Launched in September 2012 to superb reviews, the 5.5-inch Samsung Galaxy Note 2 is ideally suited if you’re looking for a mobile phone come tablet, otherwise known as a ‘phablet’.
The Note 2 features an ‘S Pen’ stylus which can be used for writing and drawing on the full HD Super Amoled screen. Similar in design to the Samsung Galaxy S3, the Note 2 is a sleeker and slimmer version of the original Galaxy Note handset.
The Note 2 also shares the same resolution as the S3 with 1280 x 720 pixels and has a slightly bigger screen than the original Galaxy Note with strong and vibrant colours and the increased size means it’s ideal for watching video and films.
The S Pen gives the Galaxy Note 2 an extra dimension as it’s not just your bog-standard stylus. As soon as you take the S Pen out of its holder, the handset recognises that you’re about to use it and it launches the built-in S Pen apps so you can have hours of entertainment from writing notes, making a diary or creating some master pieces. You can also drop video clips into your notes and can even use the S Pen whilst multi-tasking and browsing online.
The Galaxy Note 2 also comes with a variety of useful apps including Google Play, Google Books, Google Maps (which is great as a sat nav too) and Samsung’s S-Voice which can be used to operate some of the phone’s functions hands-free.
The rear-facing camera is 8 megapixels and there’s also a 1.9 megapixel front-facing camera. With the same camera hardware as the S3, the Note 2 comes with an LED flash and autofocus. The camera also features a burst mode, touch focusing, a choice of scenes, HDR and a panorama setting.
Despite boasting a phenomenal 3100mAh battery, the Galaxy Note 2 weighs in at just 182 grams and is 9.4mm thick. The powerful battery gives the Note 2 a whopping 17 hours of talk time and an amazing 12 hours of video-playing.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 2 is powered by a decent 1.6GHz quad-core processor and comes with 2GB of RAM and a minimum of 16GB of internal storage which is upgradeable with a microSD card. This means that the Note 2 is a pretty fast Android handset and the Jelly Bean operating system comes with Google Now which can be voice activated and can assist you with travel directions, traffic news, the weather and a whole host of other useful search functions.
The Note 2 also boasts NFC and S Beam which essentially means you can transfer and share documents, photos, music and video with other S Beam-enabled devices and much more quickly than if you were using just WiFi.
