard for both text and images

Smart enough text predictions. it scrutinises your emails, Facebook
posts, Twitter posts and teach itself whats your writing behaviour is
ie mostly used words etc

Google Talk too handles the Instant Messaging department

"Continuous input" lets feed words by swiping over the keyboard just like Swype

The landscape QWERTY eats lot of the screen. Better go for portrait

The S note app is equipped with an on-screen keyboard for both
handwriting recognition or Keyboard input

Can schedule messages to be sent automatically at given times

From the list of all scheduled messages, you can cancel or send a
message regardless of the set time

When you finger to text, it brings the QWERTY and when tapped with
the S Pen it launches the handwriting recognition

Music square

The browser supports double tap, pinch zooming, two-finger tilt zoom,
text reflow, find on page, save for offline viewing, request desktop
site, Incognito mode and pinch zoom which opens up the tabs view

Two finger typing is cushioned in portrait mode, but horrid in landscape

An extra row just for the numbers

The big screen makes portrait typing comfortable

Print option in the browser lets you print out web pages directly from
your phone but the option is limited to Samsung printers

Its quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and quad-band 3G but AWS is missing

Available with all major carriers

The S Note app accomodates handwritten notes, texts, mathematical
formulae along with images and voice notes

Slow-motion (1/2x) and fast motion (2x) modes

Colors of photos slightly oversaturated

As you already know, Adobe is officially not supported. But you can
still load it and 1080p YouTube videos are played fine

The MHL-to-HDMI dongle that you bought for your first Note or S II,
isnt compatible with the Note II

When you hover over a text field with the S Pen, a cursor pops. You
can easily tap to position it there

The G-Talk works with the likes of Pidgin, Kopete, iChat and Ovi Contacts

An application specific message search that can find any given SMS or
MMS search criteria within the message dept among all stored once

The MHL also enables USB On-The-Go though the adapter required for
that is missing in the box. How it goes? You just plug it into the
Note and plug a standard USB cable on the other end and thats it.
There goes USB thumb drives, card readers, connecting other phones,
USB keyboards, mice and even printers. Actually Samsung-made printers
only

Ambient light sensor

Notification LED

The SIM card is not hot-swappable, but the memory card is

Strong battery life

Can replace the battery without losing NFC because the NFC antenna is
on the back cover

The diagonal metrics grown to 5.5" up from 5.3"

Aspect ratio has jumped to 16:9 from 16:10. A taller but narrower screen

The Note II's screen is a 720p and 1280x720 pixels one but the
dilapidated used to be a WXGA or 1280x800 pixels one. Overall 80
pixels lost on the way back home

You can access Quick Command pad pressing S Pen button and swiping up.
Whats the usability of it? You can use "@" sign to launch email, "?"
sign to launch a search, "#" sign to dial a number or "~" sign to send
a text there.. New commands can be added picking a new function like
Bluetooth by selecting from a long list to choose from and assigning
the symbol you want. Its that simple but its the Command Prompt of the
Daisy Town

The S Pen lets catch a part of the screen and that can be used in apps
like email and S Note etc

S Voice even accepts hand-written queries

What S Voice can do? It does search web, make calls, send texts,
notification area toggles, answer or reject incoming calls, start the
camera and take a photo, control the music player and FM radio and
stop or snooze alarms

Google Now can answer factual questions

Direct Call

Smart alert

S Pen also practicable in the browser

S Voice is on board along with Google's excellent voice commands

Talking about GPU (Mali-400) performance (GLBenchmark) it beats the
Galaxy S III (Mali-400 and the GeForce- packing Tegra 3) but looses to
Adreno 320 of Optimus G and PowerVR SGX 543MP3 in the iPhone 5

In regard of the web performance it falls short behind Apple's iPhone
5 (SunSpider, BrowserMark) but beats all other Androids

In Benchmark Pi, the Note II is defeated by the quad-core Krait packed
LG Optimus G. The 1.7GHz Tegra 3-based phones like the HTC One X+
would do the same in the due time

Geekbench 2 prefer Exynos chipsets than Snapdragon S4 Pro and Apple A6

Quadrant score is lower than the HTC One X

The LG Optimus G out performs Samsung Galaxy Note's I[ processing
entity. But runs Android Ice Cream Sandwich, lacks S Pen, a jumbo
screen, outfits a poor camera. Priced at $199.99

All type of media files can be shared via NFC. The only hitch is you
need two S Beam-enabled devices

Android Beam's NFC functionality is limited compared to S Beam

Chapter preview in the video player which voluntarily detects chapters
in the video. It shows a rectangular grid with live thumbnails

Three crop modes in the video player to choose from for how the video
fits for your likeness in the screen theatre

Using contacts' profiles, Buddy photo share distinguishes who they are

My Files app with a split-screen interface

My files app is launched instantly when you plug in a USB mass storage
device, a USB drive, another phone or an SD card etc

Smart rotation keeps its screen in effect with your eyes angle
neglecting what the accelerometer force it. If practically spoken,
when you're lying but holding the phone in the vertical direction it
still keeps the screen in landscape orientation

Records HD (1080p or 720p) videos and capable of taking high def (6MP)
pictures at the same time

Pause and re-record in the same video file is available

Touch focus during recording is present. There is an AF button to jump
back to regular continuous autofocus mode

The LG Intuition for Verizon Wireless is the closest rival. Has a 4:3
screen, sub par stylus, a decent dual-core chipset and a lower
resolution screen. Priced at $149.99

S Voice can also be used as a calculator

Smart Dial

You get S Voice and as a bonus Google's which does differ in
functionality than its sibling

You have to get used to the Home key, its too responsive

Flash is missing. Better keep an eye for HTML5 versions of your web
sites of preference

YouTube works

HTML5 games

HTC's soon to be released One X+ for AT&T is another quad-core. Ships
Android 4.1 Jelly Bean but its Tegra 3 chipset cannot keep pace with
the processing power of the Samsung Note II Exynos. But you can still
save $100

Security options like encrypting outgoing email and signing it with a
private key, are given for each email account you sync

Best faces takes 5 photos in burst mode and stores traits of each face
in photos. You can pick any of the 5 photos for each person's face
clarity at a later period

Can import and export contacts to or from the SIM. But they arent
displayed alongside the phone's entries

Version for United States use the same chip specs as of the global version

A headset with few spare earbuds for free

A single-LED flash, not dual

Deep system and interface integration with S pen

A lower pixel density, 267ppi in the Note || vs. 285ppi of the Note |

The crosshatch pattern is gone with the PenTile matrix

Voice typing is available offline (relevent language packs required)

No Android keys on-screen though Google suggests it. Samsung has
replaced the hardware buttons with on-screen controls

During a call you can take a note, use the keypad, mute, hold the call
or add another call to the ongoing conversation

After syncing with social networks, the phonebook will automatically
merge contacts. You can manually do the same for each contact

Using AllShare Play you can transfer or share data and multimedia
files to your notebook or PC

With AllShare Cast you can stream content to and from a variety of
devices including TV or computer over DLNA

The battery performance of the US Galaxy Note II varies in accordance
with the carrier version

The S Pen of the first Note was 10.4cm tall and 5mm thick in dense,
the new one measures 11.3cm in length and 7mm in thickness. Its just
like a real pen than a typical slim stylus

Ripples, water-drop sounds are rife as is the case with most recent
Samsung flagships

Five customizable shortcuts at the bottom of the screen

Three view modes in the app drawer, Customizable grid, Alphabetical
grid, Alphabetical list with shortcuts easy to hit

Alphabetical list in the app drawer isn't very efficient handling space

The Bad News: The dock at the bottom now accommodates five icons but
the homescreen fits only four on a row

The Good News: The app drawer is a 5 x 5 grid

Notifications now display more information and have more advanced controls

The Quick contacts; just tap on a contact picture, a pop up menu with
shortcuts to call, text, email or Google Talk will appear

Can search for nearby POI in the Maps app

While in the mail app, turn the tablet landscape wise, the split view
is accessible. It sports a list of emails in the left and shows the
relevant message in the right

S Voice can be maneuvered for looking up factual items in courtsy of
Wolfram Alpha. Its the same mechanism behind Siri's answers

Even without going online, the maps app will reroute you if you plan
routes and divert yourself off the course or detour

The RGB sensor is capable of detecting the full spectrum of the
ambient light. It can elude artificial light sources cleverly

An internet connection is not required to do voice typing. You can
enter text by speaking wherever an on-screen keyboard appear

Can choose which types of events trigger the LED

When you put the tablet (back) on a flat surface, its actualy the
camera lens that touch the plain. But the glass is not easily dentable

Both 2.4GHz and 5GHz band compatible Wi-Fi support which covers a/b/g/n

You can tap and drag in any way to unlock the lockscreen

Whats up with the MHL enabled microUSB? It handles charging, data
connections, HD video output through an HDMI adapter or USB Host

Voice dialing; Just utter "Hi Galaxy" and give your command

Not comfortable for one handed use

For easy one handed usability, few tweaks are added like QWERTY
keyboard, phone keypad and in-call buttons, calculator and unlock
pattern moved to one side of the screen. Just let it be left or right

Build in Live wallpapers, News wall put up a glamorous slideshow of
headlines, Stock wall does the quotes, and Photo wall pull out photos
from the Gallery

The Galaxy Note II senses when the S Pen is pulled out. It fetches a
contextual page with shortcuts to preview thumbnails of your recently
ventured S Notes

Swipes in the phonebook lets you do a quick dial with a right swipe
and send a text message literally with a left swipe

Cannot have more than seven home screen panes

Full-screen widgets

The stylus is not as comfortable as the S Pen on the Galaxy Note 10.1

Can put a news ticker at the bottom of the lockscreen and stay up to minute

The news ticker is expandedbale

Face unlock, Face and voice unlock

There is a tab in the app drawer which enables you to easily pull out
widgets to the homescreen panes

The camera can be started from the lockscreen by touching the screen
and rotating the phone horizontally

Widgets are resizable but only some widgets are resizable, not all

The dock at the bottom of the home screen houses five shortcuts or
folders. Four of them except the shortcut at the far right in the dock
(that opens the app drawer) are customizable

The Music Hub doesnt recognise album art of the music den of the phone

Note || carries a more sensitive digitizer in comparison to the Note
|. It distinguishes 1024 different levels of pressure. Its 4 times
powerful than its older relative. In the drawing app its clearly felt

With Android 4.1 aboard, the widgets will pave the way for the widgets
you put there lately. This way, keeping the homescreen tidy, becomes
easier

When the S pen is pulled out, icons at the bottom of the home deck
diverse into a different but relevent set. It also gives you another
set of shortcuts in the notification area if you enter the area with
the S pen

In the browser you get an option to manipulate brightness and colors
with four different presets including Automatic brightness. Music to
eyes

A download shortcut in the app drawer which put up a screen loaded
with only the downloaded apps

The default task manager boasts a button that brings the Mayan
calender to all active apps at once and a shortcut to Google Now

Quick Controls menu pops out when you place finger near the left or
right edge of the display and its an effective alternative to the
buttons on the top Alter. This becomes handy when you use the tablet
single handed

Can controll brightness without disabling automatic mode

Regular homescreen panes distinguishable with dots

Dedicated pages are assigned custom icons ie a pen for the S Pen,
headphones for the Earphone page etc

Pinch to zoom out and easily manage homescreen panes. You can add,
delete or reorder them easily

Quick glance; when phone is locked, cover top of Note. The screen will
be lit and the status bar will be thrown in

Quick glance is also triggered when the phone put face down. Thus a
battery sucker

Default widgets of Dedicated Pages (S Pen page's S Note widget,
Earphone page's music and video player control widgets etc) cannot be
tweaked to your preferences or some one else's

Page Buddy; each Dedicated functional pane can be enabled or disabled seperate

Air View; Hovering the S Pen over S Planner events, it can be
expanded. Hovering S pen over emails you can preview emails. Hovering
S pen over text you can view a preview of the text file. In the same
way preview videos. Its a Magic Wand

Even specific vibration patterns can be set as incoming call alerts
(like you would do a ringtone) choosing from predefined patterns
available or making your own

MHL port works as a charger port, enables video output (using a
MHL-to-HDMI dongle which is not inclusive in the retail box

Using accelerometer it even alerts you (beeping) if the stylus is
displaced, not put back into the hole where it belongs or your not
present near with its beloved stylus

Note II's screen can detect the S Pen from a near distance. Walk, Talk and Note

Note II is sharper than the previous though its been allocated fewer pixels

Mode Change offers two separate homescreen setting patterns that can
be accelerated at the same time, namely Standard and Easy. With Easy
mode you can do both, place big, easy to handle widgets that cover the
functionality in whole and eats the space drasticaly and add regular
widgets in the same breath. Thus the Mode change module works as a
toggle between playful and work widget environments. Extremely useful
when your home panes are filled with single big bad wolf work oriented
widgets but you want to taste nasty cluttered Widget panes as well

Cannot rename the modes and maximum number of Modes you can have is two

You can assign a "Peak Schedule Time" in the email app selecting the
days of the week and start and end time points so that it can check
out new mails more often during the given peak time period