On the eve of the one-year anniversary of the of the launch of the Samsung Galaxy Note at Berlin’s IFA 2011, Samsung launched the successor to the phablet — the Galaxy Note 2 — at this year’s IFA without providing a concrete North American launch date.
The Galaxy Note 2 comes with an overclocked quad-core 1.6GHz (versus the 1.4 GHz found in the original Note) Exynos 4412, a Mali 400 GPU that is similar to that found in the Galaxy S3, a 5.5-inch Super AMOLED display (with 0.2 more inches than the original Galaxy Note), 2 GB of RAM (twice that the original had) a 1.9MP front camera, Android’s Jelly Bean, 4G LTE, and a 3,100 mAh battery.
With the Galaxy Note 2, the S-Pen also received a series of updates with both hardware and software: Samsung says the new S-Pen is longer, thicker and ergonomically designed for the perfect grip while S-Pen related apps have been enhanced and refreshed.
Considering Samsung’s bizarre stratagem of releasing smartphones in the U.S with slightly different hardware, these specs are subject to change. With the original Galaxy Note and the Galaxy S3, North American consumers got the same phone as their “world” counterparts albeit with hardware that was slightly underpowered in comparison.
In a post Apple v. Samsung world, who knows what North American consumers will get or even when they will get it. Granted, the Galaxy Note was not one of the devices being contested in the case but, however, the ruling — and a possible injunction banning the sale of certain Samsung devices in the U.S — might have begun to erode Samsung’s confidence in doing business in this economy, and might exacerbate their post-America mobile strategy found in the launch plan of the Galaxy Note and S3.
