Display, TouchWiz and S-Pen
Display
The Galaxy Note 2 comes with a 5.5″ Super HD AMOLED display with a resolution of 1280 x 720. This is in fact lower than the original Note, but since it’s an RGB display instead of a PenTile display it actually has more Sub-pixels vs the original Note. So this time around Samsung went with a 16:9 display to make it perfect for watching videos and the overall width comes in a few millimeters shorter than the original Note as well, even though it has a bigger display.
TouchWiz and S-Pen
So the S-pen is something that sets the Galaxy Note series away from conventional smartphones. Giving you a the ability to draw/sketch, write, and control your device with the stylus. So let’s check out the layout of TouchWiz and the features added to it using the S-Pen.
The homescreen and much of TouchWiz itself is laid out the same as the Galaxy S3 and original Note. The changes really appear when using the S-Pen.
The one big feature added to the Note 2 that is somewhat buried under all the other features is Multi-Windows, this was just recently added to the Note 2 in all countries other than Korea, who had the feature from Launch. The feature allows you to use two applications at once from in either landscape or portrait positions. The user simply drags the app to the top or bottom of the display and it will be loaded up. The Multi-Window feature doesn’t need the S-Pen to work, but works a lot better with it for scrolling. This is first time we have seen true multi-tasking on a smartphone.
The homescreen will change to a different layout when it detects the S-Pen has been removed from the device.
Holding the Button on the S-Pen and double tapping on the screen will bring up S-Note pop up for quickly taking down a note. Other functions include holding the S-pen button and holding the S-pen on the screen for taking a screenshot that comes up for editing afterwards.
You can also hold the S-Pen button and simply drag the S-Pen around anything on screen to cut it
Pulling the S-Pen out during a phone call will also bring up the S-Note Pop-up app directly, allowing you to take down information very quickly while on a call.
TouchWiz now includes the hover feature of the S-Pen, which was lacking a lot in the original Note. So now the user has the ability to quickly preview images and videos using the, S-Pen from a distance to the device. This includes fine searching videos when playing by holding the S-pen above the playback bar. Scrolling is covered throughout the device as well; by holding the S-pen near the edge of an app it will begin to scroll if there is more to see.
Page 1 – Specifications
Page 2 – Design
Page 3 – Camera performance(Photos and Video)
Page 4 – Dispaly, TouchWiz and S-Pen
Page 5 – Benchmarks
Page 6 – Conclusion
Great review!
Ye should give the phone to me now! 😉 I’ll bake ye all cookies, that ok?