Samsung is constantly innovating and pleasing the sentiments of its customers. However, sometimes when you try to please the sentiments of one customer, it might hurt the sentiments of the other customer. That is why you have a range of products (or a product portfolio I may say) so that you can address the sentiments of different customers using different products. It seems Samsung is trying to address the sentiments of yet another customer base using a large 6.3 inches display panels, and this version of the smartphone is going to be the centerpiece of attention for some. But at the same time, it may be the point of criticism for some analysts as well; I mean a 6.3 inches smartphone? However, we’ve recently seeing some even bigger tablets trying to mimic the functionality of the smartphone and compared to them; 6.3 can be considered mainstream. Samsung also released the 5.8 inches version of the Galaxy Mega. Here, we decided to take the Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 for a spin and see how it moves along with the king in the Phablet arena from Samsung.
Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 Review
Samsung has released two versions of the Galaxy Mega; one with 5.8 inches display panel and the other with a huge 6.3 inches display panel. Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 is the biggest smartphone from Samsung yet and trust me it is really big. If you thought Galaxy Note was big, wait until you see this monster. Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 has 6.3 inches TFT Capacitive touchscreen display panel featuring a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels at a pixel density of 233 ppi. It supports multi touch and comes with Samsung Touch Wiz UI; however, it doesn’t seem to have the Gorilla glass reinforcement on the display panel. In fact, this tells me that Samsung doesn’t consider Galaxy Mega at the level of Galaxy Note or Note II because they haven’t paid as nearly as much attention to this handset which you will find out when you are done with the review.
Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 is powered by 1.7GHz dual core ARM Cortex A15 processor on top of Exynos 5250 chipset along with Mali T604 GPU and 1.5GB of RAM. It runs on the newest Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, and the underlying hardware is quite a feast for the operating system. It is true that Samsung Galaxy Mega doesn’t have a Quad Core processor, but Cortex A15 processor cores are sufficiently more powerful than the A7 or A9 processor cores. It comes with 8 GB or 16 GB of storage with the option to be expanded by microSD up to 64GB. We are happy about the inclusion of the microSD card slot to this monster so that it can be put to proper use.
Samsung has also been gracious enough to include 4G LTE connectivity in Galaxy Mega 6.3, which boosts its usability. There is Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac available for continuous connectivity with the option to easily setup a wireless hotspot to share your super-fast internet connection with your friends. There is 8MP camera in the back with autofocus and LED flash that should be able to capture 1080p videos @ 30 frames per second. The 1.9MP front facing camera can be used for video conferencing purposes. The handset comes in Black or White and looks sleek and attractive with a thickness of mere 8mm. However you might feel uncomfortable keeping it on your face and making a call. Samsung has included 3200mAh battery in Galaxy Mega. Unfortunately, this doesn’t come with the best thing I like in Note which is the S-Pen Stylus.
Samsung Galaxy Note 2 Review
Samsung’s Galaxy line is the prominent and flagship product line that has earned much respect towards the company. It is also these products that have the highest return for Samsung’s investments. Hence Samsung always maintains the quality of these products at a very high level. At a glance, Samsung Galaxy Note 2 isn’t any different to that image. It has a majestic look that closely resembles the looks of Galaxy S3 with the same Marble White and Titanium Grey color combinations. It has a 5.5 inches Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen with vibrant color patterns and the deepest blacks you could ever see. The screen was viewable from very wide angles, as well. It features a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels at a pixel density of 267ppi with a 16:9 widescreen. Samsung promises that the screen is more optimized to today’s visually oriented apps. It goes without saying that the screen is reinforced with Corning Gorilla Glass 2, to make it extra scratch resistant.
Following the footsteps of Galaxy Note, Note 2 is slightly bigger scoring dimensions of 151.1 x 80.5mm and has a thickness of 9.4mm and a weight of 180g. The layout of the buttons hasn’t changed where it features the big home button at the bottom with two touch buttons on either side of it. Inside this housing has the best processor that is featured in a smartphone. Samsung Galaxy Note 2 comes with 1.6GHz Cortex A9 Quad Core processor on Samsung Exynos 4412 Quad chipset with Mali 400MP GPU. The powerful set of hardware components is governed by the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. It also features a 2GB RAM with 16, 32 and 64GBs of internal storage and has the option to expand the capacity using a microSD card.
The network connectivity is reinforced with 4G LTE that varies regionally. Galaxy Note II also features Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n with DLNA and the ability to create Wi-Fi hotspots to share your internet connection with friends. It also has NFC along with Google Wallet. The 8MP camera has become a standard in the smartphones these days and Note II features a 2MP camera on the front for the use of video conferencing. The back camera can capture 1080p HD videos at 30 frames per second with image stabilization. One of the specialties in Galaxy Note series is the S Pen stylus provided with them. In Galaxy Note II, this stylus can do a lot more compared to the conventional styluses featured in the market. For instance, you can flip over a photo, to get its virtual backside and scribble down notes just as we do on actual photos sometimes. It can also act as a virtual pointer on the Note 2’s screen which was a cool feature. Galaxy Note 2 also has the function to record your screen, every key stroke, pen marking and stereo audio and save it to a video file.
Samsung Galaxy Note 2 features a 3100mAh battery that may be able to survive for 8 hours or more with the power hungry processor. The increased mileage of the battery will suffice for the bag of tricks introduced with the Galaxy Note II compared to the original Note.
A Brief Comparison Between Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 and Samsung Galaxy Note 2
• Samsung Galaxy Mega is powered by 1.7GHz ARM Cortex A15 dual core processors on top of Samsung Exynos 5250 chipset along with Mali T604 GPU and 1.5GB of RAM while Samsung Galaxy Note II is powered by 1.6GHz Cortex A9 Quad Core processor on top of Samsung Exynos 4412 Quad chipset with Mali 400MP GPU and 2GB of RAM.
• Samsung Galaxy Mega runs on Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean while Samsung Galaxy Note II runs on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 has 6.3 inches TFT Capacitive touchscreen display panel featuring a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels at a pixel density of 233 ppi while Samsung Galaxy Note 2 features a bigger screen of 5.5 inches featuring a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels at a pixel density of 267ppi.
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 is larger, thinner and heftier (167.6 x 88 mm / 8 mm / 199g) than Samsung Galaxy Note II (151.1 x 80.5 mm / 9.4 mm / 183g).
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 has 3200mAh battery while Samsung Galaxy Note II has 3100mAh battery.
Conclusion
I can clearly see that the performance of Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 may well be better than Samsung Galaxy Note 2. The chipset in Mega is newer, the processor is better, and the GPU is also newer, so it is bound to perform equally or better than Note 2. But there’s something strange pulling me towards the Note 2 telling me that Note 2 is still the best. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I’d ask you to hold both in your hands and check it out. Adding a bit of an objective comparison, I find it unfortunate that Samsung hasn’t included the S-Pen stylus in Mega 6.3, which is a major setback for me because I love what I could do with the S-Pen Stylus in Galaxy Note 2. So our advice is for you to wait till you get to have these handsets in your hand and then pick the best per your requirements.