Rumors are starting to appear on the Internet about the "Note 2" and while they are still unsubstantiated rumors, they are starting to take a solid form. The major specs I have been able to gather are:
- Samsung Exynos 5250 processor
- 1.5 GBytes of RAM
- 5.5-inch SuperAMOLED display
- WSXGA+ resolution (1680x1050)
- 8-megapixel camera with improved optics and electronics
- October 2012 release!
Most of the specs seem pretty good. The screen is not a SuperAMOLED Plus and is of the PenTile matrix variety but with a 360 dpi, the human eye cannot distinguish individual pixels: if true, the screen should be absolutely phenomenal. The 1.5 GBytes of RAM seems weird, however, and I expect/hope that it gets bumped up to a full 2 GBytes. And the fact that the camera is still "only" 8-megapixels is a little disappointing but, truth be known, I really don't need anything better and I seriously doubt that most other people do, either. Except for high-end DSLRs, most digital cameras don't have much better; so if the optics and electronics are indeed better, then the camera could be quite impressive.
But the best news is that tt seems that the 5250 will support LTE. If that is so, then it's likely that the US-versions of the Note 2 will forego the use of a Qualcomm chip. While I think the Qualcomm S4 Krait with it's A15-based architecture is the best smartphone chip on the market -- yes, even better than the quad-core, A9 Exynos 4412 -- I hope and expect the Samsung Exynos 5250 to be even better. But worst case, if the Samsung Exynos 5520 is still not compatible with the LTE frequencies and encoding used in North America (still a possibility, though hopefully not likely), then I hope our version of the "Note 2" at least gets the Qualcomm Krait S4 Pro processor with the Adreno 320 GPU. If it comes to that, then the S4 Pro shouldn't be a bad second choice.
If the specs are true, the "Note 2" looks like an impressive phone but with the AT&T Note only being out for a few months, do any of you think the "Note 2" is a worthy upgrade?
Now if they only put the power button on top instead of across from the volume rocker.