Samsung’s Galaxy Note II is the company’s largest and most powerful smartphone yet. It will also be sold by five U.S. carriers. Image: Samsung Electronics
As was the case with the Samsung Galaxy S III, the Galaxy Note II will be available on five different U.S. wireless carriers when it comes out this fall, Samsung said in a statement on Wednesday. The rollouts will vary by carrier, so each will be making its own announcement with regards to timing. Regardless, as with the Galaxy S III, those carriers — AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon and U.S. Cellular — will be offering basically the exact same device, with the only differences being slight tweaks to the internals to accommodate the different cellular networks.
This is significant for Samsung and the mobile industry as a whole. Until the Galaxy S III, the only phone offered so widely and uniformly was Apple’s iPhone. The Galaxy S II was offered across a number of U.S. carriers, but Samsung changed the look, internals and even the name of the handset for each carrier.
The norm in the Android space is to see top-tier devices such as the HTC One X (exclusive to AT&T) and Motorola’s Razr lineup (exclusive to Verizon) offered through only one carrier. Samsung is bucking the trend here, and that’s a good thing for consumer choice. If more hardware makers can follow suit, consumers might eventually be able to choose the best device on the market, rather than the best device from the company they’ve already got a mobile service contract with.
On Wednesday, U.S. Cellular said it would begin selling the Note II in late October, though the company didn’t offer up a specific launch date. Pre-orders through U.S. Cellular began on Wednesday at a price of $300 on a two-year contract. AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon have yet to announce specific launch dates as well.
The Note II is Samsung’s latest flagship device and a followup to the first-generation Galaxy Note phone, which was largely panned by critics but was popular with consumers.
The first Note boasted an oversized 5.3-inch display and an “S Pen” stylus for writing quick notes or sketching out ideas. The Note II packs an even larger 5.5-inch display, with a 1,280×720 resolution, 2GB of RAM and Samsung’s 1.6GHz quad-core Exynos processor. Unless LG ends up bringing its quad-core Optimus G to the U.S. before the Note II, the new Note will end up being the first quad-core smartphone to hit American shores.
Source: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/09/samsung-galaxy-note-ii-hits-5-u-s-carriers-in-november/
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