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Samsung's first crack at a smartphone larger than five inches came last year in the form of the Galaxy Note. It was wildly different than most phones we'd seen before: it was massive, for one, and involved the use of a ~~stylus~~ pen, a sorely outdated concept at the time. Who would be willing to buy this thing? Yet, despite its enormous size, this tablet / phone (forgive us: phablet) captured more hearts and wallets than even Sammy had probably expected. The S Pen showed that it was more than just a simple stylus, artists and tech enthusiasts alike loved it and a successful marketing campaign helped push millions of units. The Note was an undeniable hit.

Did Samsung realize at the time that it was sitting on a gold mine? It's hard to know for sure, but its success meant only one thing: an inevitable sequel. The Galaxy Note II, introduced a year after its parent, has some big shoes to fill. We believe it's up to the task, though: it boasts a quad-core Exynos processor, twice the RAM, an even larger display and a whole new bag of S Pen tricks. It sounds compelling, but does the new version truly trump the old? Is it worth another sound investment (pricing varies, but it starts around £530 for a SIM-free version) just a year down the road? We'll satisfy your curiosity after the break.

Gallery: Samsung Galaxy Note II (N7100) review

Continue reading Samsung Galaxy Note II review

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, Samsung

Samsung Galaxy Note II review originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 08 Oct 2012 09:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If three's a crowd, the Samsung Galaxy S III party in the US is about to get pretty stuffy. Having already reviewed AT&T and Sprint's variants -- not to mention the original I9300 before them -- we're now ready to put a third iteration through its paces, this time from the country's fourth-largest carrier, T-Mobile.

Of course, the phone itself needs no grand introduction, as it's fast become the new darling of the smartphone world. And rightfully so, in many respects: it's the first high-end device to launch on all four major mobile operators in the US (a feat in and of itself), and it's done so with minimal carrier branding, hardware changes or bloatware levies. It is, in essence, an unadulterated handset. The reason this piece of news is so wondrous is that it opens up your ability to choose your phone service based on the network, not on the actual phone each individual carrier offers.

Sadly, the big tradeoff here is the loss of an Exynos quad-core processor in exchange for a Snapdragon S4 dual-core chipset and additional RAM. Join us as we take a deeper look at the T-Mobile Galaxy S III. Is it the best phone on the network? Is it worth shelling out $280 (with a two-year contract) for the 16GB model or $330 for 32GB? How well does it perform? This and more answers await you in our full review below.

Gallery: Samsung Galaxy S III for T-Mobile review