Gadgetory

everybody it's Michael Fisher with pocketnow.com here in the Boston offices of pocket now we are slaving away on our Samsung Galaxy Note 2 full review which will be up very soon but we figured in the interim that maybe you'd like to see some more comparisons we've already compared the note 2 to the galaxy s3 go ahead and look that up if you haven't seen that video yet we've done an in-depth tour of the s-pen and now we're going to have a quick look at the samsung galaxy note 2 versus its predecessor the samsung galaxy note oh gee edition we're going to take a very quick look at this as you can tell work with on-camera audio so it's not going to be an in-depth video we're going to look at three areas hardware software and the s-pen we didn't have a lot of time we got to get back to work in this review so let's get to it it's a pocket now so let's take a look at hardware first this is the Galaxy Note on the left the Galaxy Note 2 on the right obviously these are different colored devices both are offered in multiple colors and it is difficult to photograph a dark and light phone at the same time so please for give me four that you can see right here it's it's subtle but if you take a look at it you can see what we're talking about with this slimming effect Samsung has definitely slimmed down the profile on the note 2 here's when in fact the dimensions are 80 millimeters wide instead of 83 millimeters wide on the original note there's also been some minor slimming here 9 point 4 millimeters on the new device nine point seven on the old one nothing you're gonna really notice unless you're really really looking for it and in fact the weight has been increased 183 grams on the Galaxy Note 2 versus 178 grams on the original Galaxy Note but somehow despite all that despite the slim margins on the metrics and the fact that this one is actually heavier the Galaxy Note 2 definitely feels better in the hand it's not just because there's a glossy finish which is a little friendlier to the skin then this weird matte finish here on the original note but the device is slimmer it's more palm friendly it's more ergonomic very very similar to the galaxy s3 which we discussed in depth in our galaxy s3 vs Galaxy Note 2 video so you can get our focus back there there we are working Before we jump into the software we just have a look at the displays here there's a little bit of a scrolling action here which belies the different technology behind these screens they are both large panels this one is five point three inches 5.5 on the right on the new one they're both Super AMOLED displays however and they're both running the same resolution almost the same resolution 800 by 1280 over here 720 by 1280 on the new device no pentile sub pixel arrangement on the new galaxy note 2 that will make many people jump for joy we've written some articles on that you can look it up if you don't know what a pentile sub pixel arrangement is anyway hopping around to the back real quickly we have once again both devices are rocking an 8 megapixel primary shooter the one on the galaxy note 2 has been rumored to be and I believe confirmed to be the same module as found in the galaxy s3 so that's good news for anyone as anyone will know who has used a Galaxy s3 camera before it is an excellent excellent shooter otherwise Hardware differences are relatively minor speaker phones are in the same place samsung branding there's your Flash volume rockers lock button in roughly the same place actually Samsung has moved the lock button down on the galaxy note 2 so it's a bit more accessible and note button excuse me I keep doing that home button flanked by capacitive menu and back keys on each instance here so given the choice between these two models it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone when I say I prefer the note 2 despite the fact that I don't really like the hyper glaze coating it does feel better in the hand and and it's certainly a much more manageable device due to those new friendlier dimensions I just want to talk about specs briefly I know some of you people watching the video are very interested in specs obviously with the generation apart the chipsets inside here are going to be different the original Galaxy Note 2 shipped with a Samsung Exynos dual-core processor running at one point four gigahertz the note 2 shipping with the new X and O's 4412 quad running at 1.6 gigahertz that is a quad-core processor obviously very very very notable more notable possibly is the fact that it also supports LTE this will be the first phone one of the first phones in the United States to support both LTE and a quad-core processor at the same time very significant otherwise we have some RAM differences here one gig shift in the original Galaxy Note and most configurations in the galaxy note 2 we have double that two gigs of ram available storage capacity 16 32 or 64 gigs of storage augmenta below microSD compared to 16 or 32 gigs of storage on the original galaxy note also micro sd over here alright that's hardware now how about the software so from a software perspective the original note shipped with Android OS 2.3.5 Gingerbread which was later made upgradable to android 4.4 ICS which is what we're running here the Galaxy Note 2 being newer of course ships with Android 4.1.1 jelly bean and all the accompanying notification enhancements Google now and the project butter UI enhancements among others and including the pop-up browser which I didn't mean to open just then but I'm glad it opened because it allowed me to show off one of my favorite features Samsung's new TouchWiz build the TouchWiz builds are the TouchWiz builds pardon me are also completely different obviously you can see in the original note this is very much the galaxy s / Galaxy S 2 design language and the software here with these kind of big square colorful TouchWiz widgets that we became familiar with over a couple years of kind of hating on skins the Galaxy Note 2 obviously bringing a much more modern take to the situation a lot here just ripped samsung just ripped directly off from themselves in the the galaxy s3 which is not at all a bad thing you can see some nice animations on folder openings here obviously a much more pronounced focus on user interface in the TouchWiz nature UX whether you like it or hate it maybe you don't like those river water droplet sounds on every menu action but you can of course change those whatever the case it is a much more evolved user interface than the old version of TouchWiz and it is much much more pleasant to use and you can see that that change in responsiveness even in just doing things like homescreen scrolling here and maybe will see it in the app launcher as well and let's not forget the defining feature of phablets the things that make Galaxy Notes Galaxy Notes the s-pen the older s-pen on the Galaxy Note 1 a much thinner affair than the newer one which we'll take a look at in a second and performance lagging a little behind what one might expect from a top-end unit especially one that's being sold on its stylist like merits you can see there it's trailing behind if you get go and you can get a trailing buy and buy a good inch or so obviously good pressure responsiveness and you know good performance overall from this device but not exactly what you'd expect from something that sells itself based on being a stylus centric device so Samsung implemented some improvements in the Galaxy Note 2 the new Wacom digitizer capable of over a thousand levels of pressure sensitivity here's the new s-pen thicker feels better in the hand it was touted as implementing some some friction increasing elements to the stylus to give it the feel of a ballpoint pen on paper almost that is not the case it still definitely feels like plastic on glass which is exactly what you are doing and while I can scribble nonsense pretty well it is tough to write well I discussed these difficulties in depth in my s-pen guided tour video from earlier this week so you should go check that out if you have not seen it already there are many many features samsung is built into the software here changing some of the implementations to include support for back and menu that was there in the note 1 but the gesture types are different now there are also options like quick launch where you draw a straight line up there's a button on the s-pen here which allows you to change its mode of operation and you can select certain symbols for a quick launch and so forth that is fun those are exciting features there is nothing that's going to really really enhance usability all too much I find that my favorite implementation of the s-pen intends to be in apps like the gallery where I can hover over images and also in the video player where I can scrub the video manually before deciding where I want to hop to in the video that is a very very nice touch and I even find the S Pen very useful in apps where a stylus is not necessary and styluses are not necessary in apps like Twitter here but it is handy for precise precision input particularly using some of the new features Samsung was able to bring to the note 2 like the pop-up browser here very very handy as well as full screen multitasking a very very innovative you of the note twos larger display area so if you are a Galaxy Note one owner should you invest in a Samsung Galaxy Note 2 as always that's going to depend on you I certainly would I think it's a much improved device I think the more interesting question though is if you are not currently a phablet owner and you did not own the Samsung Galaxy Note in its original iteration how will likely are you to consider something like this well considering the improvements Samsung is made to the Galaxy Note line with the Galaxy Note 2 I think the phablet category is only going to get bigger in the future but of course you'll have to wait for our full review to hear more of our insights with regard to the Galaxy Note 2 in the meantime follow us on Twitter pocket noun tweets is the official account follow me on Twitter I'm at captain 2 phones it's captain the number two phones visit us at pocketnow.com leave a comment there if you want to discuss this quick and dirty video if you want to throw us a thumbs up here on YouTube that would be awesome too if you liked what you saw meantime stay tuned to pocket now thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time