Samsung has just announced the Galaxy Note II, and it will be available to all major U.S. carriers by mid-November. This confirms the rumor that leaked out a week ago, which nailed the carriers who would receive the hybrid phone-tablet. The Korean based company claims the new Note will pack “some of the best capabilities of the Galaxy S III.”
Features on the Galaxy Note II is impressive. The device will be the first to sport Samsung’s Exynos 1.6 GHz quad-core processor in the United States, while bringing both support for LTE and HSPA+. The Note II packs more improvements under the hood such as 2GB of internal RAM and 16GB of onboard file storage (expandable up to 64GB). On paper, the screen on the new Note ain’t bad either, as it rocks a 5.5-inch HD Super AMOLED display with a 16:9 aspect ratio. The battery is now 24 percent bigger than the original, courtesy of a 3,100 mAh power cell.
Like the Galaxy S III, you can expect to see Samsung’s custom user interface TouchWiz. But, unlike the GSIII, the Note II will come with Android 4.1 out of the box — ah, the sweet taste of Jelly Bean. S Pen features stepped up another notch as well. There’s some new cool tricks like when you take the pen out it immediately launches the S Pen Menu. The writing and drawing experience will vastly improve thanks to S Pen now being able to sense 1,024 levels of pressure sensitivity, which is four times more than its predecessor.
Unfortunately, you’ll have to wait for AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless and U.S. Cellular to announce their own pricing and availability.