Samsung Galaxy Note 2

Not sure how your carrier handles upgrades but you should probably consider waiting for the note 3 at this point unless price point is a concern. You could probably get a really good deal on the note 2 in the months leading up to/after the note 3s launch.

I have to say the note 2 is plenty fast and that's fully skinned with nova launcher and a bunch of console emulators and crap on it. Battery life on the note 2 is also very good. I shut my cell when I go to bed at night and find myself usually charging it about once a week with average usage and internet surfing. The battery is extremely tenacious on mine and lasts on standby at 3% for a couple of hours. Add the 2x battery saver app from the market place which shuts data connections when the phone is locked and the time between charges is impressive. I never quite get 2x out of it but I usually get about 1.5-1.6x run time out of it. Not bad at all/

Since I still use my HTC inspire daily at home I don't really have/need to upgrade. It was just one I was looking at. When the price finally dropped to 300 I figured it wouldn't take long for it to drop to 150 like it did on my phones before (Samsung Jack and HTC Inspire). Other carries had it down to 200, Sprint even went as low as 99 dollars to new signups. But the price has held on, so I just held out. Hell the note 4 may be out before I do any phone swapping, lol.

I finally found the unlock code for the Samsung Jack about a year and half ago. I still have it and carry it overseas with me incase I have to buy a local sims card. I have been wanting to Unlock the Inspire but they have it locked down a lot more. Software to do it is hard to find as you have to fully root the device first. The Samsung Android phones have been very easy to do.

The old droid phones were easy to root. Not much I can find for the galaxy note 2 last time I looked. Something might have come out since then though.

Seamaster wrote:When I played with it in store, I also noticed that it was a largish phone. But you find it okay for day-to-day use?

It is certainly on the large size for a phone with a 4.7" screen, but I got an Otterbox for it (nearly mandatory) and it works O.K. on the hip. It is still smaller than the Notes.

Thanks.

Otterbox? Is that a hip holster?

Its pretty much the de facto standard in protection these days. Id go with the (better) defender given the choice between the 2.

I got the defender for my One, but it has an issue with the built-in screen protector coming up a bit short on the bottom and interfering with Swype in portrait mode. At the Verizon store, they popped it out and added a different screen protector.

Now how to figure out how to turn that turbo mode on at will, lol.

Rename all of your apps to Geekbench 3?

Having watched the numbers that companies like Samsung give out for their TVs, especially with things like contrast ratio, I would never trust their numbers with other ratings or benchmarks. Smoke & mirrors. Frankly, I put limited stock in benchmarks at this point anyway. My high-powered laptop is two years old now, and is still a screamer. I ran benchmarks on it when I first got it, and have never bothered since. If I notice a serious performance dip, I will worry about it, but for now I be a happy camper, whether or not the numbers show it.

While I read reviews on the HTC One, I cannot remember if I even looked at the benchmarks. Perfectly happy with it regardless.

Bricked itself yesterday through no doing of mine. Had to do a full recovery to get it functional again. Lost my icon pack in the process.

Went ahead and rooted while I was at it. It was fairly easy. Phone ended up in the same boot loop that made me start messing with it to begin with halfway through the root. At that point I did another full recovery (At this point the custom recovery image was already flashed) Which restored my note 2 to default settings for the 2nd time but this time with root and SU.

It was fairly easy, you do need to make a backup though. My phone I didn't really care about because at that point it was completely empty anyway.

Followed this guide and this video.

Now I am looking into jedi x20.

Decided I cant be bothered with jedi x20 and settled for just installing lmt off of xda since that was 90% of my interest in jedi anyway.

I finally picked the note 2 up today. 99 bucks. Every where online was out, and most stores were. I found it at radio shack of all places, lol.

I am hoping the 4.3 factory rom is out soon. Been reading up on how to root this device and get around can't swap apps to sd card limitation google/samsung put on there.