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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tommo123 - Thursday, October 25, 2012 - link
i'm in liverpool and we're getting it amongst the 1st.1 - the prices are stupid.
2 - afaik the radio uses more power
3 - youtube - only buffering probs i have are on their end
4 - streaming in general - 3G i get is more than sufficient
tommo123 - Thursday, October 25, 2012 - link
put a LTE note 2 next to a 3G note 2 and watch youtube/stream netflix and odds are there won't be a difference in anything other than downloading. And that is not going to happen due to EEs anaemic allowanceagent2099 - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
That is a steep price at 299 Subsidized. Any idea what the unsubsidized price will be?warisz00r - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
Where I live, the at-launch price is the same as the OG Note.phemark - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
Good review, waiting for Padfone 2 review now:)antef - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
IMO the menu-home-back button layout is a dealbreaker (as opposed to back-home-recent apps on Nexus/HTC/Motorola devices). It means you have to long-press to access recent apps and you have to remember to look down there to press the menu key even though every other action is on the action bar up top, totally disjointed. Not to mention the menu key is always present and lit up even in apps where it doesn't do anything, like the camera app and Google Reader. Try explaining that to a new user, no wonder so many people choose iPhone, it makes Android seem more confusing than it has to. This combined with the awful look and bloated, overlapping feature set of TouchWiz makes it apparent Samsung has zero handle on UI design or usability. I will gladly buy a Nexus device that they manufacture, but not any of their branded devices.schmitty338 - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
iOS can be even more convoluted. Case in point, my mom, whom has an old HTC android phone that she uses just fine) called me the other day asking how to do basic things on her new iPad.Neither is perfect and both have their pros and cons.
Also, have you use the new Note 2? EVery single video/written review I have seen praises the software. Yes, some features are probably never going to be used, but that doesn't harm the experience which, everybody agrees, is for the most part, outstanding.
Bubbacub - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
padfone 2 review would be great.i dont know about others - but i spend a lot of time copying data (HD films) from my laptop to my phone and my tablet. would be nice to get rid of that extra step (which is huge for me because i use linux which has utterly retarded MTP support)
Jumpman23 - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
In a lot of android phones whenever I try to use a stylus and draw a diagonal line in some drawing app, the diagonal line would never be perfectly straight as I'd like. It is always wavy. Try drawing a slow diagonal line in any drawing app and you'd know what I mean. So I wonder if the Note 2 has improved upon this.schmitty338 - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
That is because they use inaccurate capacitive touch for drawing. This is an active stylus built on Wacom tech, just like full-sized windows tablet PCs and drawing tablets...it won't have that issue.