Living With the Samsung Galaxy Note II

For the past few weeks, I’ve been carrying around a Samsung Galaxy Note II, the “phablet” that sits somewhere between a phone and a tablet. With its 5.5-inch screen, it’s certainly larger than the typical phone I carry around, but I’ve found that the large screen makes it the device I check first for Web browsing, email, and some kinds of reading.

The first thing anyone talks about with the Galaxy Note II is its size, and at 5.9 inches tall by 3.2 inches wide by 0.37 inch thick, it is notably bigger than other phones; the Apple iPhone 5 is 4.87 inches by 2.31 inches and 0.30 inches thick and the Samsung Galaxy S III is 5.38 by 2.78 inches and 0.34 inches thick. Weight is an issue as well. The Note II weighs 6.34 ounces compared with 4.7 ounces for the S III and 3.95 ounces for the iPhone.

But it fits (barely) into my pockets, and that’s what counts to me. Most of the men I showed the Galaxy Note II thought it was really neat, but most of the women thought it was too big.

This phone clearly isn’t meant for everyone. For instance, it does look (and feel) a little silly pressed to your ear. Talking isn’t my primary activity on a mobile phone these days, however; I more commonly use it to manage email, browse, and use apps. And that’s where the device shines because the screen just makes these things look better.

The Note II looks like a bigger version of the Samsung Galaxy S III phone I tried a few months ago, but with a larger screen. Like the S III, the Note II has a 1,280-by-720 resolution AMOLED display, giving it a 16:9 aspect ratio; its screen is not only larger (5.5-inch versus of 4.8-inch), but the subpixel layout is a bit different since it doesn’t use the Pentile format the S III uses. I find that both displays look quite good, and think the extra size is particularly nice for viewing videos, as well as Web browsing.

The device itself is quite fast. It runs a 1.6GHz quad-core Samsung Exynos processor and comes with 2GB of RAM 16GB of storage (a bit over 10GB available), plus it has a microSD card slot for additional storage. It supports LTE and I found it very responsive at just about everything I tried.

It still has a plastic case, which doesn’t bother me, but makes it feel less modern than some other phone cases. The base device uses microUSB for connections and charging. Most importantly, it has a Wacom stylus, which Samsung calls the S-Pen, with 1,024 levels of sensitivity.

From a software perspective, the Galaxy Note II I tested ran the “Jelly Bean” version of Android (4.1.1) and generally seems quite similar to the Galaxy S III, down to Samsung’s TouchWiz extensions and most of the Samsung-specific applications. I’m not at all sure TouchWiz is necessary these days, but there are some nice customizations, such popping up a special menu when you remove the S-Pen. The version I used also had a lot of AT&T applications that were mostly unnecessary.

Samsung’s own applications were interesting, but they often seemed to duplicate other items in the system. It offers a Samsung account and Samsung’s own Media Hub for renting or buying video content; as well as Samsung’s Music Hub for streaming or buying music. Of course, being Android, it also has the Google Play stores for books, magazines, movies,  TV shows, music, and apps. S-Voice, the voice-recognition system, speaks a bit like Apple’s Siri but I generally think that the Google search function (Google Now) works a bit better for me.

Some of the tools really take advantage of the device, particularly those that use the S-Pen. S-Note (above) lets you take notes with the stylus, type notes from on an on-screen keyboard, add them via voice note, and insert various kinds of media. By pressing the stylus, you get more functionality. Overall, I find this to be a useful note-taking tool, though it can be a bit confusing in places. It is great to be able to write down lists and sketch a few things, but moving things around is difficult, and often bring up the wrong tool.

Paper Artist is a very nice drawing package with lots of effects that you can use on captured photos (similar to Instagram). I’m not an artist, but I find it surprisingly capable.

The product has a number of other features, such as S-Beam for transferring content to another current Samsung device. Some features don’t seem to be in the U.S. version, including a method of running two applications side-by-side, so I couldn’t test them.

t has an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera, plus a 1.3-megapixel camera for video chats. The camera has a number of shooting modes, including a burst mode and a “best photo” option, the ability to take panoramas (above), and a variety of special effects on the image. Overall, I think the photos and video taken in good lighting look fairly good. When I took it to a concertrecently, where the lighting was poor, I found the basic photos to be among the best (though still not quite as good as I would like) but wasn’t nearly as happy with the videos.

One thing that makes it heavier than the Galaxy S III is a larger battery, and that does make a difference when it comes to battery life. The device’s charge easily makes it through a full day for me, despite the larger screen.

Still, the feature I find particularly useful about the device—the same feature many will eschew—is its overall size. Web browsing is convenient on the big screen, and it is a great device to read email on as well. Some applications also look particularly good on the larger screen, including the New York Times and Flipboard. (These still feel like phone apps, though, not tablet-specific ones.) Essentially, you’re just seeing larger fonts, but that does make a difference.

And that’s really the story of the Note II. The included S-Pen is useful for note-taking and sketching (assuming you can draw). But for me, the most important thing is the bigger screen. Simply put, bigger is often better for reading. Samsung says this is the best of both phones and tablets, which seems like a bit of an exaggeration since it’s not the same as a tablet, but it is certainly easier to carry one Galaxy Note II than both a phone and a tablet, and as a phone, it certainly gives you a great deal of capabilities. Not everyone will want to carry something so big, but I found it to be my go-to device in most circumstances, in large part, because the screen simply looks so good.