When 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.

Camera Analysis - Stills Display - A new Subpixel Geometry
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  • leo jacsion - Tuesday, December 18, 2012 - link

    Preservance a professional <a href=" http://preservancetech.com/our-services/web-design... Designing</a> company based in the capital city of India that offers various services for website designing from a static website to CMS driven website to any open source website development to complete e-commerce site to travel portal.
  • leo jacsion - Friday, December 21, 2012 - link

    Preservance a professional <a href=" http://preservancetech.com/our-services/web-design... Designing</a> company based in the capital city of India that offers various services for website designing from a static website to CMS driven website to any open source website development to complete e-commerce site to travel portal.
  • darwinosx - Wednesday, January 30, 2013 - link

    It is much more than that. Anyone who paid any attention to the trial knows that Samsung had pages and pages showing the iPhone interface and the S 2 interface which it clearly said to copy as closely as possible. But the Android kids want to be ignorant and trot out the Samsung line that is just about being a rectangle.
  • cmdrdredd - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link

    The GS2 is ugly as hell next to the GS3.
  • Samus - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link

    Yeah its amazing how much my wife's GSII is mistaken for an iPhone in the line at ****bucks.

    I know what you mean, though, and its sad Samsung is basically banned from making "attractive" looking phones. Because appearantly, Apple invented attractive looking phones?
  • Wardrop - Thursday, October 25, 2012 - link

    Dejavu?
  • Spunjji - Thursday, October 25, 2012 - link

    Good to see I'm not the only one who got whacked by the comments system yesterday.
  • n13L5 - Wednesday, November 7, 2012 - link

    The way I got my home screen set up, nobody has ever asked if it is an iPhone, as there's no rows of icons to see, and given the Samoled's black values, you can't even see where the screen ends if your background is set to black.
  • Sabresiberian - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link

    I guess Samsung didn't consider what would be aesthetically pleasing to someone who would choose a screen name like "jigglywiggly". :D

    Seriously though, just like I'd never be caught using a screen name for a site like yours, there is nothing wrong with your choice, and there is nothing wrong with the looks of the Note II here. You just don't like it. That's fine, but please try not to talk as though you are the arbiter of beauty; you're not.

    ;)
  • kenyee - Monday, November 5, 2012 - link

    Smooth, round, light, sleek. Not a brick like the iPhone :-)
    The SGS2 wasn't bad, but the pebble design aesthetic isn't bad IMHO...

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