Budget: Note 2

Specs: Note 3

Seriously, if you can use the spare cash, the N2 is good enough, at least to hold you off until the Note 4. That's what I did a few weeks back. 600 is actually a LOT when you sit back and think about it.

Properly configured, the N2 has oodles of RAM, has good battery life and is more than fast enough. Plus it's easier to hack and fool around with at the moment, with no Knox to worry about (at the moment anyway) and with a much more "matured" dev environment (the N3 will catch up after a few months of course). Lags? I had a sheetload more lag on my S3 for sure and while the N3 is silky smooth, my N2 is no sloth either.

Properly configured, anyway. Sammy loads their phones with so much bloat to begin with.

Plus all of the current stock probably has the newer eMMC firmwares baked in so you won't have to worry about SDS either.

Like I said before, if you can live with last year's best, the N2 is certainly "good enough". If you have an extra 600 lying around though, DO get the N3 by all means - in a straight up contest of course it's better.

This post has been edited by Eiraku: Oct 21 2013, 06:07 PM

So very true. Fortunately for me my N2 came with a very good Mercury Jelly copy + I had my old trusty Transcend mSD. And all the stuff I collected throughout my time with the S3 was usable with the N2 (HDMI and OTG cables, amongst others).

Still had to get spare battery, a good SP (XSP is great btw) and a spare S-Pen just in case. Sometimes I think it's this "hidden costs" that actually make the most damage financially.

@stormlcc: I personally haven't gotten into any lags so far, but I HAVE only spent a few weeks with the N2. But as you say, nobody else has the S-Pen, unfortunately enough.

Also, there's the fact that prior to 4.3, Android didn't have ftrim routines built in. And without trimming, AFAIK most solid state storage gets laggy after some time. Samsung more than most, for sure.

This post has been edited by Eiraku: Oct 21 2013, 06:51 PM

Well if it's useless, just rip it out. I don't even have the stock launcher anywhere on my otherwise stock ROM anymore. Plus all the other useless crap in there.

Although I do have to concur that ripping the bloat out only applies to more "technically inclined" users. Which means most people are still very well stuck with all that bloat.

As for build quality, what to do. Get me a fully aluminium unibody phone with an SD card slot and a removable battery and than I'll jump ship. Plastic is a small price to pay for practicality IMHO, but that might just be me.

This post has been edited by Eiraku: Oct 21 2013, 07:21 PM