Samsung Galaxy Note 2 Review (T-Mobile) - The Phablet Returns
by Brian Klug on October 24, 2012 9:00 AM ESTWhen it comes to video, surprise, the Galaxy Note 2 performs like a Galaxy S 3. Samsung has always had good video encode compared to the competition and the Note 2 is obviously no exception. I’m starting to suspect that M5MO is doing the video encode and thus how Samsung is able to keep 17 Mbps H.264 high profile looking so consistent across devices and different SoCs and time. This has been a feature they’ve touted for some time now and continues here on the Note 2.
Unfortunately I shot my video on the same day I took my bench photos and it was a bit overcast, which doesn’t quite match the sunny to very sunny views we’ve had in previous videos at the test location. Nevertheless despite the lighting changes the rear facing video quality looks pretty sharp to me. Front facing seems soft or undersampled for some reason compared to the 720p video I’m seeing out of some of the other high end smartphones I’ve recently reviewed.
Users coming from the original Note will also find that they have a much wider field of view on the Note 2 while shooting 1080p video thanks to the fact that the different CMOS and possibly different ISP firmware reads out. It doesn’t appear to be a center crop anymore like the original Note took, instead you get the wider but still not totally full field of view behavior of the Galaxy S 3 era camera.
As usual I’ve uploaded the videos from the front and rear video to YouTube for easy viewing and also provided the original untouched output from the camera in a zip file (167 MB) for your enjoyment if you don’t want to view samples through YouTube’s x264 transcode blockiness.
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Zoomer - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
Google play music actually seems to do burst caching.Peanutsrevenge - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
Agreed.I listen to the cricket on tunein radio when it's on and that's a constant stream I believe and it annihilates my battery, despite the low bitrate.
Would be nice if somewhere along the line radios could go into a low power mode where it's only running close to the minimum required speed with the power taking a relative drop.
tommo123 - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
and haven't got the thing below 30% in battery life yet, even after using bluetooth audio for a few hours and tracking my location with endomondo, watching movies via 3G (didn't go for the LTE ver here - no point) and so on.got my USB OTG adapter today and am seeing how long i can play movies off of it for. max brightness and playing off an SD card connected externally.
the screen on this thing is amazing and now my SGS2 is tiny, like a kids toy.
tommo123 - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
well video playback laster 8 hours 19 mins with screen on max brightness, with wifi on and powering a usb OTG cable, a sd card/usb adapter and the SD card itself. now on 5%not too shabby.
in airplane mode etc and an internal mSD card i think it could hit the 10 hours mark - especially with brightness lowered a tad
Spunjji - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
Pretty much fits my experience! Fairly sure there are even gains to be had from rooting, tweaking etc.tommo123 - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
oh i rooted mine on the 2nd day and flashed a rom on the 3rd :)PeteH - Thursday, October 25, 2012 - link
So maybe not the best example of a "typical" user's experience ;)tommo123 - Friday, October 26, 2012 - link
nope :)i did my own test yest though
i let 720p vids play non stop yest on this in airplane mode, max brightness (like i was on a plane) and was impressed! played for 11 hours 38 mins before it hit 5%. so say 12 hours video playback.
nice.no need for a laptop to play vids on a flight anymore. just this and a spare battery for when i get off the plane :)
plus 1 for removable batteries! :D
Peanutsrevenge - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
No point in LTE?You may regret that soon, 4G's rolling out as we speak.
Was in T-mo store the other day helping mate choose a phone (got S3 i9305, could convince him to get note II) and sales advisor reckons 6 months for Bournemouth.
Spunjji - Thursday, October 25, 2012 - link
This one does vary a lot by where you live. Their definition of "coverage" might be interesting too, given how their standard network holds up.