Gadgetory

Oh guys this is April from Android Authority calm today I'll be showing off some of the awesome and cool features to the latest and hottest super phone the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 GT and 7/100 do you want to know why thousands of people have gone crazy over this phone find out by watching this video review let's see what Samsung's newest phone has in store for you first let's examine the phone's physical features if you've used the original Galaxy Note before you'll have an easy time with a new Galaxy Note 2 the two are almost of the same size and thickness the Galaxy Note 2 though is slightly taller and slightly wider it's actually a huge phone almost tablet like that's why a new word has been coined for it phablet short for phone tablet Samson is known for using hard and durable plastic for most of its Android smartphones from entry level up to the high-end ones like the galaxy s3 the Gauss e note 2 is no exception it's housing is predominantly plastic we try to smash the phone in a drop test but the note 2 survives with only minor blacks and blues we have a video of the drop test also here on YouTube the ones that our test device got from that awful day for the gravity of the earth allowed us to see that the edging or frame is still made of hard plastic but coated with a thin layer of some sort of metal the bag cover is also plastic and is attachable the NFC antenna is embedded in the back cover nevertheless the handset is very light and is easy to carry around despite supporting a wider screen but since it's a big phone and might bulge out from your pocket you can buy the Galaxy Note 2 in either white or grey watch our other YouTube video comparing the two colors as far as Hardware buttons and ports are concerned little has changed from the first galaxy note the power button is still on the right side volume rocker on the left charging port and S Pen cradle at the bottom and a headphone jack at the top moved towards the left corner notice that the our and volume rocker keys have been moved down a little bit they are more accessible to the fingers now what about the display Samson added about a tenth of an inch to the screens diagonal the display on the note 2 is actually taller than the first note this means more viewing space for browsing games and video playback the original node had a 16:10 aspect ratio with screen dimensions of 800 by 1280 pixels for the new node has a 16 to 9 aspect ratio at 720 by 1280 pixels the note 2 still uses Samsung's much celebrated HD Super AMOLED technology but using an RGB matrix at this time instead of the pentile matrix used in some of samsung's previous HD smartphones the displays very crisp very bright and very sharp even in broad daylight the capacitive touch screen accepts both as a pen and finger and put it is very snappy and smooth no lag when swiping between home screens buttery zoomin and zoom-out no jitter and animations and transitions but gives a note to at superpowers the phone's processing hardware packs a huge super punch pod core Samsung Exynos 4412 ticking at 1.6 gigahertz 2 gigabytes of RAM up to 64 gigabytes of internal storage and high-capacity lithium-ion battery for up to 16 hours talktime on 3g together with android 4.1.1 jelly bean touch wiz and the phone's awesome hardware you can expect your experience of the phone similar to soft butter in terms of physical built screen and display and processing hardware the Galaxy Note 2 appears to be durable and very powerful the original Galaxy Note certainly turned heads with a stylus called the S Pen it is a centerpiece of the Gauss keynote series including the note 2 with the s-pen you can write and draw on your Galaxy Note 2 and more let's find out more about this pen Samsung changed the looks of the s-pen for the galaxy note 2 significantly many of the changes make the new pen more ergonomic can prior to the previous s-pen the new one is taller and thicker still roundish but with a flat side for easier grasping it's very light so it's easy to control when you doodle on your note to the triangular girth of the s-pen also makes it easy to return the pan into its holder the pan only goes one way into its slot unlike the cylindrical stem of the previous s-pen which often cost us the pence head to misalign with a notch so you'd need to rotate the pen to lock it in place the button on the s-pen is still around samsung has made it a bit more prominent and easier to find unlike the previous S pen's button which blended with a cylindrical stem notice that the new S Pen has notches these provide additional traction for grasping and for easy clicking by the thumb or index finger Samsung's latest software for the Galaxy Note 2 brings a new feature called air view which takes the hovering pen icon several notches higher let's see how this works for example when viewing your media files in the gallery you can preview an image or video just by hovering the pen over a thumbnail also the gallery shows your photo albums on a column on the left so that you won't need to tap the back button to pick a new album to browse well we're here in the gallery you might also want to see that the new gallery has acquired several visual improvements while watching a video you can also use air view to help you determine the place that you want to skip ahead - like this therapy also works for emails in the default Mail app you can preview an email message without opening the email itself just hover the pen over the email list like this the same feature works for the s planner app - hover the S Pen on an item on your calendar and you'll see the event details in a tooltip balloon air view even works with a default browser hover the S Pen on the browser's buttons and you can see tooltip labels you can also scroll up or down a webpage just hover the S Pen over the edge of the screen sometimes hyperlinks are tabs and a web page will also be highlighted when you hover the S Pen on it on the multi-window menu you can view the complete URL address of your tabs by just hovering the S Pen on the URL at the moment air view works only with stock Samsung Apps mostly such as s planner and the default email app you won't be able to use air view just yet using Gmail or YouTube so far I've shown you what the S Pen can't do without actually touching it on the screen let's take a look at the wonderful things that happen when you actually touch it on the screen click hold and tap the screen to grab a screenshot click hold and draw a select region to copy the selected portion to the clipboard and open it in the image editor from there you can share the image to your cloud accounts or social networks the S pen's button also has other functions besides of taking screenshots and the S note app for instance click the pen button to activate the eraser tool the Galaxy Note 2 also automatically detects when the pen is detached from its holder if your phone is locked and you remove the s-pen the screen unlocks and brings up the S Pen page known as the page buddy feature as you can see here it contains shortcuts to the various S Pen apps so the phone actually readies itself for S Pen input at the moment you remove the pen from its holder you can't change the app shortcuts on the page buddy screen but you can enable or disable a certain page buddy also since we're discussing this intelligent detection mechanism I'll show you how the phone also auto detects the headphones when earphones are inserted the page buddy for earphones will appear on the home screen here you can choose to launch the video or music player the same thing happens when you connect your phone to its dock try pulling out the S Pen while in a call the pop-up note appears so you can quickly jot down notes while talking on the phone it even appears even if your screen is locked so no need to reach for your pen and notepad another new S Pen feature on the note 2 is quick command this lets humanum eyes tapping and navigation for common tasks such as sending email hold down the S button and flick upwards to open quick commands and the quick commands app draw the @ symbol write a contact name and it will let you compose your email right away do a quick internet search by drawing a question mark followed by the search term jump to a location on the map using the exclamation mark use a hash or number sign to call a number draw a tilde to compose something or you can even add your own quick commands with your personalized set of symbols the S note app is still around after all it is the app that is most frequently used together with the S Pen an S note you'll find various Note templates that you can use to create various kinds of notes and memos it has more notebook covers if you're into personalizing your notebooks hold down on the notebook of your choice and choose from 32 notebook covers rename your notebooks either by typing the name or by scribbling it with a s pen when you have a lot of notebooks make a folder for better organization when you hover the tip of the S Pen over the folder it'll give you a preview of the notebooks inside the new page flipping animation is a nice touch this animated flipping will make owners of the original galaxy note envious even also record voice memos and attach images and videos s note also lets you record your progress in writing drawing or making diagrams and flowcharts hovering the S Pen over an open S note and holding down on the button will give you access to ideas sketch write down a word and it'll give you a clipart for it it's handy for when you're solidifying your notes with images so far I've been babbling about our favorite features on the note 2 the S Pen and its apps what else can the note 2 offer you a few more goodies actually for one the camera is really awesome there are also some new software features baked into TouchWiz for the note 2 so let's talk about the camera this time the Galaxy Note 2 packs an 8 megapixel camera and it has a few tricks up its sleeve like the original Galaxy Note the Galaxy Note 2 also has a super fast camera zero should are lag here guys let's check out burst mode and see how fast this camera really is the camera has a feature known as best photo which is handy when you're picking the best shot when trying to capture motion you can use scene mode to adjust lighting for certain conditions such as sunset and dawn you can even apply filter sort of facts to your photo right on the viewfinder if you're short on light turn on the cameras low-light shot feature the picture quality is rather good you turned off all the lights in the room and dependent only on sunlight coming in from the window Pikachu see really stood out if you're fond of base shots the camera feature called best face can give you a hand this feature lets the camera take several continuous and successive shots of the face then suggests the best face you can also override the phone suggestion make your photos more personal with a photo note feature you can write at the back of your photos it's just like the real thing right after you've snapped a photo you can send it over to your friends via NFC technology and sbeam all you need to do is to touch your device against the back of another NFC capable device then tap your screen to send the file easy the video camera also has an option for slo-mo take a look at how we film Pikachu in this fall and impact with the floor if you knew the burst of speed fast motion speeds up the frames to capture speed up action on the screen footage is a bit grainy however for both of these modes software wise the Galaxy Note 2 is the first Android phone to come with Android 4.1 jelly bean out of the box Samsung's take on jelly bean includes extra features such as home screen mode cloud syncing and blocking mode home screen mode lets you change your home screen to easy mode which presents users with larger widgets this one's great for newbie users who are still getting used to touchscreens it also puts all your favorite apps on your home screen or you can switch to the usual Samsung home screen the cloud app lets you create or add a Samsung Account to sync your calendar contacts Internet and s note notebooks you can also set your Dropbox account for syncing your content if you don't want to be disturbed turn on blocking mode this mutes all notifications from your handset you can also keep a whitelist of contacts that you can allow to contact you even if blocking mode is on we first saw the smart stay feature on the galaxy s3 and now it's back on the Galaxy Note 2 smart stay is an eye detector at the phone to text your eyes looking at the screen the phone won't go to sleep this is exceptionally convenient especially when you're browsing or reading an e-book we also got more smarts for the smart rotation feature it analyzes the position of your face and will adjust the screen orientation accordingly if you're not up to typing with your thumbs you can pull out the S Pen and hand write for messages the Galaxy Note 2 has handwriting recognition software which converts your handwriting to text it's not flawless but it does read my awful handwriting the Galaxy Note 2 screen is wide and unless you have a super long thump chances are you'll be using your two opposable thumbs to type text the Galaxy Note 2's one-handed operation feature once you confess the keyboard and move it to the side of the screen closer to them one-handed operation is also available for the phone dialer calculator and pad and unlock screen Samsung has made the Galaxy Note 2 more capable of multitasking for example when you want to do other things while keeping an eye on a video you can use the pop-up play option this option lets you view a video in a floating window while you go about using your Galaxy Note 2 browsing the internet or taking down notes we first saw the ability to multitask on the Galaxy Note 10.1 the Galaxy Note 2 also allows you to use the screens real estate through the multi window feature you can display two apps on your screen at the same time sort of like split screen not all apps support this feature though the Galaxy Note 2 is a unique and powerful beast with more features and functions then we can exhaustively cover in this review besides we don't want to take the fun out of your own exploration of Samsung's hottest phablet now do we if you love the original Galaxy Note you'll definitely want to get the galaxy note 2 smaller hands may find it rather large but it's screen is great for gaming reading and media consumption the S Pen is a magical accessory to note-taking and sketching become more fun on the note 2 Samsung's new software features as well as improvements the previous ones on the original note does amazing stuff and tandem with the phone super-powerful hardware despite some phone limitations and imperfections we are in love with a gaussian note 2 and we highly recommend this to those who are on the verge of buying their next android smartphone what about you guys what do you think of this new super phone for more juicy details on the Gauss e note to check out our rhythm review on android authority comm don't forget to subscribe to our youtube channel this is April from Android Authority calm thanks for watching guys may the light side of the Android force be with you