Baig: Galaxy Note II delivers in a big way
- $299 at Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and U.S. Cellular
- $370 at T-Mobile
- Airview lets you preview e-mails
NEW YORK -- It was hard not to be skeptical when Samsung started selling the Galaxy Note early last year. The device was nearly impossible to compartmentalize — seemingly too large a screen for a smartphone, too small for a tablet. Eventually, it was dubbed a "phablet."
Galaxy Note relied on a stylus-like pointing device called the S Pen, which struck some observers as a throwback to an ancient PalmPilot. But the S Pen was not a dumb pointer.
The more I used the Galaxy Note, the more it grew on me. And Samsung, which positioned the device mainly as a phone rather than a tablet, found an audience. The South Korean electronics giant sold more than 10 million units.
Now, Samsung is bringing out Galaxy Note II, with support from all the major U.S. carriers. AT&T, Sprint and U.S. Cellular will sell Note II for $299 with the usual contract obligations. Verizon Wireless on Thursday announced that it too would offer the phone at $299.
T-Mobile will charge $370 but preload an exclusive version of Electronic Arts' Need for Speed Most Wanted game.
The phone will launch with the Android 4.1 mobile operating system. It's also the first Samsung phone for the U.S. to house a powerful quad-core processor.
I've had a chance to check out the T-Mobile version for more than a week. Despite a few networking snags — T-Mobile's 4G network was out of reach in some of the New Jersey areas where I tested the device — I am mostly positive.
Like its predecessor, the initial thing you must come to grips with when you first pick up the phone is its very bigness. You can't help but feel like a dork holding the phone up to your ear. The phone weighs a relatively heavy 6.3 ounces but you can still stash it in your pocket or purse. It measures 5.9 by 3.2 by .37 inches.
Such dimensions translate to a device that's about as thin as the original Note but slightly taller, presumably to account for a high-definition (720p) Super Amoled display that is 5.5 inches, up from 5.3 inches before. And you thought the 4.8-inch screen on Samsung's popular Galaxy S III smartphone was ginormous? The large-screen payoff comes when you're viewing Web pages or watching videos.
The S Pen
In the new phone, the S Pen is a bit taller than before but packs a bunch of new tricks.
Using S Pen, you can add your signature to e-mails, circle key dates in the calendar app, or draw in other programs. Samsung has improved a cropping feature that was introduced on the first Note. Hold down the button on the S Pen and circle an image or map to clip that image for use in another app.
Perhaps the most clever stunt is an Airview feature. Hold the pen nib just above the screen without actually touching it, and you can preview e-mails, make drop-down menus fly out as you move through websites, or play videos that pop up in a small screen window. You can scroll through Web pages, too, without actually getting your fingerprints all over the display.
In the S Note app, you can jot down notes with the pen while simultaneously recording sound, so you can follow whatever you scribbled as you play back the audio.
Another S Pen goodie lets you draw on the back of a photo, maybe the names of the people in the image or the place at which you shot it, without doctoring the front of the picture.
Display
The phone is packed with other new features. For example, you can choose a setting that lets you position the onscreen keyboard to the right or the left of the display to make it more accessible to folks who want to hold the device with just one hand.
The newly designed Gallery app has cool new ways to show off pictures and videos. In addition to a standard grid view, you can make pictures cascade back and forth in a timeline view or spin through them in a spiral view.
The camera
Galaxy Note II is an excellent camera phone, and you have fancy new tools for taking pictures, too, with some features borrowed from the Galaxy S III. For example, a Best Shot mode takes 8 pictures and lets you choose the best among them.
Parents will appreciate the Best Faces shooting mode, useful for snapping group pictures of uncooperative kids or grownups. The Note fires off the shutter a few times. When previewing the shot, you'll see a yellow box for each face in the photograph. You can tap the boxes to pick the best picture for each person. The phone will process all the best mugs in a single photo.
Samsung has also added a new low-light mode for shooting in a dim setting.
Best of the rest
As with other Samsung smartphones, you can take advantage of the S Beam feature that relies on NFC (Near Field Communication) technology to share photos, videos, music, maps, Web pages, contacts and S Note files by tapping capable devices back to back.
A bigger device means a bigger battery. Though I didn't conduct a formal battery test, the Note II got me through a full day of mixed use.
Galaxy II is obviously too large to be everybody's cellphone. It's on the pricey side, too. But it's a fun, feature-rich device that delivers a lot of the "write" stuff in a great big way.
Email: ebaig@usatoday.com; Follow @edbaig on Twitter.