TWO INFINITY AND BEYOND
Samsung Galaxy Note 2 Review FILIPINO STYLE
UNBOXING MUNA:
FULL REVIEW:
After unending releases of Rebranding
Giants, these past month has been giant release after giant release, CherryMobile Titan, Cherry Mobile Flare, MyPhone A919 Duo, Cloudfone Thrill 430x, I
was surprised the wave has stopped a bit, sure Cherry released Skyfire, Flame
and Blaze, MyPhone released the A888, but I assume that the wave will come back
on January, with Torque also joining the battle.
After the release
of the Giant Phablet Note one a year ago, here comes one of the most highly
anticipated High-end phones in the market. Boasting Quadruple 1.6 GHz
Cortex-A9, a HUGE 5.95 inch screen oozing with bright and lively colours
partnered with Gorilla Glass 2, up to 64GB INTERNAL and a 2Gb RAM for
multi-tasking, this phone , in my most humble opinion, holds the crown for the
best Smartphone today. For now, I take a break from the local
scene and Push myself further into the international market, this Christmas I
received my Super Dream Phone, the phone I will never let go, The Samsung
Galaxy Note 2. So for a reviewer, who reviews dual core, am I ready for the
Quad-core ride of my life? Read on and find out!
Lastly,
thanks to my loving parents who gave me this phone <3
1. THE
PACKAGE (8 out of 10)
1.1 The
BOX
As
mentioned before, the box or packaging of the product has its own benefactor
for the feel of the phone, the more expensive looking a box is, and the more
candy it is to our eyes. As for the Galaxy Note 2, the box is looks simple,
similar to the packaging of most of their phones. But, with the hype of the
Galaxy Note 2 all around the world and knowing that you have the best
Smartphone today, you would go gaga over the box itself. With the Samsung logo
stapled in the box, would you seriously doubt the quality of what the box holds
inside? I have used three different brands of last year’s Galaxy S2, i9100,
i727 and shv e110s, all of them are splendid. I am pretty sure that most of
those who bought this product would keep the box for a long time. This is something
to brag about.
1.2 What’s
in the Box?
Opening
the box you see the Phone! Yehey! The Package includes the standard manuals
shit, which are virtually useless and unread, the charger, headphones, and the
USB cable. The headset is one of the
best I have used, EVER! The In-Ear type further piques my interest add that to
its glorious sound quality, my ears almost exploded in delight. The charger is
unique as it requires very minimal assembly. It’s a shame that the TV-Out is
not included. The USB Cable feels strong and rugged. The contents of the box is
pretty standard, and in no way a ‘Kanin Palang Ulam Na’ type of package (Simply
the bread is worth your money) Hell to translate. But of course,
you did not buy the Note 2 for the package alone.
2. PHONE
SUPERFICIALITY (9.4 out of 10)
Here
it is the Ultimate Smartphone! Holding it for the first time made me feel
stronger and weaker at the same time. I felt excited and terrified at the same
time. It’s as if you've reached the unreachable and you weren't ready for it.
Personally, I prefer bigger screens for phones as I frequently watch movies or
series, so this feels just right despite its very bulky state. The phone essentially
looks like a bigger Samsung Galaxy S3. The front showcases Home, Back and Menu,
with the 1.9Mp Front Camera and the scratch resistant Gorilla Glass two, of
course it did not test its scratch resistance, and again this is not my phone.
(Though I did try to scratch another friend’s unscreen protected S3, and it was
indeed scratch resistant). The back shows the speaker and the camera and the
sides contain the power button and the volume rocker.
If you are not a fan of bigger screens or bigger phones, this maybe not for you
as this phone often uses both hands on many tasks especially for texting. You
can use one hand but save yourself the trouble and use them both. The
S-Pen (which will be discussed later) also feels and looks exquisite; it feels
like you are holding a rather expensive pen, it is one of the factors that made
the phone unique. Definitely a plus one to the phones’ punch in the eye
candyness department. If you don’t like the cover, hundreds of accessories are
available in the market, aside from internal beauty; physicality can also be
changed to suit your taste. Overall this phone looks and feels great, it’s not
that heavy for its size, the only problem you would ever encounter with this is
the filthy, loathsome, despicable creatures known as snatchers, robbers, or any
other criminals. This phone looks so good it magnetizes the eyes of everyone
around you, better be careful using this publicly. I would suggest a Back Up
phone if you fancy media playback publicly, Cherry Mobile Flare, perhaps?
3. PERFORMANCE
EVALUATION (9.6857 out of 10)
3.1 Speakers
(9.7 out of 10)
This
month has been the most times I had changed phones, from Samsung Galaxy S2,
Cherry Mobile Titan, Cherry Mobile Flare, MyPhone A919 Duo, Cloudfone Thrill
430x, along with the bunch of phones I used this past year, you can never doubt
my ear when it comes to audio quality of a phone. So far, only three phones
have caught the attention of my ear to have given them a 10/10, they were
Motorola Photon 4G, Samsung Galaxy S2, and surprisingly, Cloudfone Thrill 430x,
these three had proven themselves to be of great service in terms of speaker.
As for the Samsung Galaxy Note 2, I am also greatly impressed, along with its
great stock headset this phone begs to play music for you, the sound is top-notch!
Why I did not give it a 10 is its relative similarity of sound quality to the
S2, its better but not that significantly.
3.2 Display
/ Media Playback (10 out of 10)
 |
| 480p Acong Talonga |
 |
| 720p Bigbang Theory |
 |
| 1080p 2Gb Spiderman |
The
5.5 Inch Screen of the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 is matched by none, the colours
are crisp and vibrant, and Image browsing is a delight and movie playback is
one arguably the best I have seen so far. This phone’s stock video player was
able to play virtually every movie file type I could think of, most of the
phones’ stock video player was shit; I had to use MX Player Pro to play other
video files. My Memory Card always carries a 720p video and a 1080p video for
testing, and to my delight, it was able to play a 2GB 1080p movie, I played The
Amazing Spider-man. I was extremely amazed at its power as my Desktop PC, a
4-year old PC running Windows XP Dual Core was not able to play any HD Movie, and
so a big WOW this Note 2 is.
3.3 Gaming
(9.6 out of 10)
Finally!
I have found a phone to topple Motorola Photon 4G of its rightful place as my
King of Gaming, yes I know HTC One X is
quad-core NVIDIA, but my reviews are based on the phones I had, if you sponsor
me one I’ll give it a review:-P Anyway, since it toppled Photon 4G, Gaming
is simply a delight, mainstreamed games was extremely smooth and fast. Throw in
the big screen and this is just a fantastic gaming device. Of course, this is
the part I will tell you where I am not an HD Gamer, as I am a handheld and
console gamer, but that may very well change, I tried NBA 2k13 and wow! Just
Wow! It feels like I’m playing a handheld game.
3.4 Camera
(10 out of 10)
 |
| Thanks for the Note 2 Mommy and Santa... Daddy <3 |
 |
| Sean and Marian |
THESE ARE ALL NOTE 2 IMAGES
No
questions asked. This phone shot the best bunch of photos I have ever
encountered all my cellphoning life and yes, I have seen the S3 at work. This
phone takes photos very quickly, when I used it earlier, I pressed the shutter
and wondered why it took so long. I was amazed to find out that it had already
taken a shot without me noticing it. This phone is capable of burst shot, 20
images in 3 seconds. WOW. The Auto-Focus function of this phone is beyond
compare. When you change scenario, the focus changes and adapts within a
fracture of a second. The front-camera is almost infinity time better than my
S2 as the colours are much more vibrant and lively, definitely beats the crap
out of Motorola Photon 4G’s 8Mp Camera. Qualities of rear camera images are
crisp, bright and accurate with respect to ground truth*. Since I am a Phone
Camera Crazed geek, I was overwhelmed with the image quality. In terms of speed
and quality and the various numbers of selections one would truly appreciate
the advancements made over the past year. (Especially me who owned their last
year flagship S2)
Video
Recording is also top notch as this phone was able to remove unnecessary noise.
Watch the video for comparison.
*Ground truth allows image data to be related to
real features and materials on the ground.
3.5 Need
for Speed (9.8 out of 10)
 |
| Browsing the Gallery and Watching a Movie |
RAM and Clockspeed Review
Many
of you might wonder what RAM and the Clockspeed are for. Should I go for higher
RAM, less clock or vice versa? The answer depends on how you use the phone.
Random Access Memory (RAM) is used to determine how many apps your unit can run
simultaneously. So bigger RAM means you can multi-task much more applications
without worrying about lagging on the system.
Clockspeed is used to determine how fast your system will run a certain
application. Simply put, higher Clockspeed means faster phone. THIS IS THE
GENERAL IDEA ON RAM AND CLOCKSPEED. Factors on speed are determined by the
chipset architecture.
Coming
across Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S, arguably the fastest Single-Cored
Smartphone, and various Dual-Core Smartphone, Motorola Photon, S2 i9100, S2
SkyRocket, S2 SHV E110s, Cherry Mobile Titan and Galaxy S Advance, Cherry Mobile
Flare, Myphone A919, Cloudfone Thrill 430x, the jump to a 1.6 GHz Quad-Core
processor is a giant leap! As aforementioned, there were no lags in any task
done. Of all the Dual-Cores I used, Motorola was undeniably the smoothest but
then came the Note 2 which made the Motorola Photon 4G Lag. The phone is touchy
as fuck and damn responsive.
The 2 GB RAM is beyond compare. I was perfectly happy with the 512 RAM of
Xperia Arc S and Cherry Mobile Titan as I rarely multitask. Then along came the
high-end 1 GB Ram Dual Core phones which made me happier, more RAM more task.
The Note 2’s 2 GB Ram is just too much, for a test run I simultaneously ran 4
games (I ran them in the background), while running the music player and
browsing the gallery. The result? The phone still ran absolutely smoothly.
Lastly, this phone features Multi-Window, you can run two applications
simultaneously, and that is extremely amazing.
3.6 User-Friendliness
(10 out of 10)
Bias
Time. The Jelly Bean out of the box is sweecool (Sweet and cool). The Android
OS is one of the most users friendly OS as it allows you virtually unlimited
ways to customize your phone to your personal preferences. With thousands of
applications and millions of user you will never feel alone. If you are into
customizing ROMs, you will never run out of choices as this phone already has
developer support in XDA. If you are a hard-core android fan, I highly doubt
you will want to find another phone.
3.7 Battery
(8.7 out of 10)
Ahhh
the battery life. Android’s worst enemy. Android’s battery life almost always
seem to be the primary concern as most phones suffer Overnight Charge. Most
phones are charged at full battery in the morning only to be drained the whole
day. It is unlike those Symbian phones which almost never run out of battery
despite heavy multi-tasking, Hi Again mister N8. I haven’t tested the battery
yet but my instincts tell me that Samsung Engineers are not dumb enough to put
a weak battery onto its super flagship phone. Initially, here is what I
observed:
Music 10 Minutes- 1%
Video 10 Minutes – 2%
Gaming 10 Minutes – 2%
Web Browsing 10 Minutes – 1%
YouTube 5 Minutes – 1%
LOOKS VERY PROMISING
THE S-PEN
This
is something that is a definite eye candy for me and maybe others too. The
S-pen provides extra functionality to your phone. The coolest one I found the
S-Pen could do was the hand writing, I have a horrible handwriting and it was
able to recognize it, how can that not be a factor? The S-pen also offers
customization of shortcuts, you can out any gestures to execute applications.
The Note 2 detects when the pen is pulled out and can actually detect it from a
distance. Sadly, as for my experience, the S-Pen did not work on the S2 or S3
or any other android device I tried.
CONCLUSION
SWEETER THE 2ND TIME AROUND (9.2148
out of 10)
To
summarize and repeat everything, this is arguably the best phone today. The
existence of its S-Pen skyrockets the Note 2 Experience from its other competitors.
For the past months, I have continuously searched for a phone that would suit
my taste and preferences, many came, but none would catch my eye and hold my
loyalty, I would always shift to another, The Samsung Galaxy S2 Skyrocket was
able to give me what I wanted but I got budol-budoled, the second time I got an
S2 I was disappointed as I purchased a Korean Brand and destroyed it capacitive
touch. I was hesitant at first at the Note 2, I originally thought it was all
hype but now, I ate all my words, it really is what is said, fast, smooth,
innovative and great. The user friendly interface, unparalleled,
display, great sound quality is beyond any phone I have ever been, all the
factors for a phone was filled up nicely by this phone, and I have my loving
parents to thank for giving me such a wonderful phone, to those owning this you
should be thankful to have this and to those eyeing this phone, if you would
ask me if I would recommend it to you, yes I highly recommend it, you can try
Note 2s on Samsung Stores and know that this review stands its ground. So for
now, maybe years to come, Samsung Galaxy Note 2 is the King of all Smartphones
today!
is it true that galaxy note 2 will suffer sudden death syndrome after 6 months?
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