Gadgetory

hey guys it's random in a minute front pocket now calm and this is our full review of the t-mobile Galaxy Note 2 let's get to it the Galaxy Note 2 is a big device but you already knew that it feels more comfortable in the hand than did the first galaxy note which felt more like an experiment than it did a refined and final product the note 2 looks and feels like a big galaxy s3 let's take a closer look at the hardware like the galaxy s3 the note 2 has a minimal bezel surrounding the display at five point five five inches that displays closer to being five point six inches then it is 5.5 inches it is big and it's got the same resolution than the smaller galaxy s3 at 1280 pixels down by 720 pixels across making for a still crisp dpi of 264 the display is a Super AMOLED HD with an RGB sub pixel configuration which means that close-up icons look smoother than they did on the galaxy s3 which had a pentile screen up on the top B of the same speaker that is found on the galaxy s3 plus some sensors an LED notification light that disappears when it's not blinking and a 1.9 megapixel front-facing camera on the back we have a symmetrical home button flanked by the menu and back buttons that like the LED light are invisible when not turned on flipping over to the back we can see the nice-looking graphite grey color of our test unit the camera is the same as the galaxy s3 which is a good thing at 8 megapixels and like the galaxy s3 the back cover is removable but it's plastic and picks up fingerprints way too easily removing the back battery cover we find a memory expansion slot a micro SIM Bay and the huge 3100 milliamp hour battery more on battery life later let's talk specs the t-mobile version like all US variants has the powerful Exynos quad-core CPU clocking it up to 1.6 gigahertz per core it also has a plentiful 2 gigabytes of RAM and 16 gigabytes of storage it ships with Android 4.1.1 jelly bean which is great to see at the box because this is the t-mobile variant there is no LTE onboard but there is support for t-mobile fastest 42 megabits per second data speeds over HSPA+ in hand the Galaxy Note tube fill is very similar to the galaxy s3 just a whole lot bigger so you'll experience the same smooth textures and rounded edges and you might also think that the build quality is cheap because of the heavy use of plastic but because the note 2 is heavier than the galaxy s3 it feels more substantial and thus higher quality the note tube is quite thin at just nine point four millimeters in depth don't expect to adequately use the note 2 with one hand though with the inclusion of the stylists Samsung wasn't trying to build a one hand friendly device because anytime you use the s-pen you need two hands speaking of the stylus let's talk about the s-pen it's thicker than the s-pen of the original note but feels light and plasticky not high quality like a desk pen also Samsung claims to have increased the level of friction of the tip of the pen but we found writing on the smooth surface of the Note 2 to feel like well writing on a smooth screen the note 2 doesn't successfully replicate the feeling of writing on paper so if you plan on replacing your memo pad with the note 2 you might find handwriting on the device to feel unnatural but it's kind of fun to just use the end pen to navigate the note 2 instead of your finger flipping through the app tray scrolling through a webpage and even drawing on the keyboard feels more precise when you're using a stylus and it reminds us a bit of the days of Windows Mobile where a stylus input was the usual and then there's a ton you can do with the s-pen we covered these features in detail in a previous video but let's review some of the coolest ones now you can now write directly into an email and the software will convert it to an image while this won't exactly make you more productive it's a lot of fun you can also now write directly into your calendar but only if you're using s planner and you're in portrait orientation pressing the S Pen button and double tapping on the screen will bring up pop-up note which is a great way to quickly jot down a note while having it hover above whatever screen you're on if you're hoping that the note 2 does a good job at handwriting recognition you're likely to be disappointed unless you have nice handwriting you can call it the handwriting recognition input method anywhere that the keyboard is called up then there's a couple of really interesting software editions that would only work with the large display of the note 2 for example pop-up browser has been added as a way to look at a webpage without leaving the app you're currently running this is super helpful when using Twitter and Facebook and you want to view web links without having to leave the app another super cool feature of the note 2 which is only available in a software update that is yet to be pushed to our review unit is a split screen multiview that lets you run two apps at once side by side and while Samsung claims that the S Pen is over 1,000 levels of pressure we didn't really notice that level of sensitivity while there are definitely varying degrees of sensitivity it would seem that there only are about ten of them if you try to draw a line and apply varying degrees of thickness let's talk more about the software running on android jelly bean the note 2 feels a lot like the Galaxy s3 because it uses pretty much the same software TouchWiz on the home screen allows for easy management of multiple panels something that we tremendously dislike about TouchWiz is that you still cannot make a new folder by moving one app to overlap on another like you can an Ice Cream Sandwich instead you must press on the menu button and tap a new folder unlike the International note 2 the t-mobile Note 2 has a fair amount of t-mobile bloatware apps and widgets these aren't a problem if you just ignore them but unfortunately they cannot be removed overall device performance was pretty impressive moving in and out of apps flipping through the app tray and browsing the web we're all very smooth with the exception of the occasional hiccup when flipping through widgets when browsing a particularly image-heavy webpage games also looked quite impressive with great frame rates and detailed textures though we wish there were some Exynos specific games that could really show off the power of Samsung's quad-core CPU for full benchmark results check out our full review but as a preview the note 2 scores impressively in Quadrant with results around 6000 we wish the note 2 at a kickstand because as a movie player the note 2 can't be beat thanks to its massive screen streaming HD Netflix video content was an absolute joy though a bit tiring if you don't prop the device so that you don't have to hold it web browsing was also more desktop-like than we've ever experienced on a smartphone but because of the display is still 1280 by 720 you don't see more content than on smaller devices with the same resolution everything is just bigger now for some test notes our t-mobile tester unit came with a graphite gray case it acts as a new battery cover and provides a book like form factor the case which will retail for about 40 dollars makes the Note 2 even more awkward to hold as you must wrap the front cover around to the back to be able to type with two hands battery life on the note 2 is far above average thanks to its huge 3100 milliamp hour battery with heavy use you'll get through a day and a half in terms of network performance we were disappointed the note 2 on t-mobile doesn't have LTE because t-mobile is still using the UMTS based HSPA+ standard our best speed tests clocked in at around 12 megabits per second which is on the low end of what you would get on LTE with a note 2 on Verizon AT&T or Sprint not only that but we dropped down to edge and even the rare 56k like GPRS data speeds at times which was just unacceptable call quality was solid we experienced no dropped calls even though we were often making calls with half the number of bars than we'd show on other devices running on other networks in the same spot in terms of camera performance we found the camera on the note 2 to be as good as it is on the galaxy s3 putting it on par with the iPhone for us but not quite as good as the iPhone 5 low-light shots were reasonably good macros were crisp and outdoor shots were well balanced I went into this review hoping that Samsung had increased the utility of the s-pen enough to the point where I would be more productive on the note 2 then I would be on any other smartphone was this the case well no I sure did have a lot of fun with the note 2 as using the s-pen to write into an email to take notes and to see a preview of my emails just by hovering on a message was a unique in Weld experience but because writing on the screen of the note2 feels so unnatural coupled with its inadequate handwriting recognition I found myself spending more time feeling frustrated than being productive but for what it is the note2 is a brilliant device that does nearly everything well and those that don't mind its size will find it to be highly capable smartphone here's what we like and what we don't like about the t-mobile Galaxy Note 2 we like that it's fast we like that the display brings movies and games to life like no other phone can and we like that Samsung has included software features to take advantage of the big screen we don't like that t-mobile still doesn't have LTE and that their network performance is still not up to par with the other carriers we don't like that the already cumbersome to hold Note 2 has the slippery and fingerprint prone casing found on the galaxy s3 and we don't like that we're still left questioning the utility of the s-pen which is the core feature of the note 2 it's just not good enough to be a game-changer yet so in conclusion we're going to give the t-mobile Galaxy Note 2 an 8 out of 10 now the reason we're not giving it a full nine out of 10 like we gave the International Galaxy Note 2 is because of t-mobile with t-mobile you don't get LTE data speeds you get speeds that are as high as 15 megabits per second and optimum conditions which is good but nowhere near something the LTE speeds we're seeing on the other three carriers also with t-mobile on the note 2 i ran into edge data speed sometimes and even GPRS speeds which just was not acceptable so the Galaxy Note 2 is an awesome phone in and of itself but t-mobile still has some of its problems unless you live in a coverage area with optimum t-mobile performance so if you liked this video please give us a thumbs up and thanks for watching that's it for now you