Samsung unveils Galaxy Note II: 5.5-inch HD screen, quad-core, Jelly Bean on board

After lots and lots of leaks and rumors, Samsung has finally made the Galaxy Note II official. The new Note “phablet” is exactly what we thought it would be and even better - it sports a slightly bigger, 5.5-inch display, a quad-core processor that gets rid of the slight lag in the original Note, and best of all Android 4.1 Jelly Bean right out of the box.

The Galaxy Note II is armed with a brighter and larger 5.5” HD Super AMOLED Plus display with resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels. While this means that pixel density will be slightly lower compared to the original Note, in reality, the image quality shouldn't suffer any losses, as this screen used the standard RGB matrix, instead of PenTile, which means more subpixels, and ultimately – clarity. The bezel is slimmer, so despite the increase in screen size overall the device is not bigger.

Powered by the same Samsung Exynos 4412 quad-core processor that's also found in the Galaxy S III, but clocked up, to the whopping 1.6GHz, the Note II will have no trouble running any application you can think of. It's still unclear if Samsung has found a way to integrate this CPU with LTE for the U.S. version, or will again have to make a compromise and replace the Exynos processor with a Snapdragon one. In terms of memory, the Galaxy Note II is well-equipped. RAM will never be an issue with its 2 gigabytes.

The G Note II features an 8-megapixel back-side illuminated (BSI) rear camera and a 1.9-megapixel BSI front shooter.

The Samsung Galaxy Note II will ship in three versions - a 16GB, 32GB and 64GB ones, with memory expandable via up to 64GB microSD cards making it possible to have as much as 128GB storage.

The second-gen Note is coming with a humongous 3,100mAh battery that should get you through the day.

The phablet comes with a brand new S Pen. It comes with new features, it’s smarter - hover with the S Pen over email titles or images, and you’d get a peek inside. Samsung calls this Air View and it works in S Calendar, the mail application, the gallery and the video player.

PopUp Note and PopUp Video are two other neat little productivity features. While in a call, taking out the S Pen out of its slot will automatically bring up a note. We've probably all had that moment when we have to write something down but there's nothing to write on nearby. And best of all, Samsung is opening the SDK to developers, so there would be more and more apps supporting built-in S Pen.