Only three days separated the release of Apple’s iPhone 5 and Samsung’s announcement for their Galaxy S4 smartphone due out in February. But for those who can’t wait for another Samsung gadget, don’t worry. The Korean-based tech giant and heated Apple rival announced today in a press release that it is unveiling the Samsung Galaxy Note II in mid-November. The price is still undisclosed. The announcement marks yet another smartphone notification with the likes of Apple’s iPhone 5, Samsung’s Galaxy S4, RIM’s BlackBerry 10 smartphone, and the collaborative effort by HTC and Microsoft with Windows 8 within the past couple of weeks.
The Note II looks to build off of the success of the Note while borrowing a few aesthetic pleasures from the Galaxy S3. The new smartphone/tablet hybrid, known aptly by techies as a phablet, will be supported by five major carriers: Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and U.S. Cellular.
The biggest upgrades will be with Samsung’s S Pen functions, which allows users to instantly outline and crop any content on the screen in any shape to save, share, paste, and edit the cropped content through coloring, shading, or their own personal handwriting. Samsung, however, doesn’t want you to think they’re all about quantifiable specs; they’re also hoping to appeal to the more imaginative. In the press release Samsung notes,
“The S Pen’s advanced features provide the ability to capture ideas, inspiration and information instantly, and to combine handwriting with any digital content directly on the screen, such as adding new calendar appointments by writing the event details directly on the day of the week, signing or adding handwritten notes to an email.”
For those more worried about the cold-hard numbers, the specs are as follows. The Note II will feature Samsung’s custom Exynos quad-core 1.6GHz processor, a 5.5-inch 1280 x 720 display, an 8 megapixel 1080p video recording cam, 16GB storage, 2GB RAM (with an additional 64GB memory with a MicroSD card), and 24% more battery life than its predecessor. Despite the upgraded, heavy-duty hardware and Android’s 4.1 Jelly Bean OS, the Note II is even lighter and even slimmer than the Note, being a mere 9.4mm thick.
Samsung released a promotional video nine days before its Unpacked Mobile event back in August hinting at a “small and light thing.” The vague nature of the video was an obvious attempt to stir up some buzz about what Samsung was putting together behind the scenes.
As noted before, the Galaxy Note II release date doesn’t have a hard date yet as the press release says “mid-November.” Keep check back with BostInno to hear the latest on the release and how much money the phablet is going to run you.
