Samsung Galaxy Note II N7100 - user opinions and reviews
- AnonD-61530
- 2Gp
NOTE 2 MINI REVIEW v2
UPDATED – Camera, black clipping, flash other little things
I have had my Note 2 almost 48 hours so thought I would update my mini review for anyone looking at getting it. I previously had a Note for 10 months preceded by a SGS2 and Iphone 4 and 3G before that. I purchased a N7100 Grey 16GB Note 2 (international) (AU$649+$25 postage) with a 64GB sandisk card ($65) for a total of AU$739.
APPEARANCE – The Note 2 looks awesome, the 16:9 screen makes it look a lot less clunky than the note and the brushed grey looks schmick. The back is more prone to finger prints than the note. The device looks a lot narrower than the note and feels smaller. Despite this the screen width is almost the same and the screen height is a fair bit more.
VIDEOS - videos are definatley better on the GN2 the screen is bigger and there is no black clipping in shadows that plagued the GN. Skin tones aren’t as neutral on the GN2 however.
BUILD QUALITY – The build quality is first rate (better than the SGS3 which was really good compared with the original note), the back cover feels a lot thicker than the note and the body is rock solid with no creaks or flex.
SCREEN – The screen is a big step up on the note. Font is defiantly sharper than the note and whites no longer have a blueish tinge. I would say the screen is brighter than the original (despite what GSM says). The colours are vivid and blacks are black, the only down side is that skin tones tent to look a bit bright tending to orangey pink. The text sharpness is a smidge below the SGS3 (if you really look close) but still awesome and a lot brighter than the SGS3.
PERFORMANCE – There is absolutely zero lag or stutter. Jellybean, quadcore and 2GB of ram do an excellent job and opening and running all apps is quicker on the note 2. The 2GB of ram is a big improvement. With a lot of apps installed I still have 500MB left, if I clear ram it drops to 780MB used with 1GB available but soon creeps up. Rebooting is super quick, the note 2 is about 28 seconds the note is 54 seconds.
BATTERY – GSM’s test is about right. The N2 battery life is getting close to double that of the note. On standby with several active apps it was using less than 1% per hour. Internet use is about 10-12% per hour which is half the note. I haven’t watched any videos yet. The battery takes about 4hrs 20min to charge from 0%. I think you could get 3 days on light use, 2 on moderate and even heavy use would be a good 12+ hours
OS and SOFTWARE – I was going to try touchwiz this time but it’s still not intuitive. Samsung should purchase Go Launcher or similar and re-start from there. Go launcher is now super smooth and a lot better option for ma. A lot of touchwiz features come through anyway (widget shuffle etc). In general Jellybean and Samsung have really thought about the little things as well. The whole interface is just a lot better looking and laid out (i.e. add contacts button on the top right not top left, $ symbol on the first symbols page). The lock screen is really nice with weather, news and 5 customisable quick launch icons which can be any app. The notifications area is even better. Smart rotation and especially smart stay are really handy features. Help and hints are really well implemented as you set up your phone. It also seems that Samsung have decided to roll out updates quicker which is good.
I know this will start a storm but… android jelly bean seem to have moved away from blacks and greys to blues and greys…. It looks heaps nicer but I’m sure Apple has some patent on blue? (it does look a bit appleish on certain apps).
SPLIT SCREEN MULTI TASKING – I didn’t have it out of the box but it came as a 40MB firmware update. This feature works really smoothly with no delay. I haven’t looked but don’t think you can add to the standard 13 apps. One app missing from the split screen is a calculator.
CAMERA - The new camera has a lot of additional features including bust shot (which is amazingly quick) best face, face and blink detection and HDR. Video now has slow motion and fast motion recording. As usual you can adjust exposure, white balance, timer, timer etc. You can set the camera and video to record to the phone or card however burst will only record to the phone due to read speed requirements. Compared to the note the GN2 is a lot sharper, has better colours and works better for macro shots and is a lot, lot faster. I actually wonder if my Note camera was faulty because the GN2 resolution is significantly better.
S PEN – I haven’t used this a lot but it is a big improvement on the note in feel and the functions it offers. Taking notes in a call is a great feature as is the ability to clip parts of pages. The airview feature works well but probably isn’t that handy for me. I notice that to allow Go Launcher notifications you have to disable air view.. obviously a little bug to iron out.
OTHER – The notification light is pretty handy, I have installed the “Light Flow” app to customise the event and colours. The WIFI signal is a lot stronger on the new note. Speaker volume and call clarity seem better. I haven’t had a chance to work out how to use NFC yet. There is no flash installed out of the box. This can easily be overcome by downloading and installing a flash apk file and allowing flash in your browser (I use boat browser). There is no need to root the device. Playing web based flash video appears to be a lot more reliable and smoother than on the note.
DOWNSIDES – There are a not too many issues with the Note 2. The big one is you can’t copy apps from your phone to the SD card. You can root your device to get this option. I don’t know if this is Jellybean or Samsung but I don’t know why the minimum phone isn’t 32GB. I haven’t installed any apps over 200MB yet. Unless you have heaps of video or music a 64GB micro SD is probably overkill. Touchwiz still isn’t an intuitive or customisable piece of software (compared with Go launcher or other ) Also the Note 2 doesn't support Telstras 1800MHz LTE or DC-HSDPA like the iphone 5, Samsung really needs to lift their game on this.
CONCLUSION – The note 2 is a big step up from the note. All the weaknesses of the note such as the pentile screen, battery life, Ram and processor performance, build quality and appearance have been fixed. Add that to jellybean, numerous additional software features and apps and you have arguably the best device in the world that is almost perfect. I actually feel sorry for the Note 3 designers because there’s not much to improve on.
This is my personal opinion after 2 days, it’s not a magazine article so I haven’t proof read it sorry. If you have any questions on the Note 2 leave them and I will get back to you.
sorry for the long post :-)
- Anonymous
- 2Gp
Abr_Hyd, 10 Oct 2012Q.1 Is it that all Apps downloaded from Google Play/Samsung App Store are stored on Phone memo... more1 and 2) it appears all apps go to the phone memory and you cant move them to the SD card. The camera gives you the option to save to the phone or card although burst photos save to the phone. The Sandisk 64GB cards are reasonable now and great if you have lots of movies, music or pake lots of video.
3) The app i saw for moving apps to the sd card was GL 2 SD which works on rooted devices only. I am sure there are other options and apps available if you do a search.
- AnonD-8044
- nE0
Released mid August now mid October and has 3.1 million hits i think thats a record..I been on GSMArena since 2003 and never seen a phone grow that fast in that short time (2months approx).
- Abr_Hyd
- KSi
AnonD-61530, 10 Oct 2012MINI REVIEW
I have had my Note 2 almost 24 hours so thought I would do a mini review for anyo... moreQ.1 Is it that all Apps downloaded from Google Play/Samsung App Store are stored on Phone memory by default?
Q.2 What if I want to download all those Apps to my Memory Card? I think we get on 11 or 12 GB Free Available on a 16GB Galaxy S3 or Note-2. Definitely need 32/64GB Memory Card.
Q.3 Which is that App? from Samsung to Transfer All the Photos, Contacts, SMS, Bookmarks & Calendar from an iPhone to Galaxy S 3 without any problem. Can the same be done for Note-2?
Thanks
- iyyapps
- utG
AnonD-8543, 10 Oct 2012Buddy i have mailed to samsungs ceos office from the contact us link on samsung india website ... morewat is the mail ID tat u sent mail to.. can u give me.. and i see no polaris office and how do we read word exel all documents in this note 2?
- Anonymous
- 0FI
AnonD-61530, 10 Oct 2012MINI REVIEW I have had my Note 2 almost 24 hours so thought I would do a mini review for anyo... morei learn new word schmick. thank you sir.
- AnonD-8543
- utv
Iyyapps, 10 Oct 2012And yes in update on screen recorder, they might include some time later and may not include a... moreBuddy i have mailed to samsungs ceos office from the contact us link on samsung india website .
Pls u also do the same and i req all gsmareners to do it so that samsung comes to know how much we need the screen recorder in note 2.
This is the mail which i sent them.
To,
Team Samsung
This is to bring to your information.
As per all demo videos of galaxy note 2 one very higlighted feature was the
Screen Recorder.
but its not present in the galaxy note 2 neither of the updates support it.
its sheer breach of trust and being a very primary customer of the galaxy family .
I expect a early reply back on the above said.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5DcgZum8M1o
The video link demonstrates the feature.
http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_note_ii-review-811p4.php
Both link demonstrate the same feature.
- Anonymous
- t7X
I think this is the best phone to date. iphone 5 is a peace of shit compared to this phone.
- AnonD-53316
- vGS
AnonD-75270, 10 Oct 2012juz got mine today n is amazing but the s pen's nib is a bit loose is it so by default or some... moreIts the built of SPen.
- AnonD-75270
- KIg
juz got mine today n is amazing but the s pen's nib is a bit loose is it so by default or some fault ??
- sheikh
- KIg
juz got mine n its amazing but the s pen's nib is a bit loose is it by default or mine got some problem ??
- Anonymous
- Snv
euro boy, 10 Oct 2012Hei, does this phone have LED notification?Yes it does. Configurable to different color settings as well...
- Anonymous
- Snv
deepak, 10 Oct 2012 samsung service bad ignoring problems go for apple if have problem like galaxy note black cr... moreTotally out of the ballpark. No crush reported so far on the BRG matrix...do your homework
- fm65
- utp
DhaemonNair, 10 Oct 2012just want to ask if N7100 is Lte capable or not? can someone tell me?
or it goes like this... moreI am also looking for answers to these questions.
It seems Samsung CC people in India themselves dont know what there company Samsung has made nor they have any idea about LTE 700/2100 !
- Derhunter23
- IV%
Thanks for your reply. Another question for you. Your Note2 is made in Korea, Vietnam or China?. And what is the difference? Thanks in advance.
- Anonymous
- vGS
Iyyapps, 10 Oct 2012And yes in update on screen recorder, they might include some time later and may not include a... moreYou are talking about cover, they didn't even provided a simple Polaris Office Editor, no one can imagine that, I was disappointed with that but still I love this phone.
- PRASANTH KUMAR
- rA2
Today only i bought this for 38k ..wat a amazing technology from samsung ..I like the pop up note and pop up browser....after 38mb update new feature available that is multitasking.But one dissapointment.While i charge it takes 4hours to fully charge
- Iyyapps
- b%L
[deleted post]yeas pathetic.. it was there in note itself.. but i don know why they didn't give in this version.. we need to download better one from google store..
- AnonD-53316
- vGS
Iyyapps, 10 Oct 2012And yes in update on screen recorder, they might include some time later and may not include a... moreYou are talking about cover, they didn't even provided a simple Polaris Office Editor, no one can imagine that, I was disappointed with that but still I love this phone.
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