Samsung made the Galaxy Note II official during their Mobile Unpacked event at IFA in Berlin today. The successor to the surprisingly popular Note will include a larger 5.5-inch 1,280 x 720 HD Super AMOLED display with a 16:9 aspect ratio that will be powered by a quad-core 1.6GHz processor and 2GB of RAM.
The 9.4mm-thick handset weighs 180g, will support internal storage options of 16GB, 32GB or 64GB and will run on 4G LTE and 21Mbps HSPA+ wireless networks. An 8-megapixel camera can be found on the rear while a 1.9-megapixel camera occupies the front of the Note II. Samsung plans to ship the smartphone with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, the most recent Google OS, as well as a 3,100 mAh battery to keep everything up and running.
Samsung's S Pen returns on the Note II, having picked up some new tricks along the way. Remove the S Pen from its holder and the Popup Note application loads, allowing you to quickly jot down something without having to navigate to the program yourself. Using the "@" symbol in front of someone's name followed by a short message will prompt the phone to open an email, address it to the person you referenced and paste the message into the body of the email. There's also a Quick Command function which permits handwritten shortcuts used to load apps or toggle settings.
Samsung says the Note II will ship in major European, Asian and Middle East markets in October. Samsung US isn't as specific although they do point out that the handset will be available later in 2012. Pricing wasn't mentioned for any of the phones but if we had to guess, $300 with a typical two-year wireless service agreement sounds about right.