Samsung opened the doors of the phablet industry with their original Galaxy Note and now are expanding their lineup of devices with even bigger phablets – Galaxy Mega series.
The Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 was launched at the end of May while the Galaxy Note 2 was launched earlier last year in September. Both the devices are completely different except the fact that they are phablets and have 5.5inch + displays. The Galaxy Note 2 is almost at the end of the product cycle with Note 3 announcement around the corner.
Lets check out how the new Galaxy Mega holds up against the almost outdated Galaxy Note 2.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6zjZ1E1vtU
Design, Build Quality
The Galaxy Mega 5.8 and Galaxy Note 2 follow Samsung’s same design language, but the Galaxy Mega 5.8 is bigger of the two. The Galaxy Mega is taller and wider, but thinner than the Galaxy Note 2. Both the devices have an all plastic build and have almost the same weight(182g).
On the front, above the display, we have the earpiece at the center and the ambient and proximity sensors, the 2MP front facing camera are at the right of the earpiece. Below the display, we have the typical Samsung arrangement with a physical home button at the center and capacitive touch keys on either side of the home button.
The positioning of keys is quite similar in both the devices. On the right side, we have the power lock key.
On the bottom, we have an uncovered microUSB port and a microphone. On the Note 2, we have the S-Pen stylus.
The volume rocker is present on the left side. The keys are also made of plastic, but offer nice feedback.
On the top we have the 3.5mm jack on both the phones, but the Galaxy Note 2 has a secondary microphone.
The back of these devices is almost same but the Galaxy Mega 5.8 has a textured back while the Galaxy Note 2 has a plain plastic glossy back. The 8MP camera is at the top center and both the phones have an LED flash. Opening the back cover, we see slightly modified internals. The Galaxy Mega 5.8 has two microSIM card slots on top and bottom of the battery and the hot-swappable microSD card slot is at the bottom right side of the device. In the Galaxy Note 2, the hot-swappable microSD card and the microSIM slot are at the top of the battery.
Overall, both the devices are pretty similar in look and feel. The Galaxy Note 2, being the high-end device, is better to handle and has a more solid feel.
Display
The Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 has a 5.8inch qHD(540×960) TFT display with a pixel density of 190ppi while the Galaxy Note 2 has a 5.5inch SuperAMOLED HD(1280×720) display with a pixel density of 267ppi.
The Galaxy Mega has a very mediocre low resolution TFT display when compared with the Galaxy Note’s SuperAMOLED HD display. The Galaxy Note 2’s display is much better in almost all the categories with higher resolution, deeper blacks, better viewing angles and more colors.
Hardware and Performance
The Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 is powered by a 1.4GHz dual-core Broadcom BCM28155, has Broadcom Videocore IV GPU and 1.5GB of RAM. The Galaxy Note 2 is powered by a 1.6GHz Exynos 4412 Quad-core processor, Mali-400MP GPU and has 2GB of RAM.
The Galaxy Mega has 8GB internal storage while the Note 2 has 16GB. Out of 8GB in Galaxy Mega, the user accessible is 5.34GB while it is around 10.36GB in Galaxy Note 2. Both the devices have microSD card slots.
Out of the 1.5GB RAM in Galaxy Mega 5.8, only 1090MB is available and when the device is free, about 700MB is free. The Galaxy Note 2 has 2GB of RAM,out of which 1.7GB is usable and when the device is idle, 1.3GB is free.
In terms of performance, the Galaxy Note 2 is faster in opening apps and switching between them. In benchmarks too, the scores of Galaxy Note 2 are higher than the Galaxy Mega.
Camera
The Galaxy Mega 5.8 and Galaxy Note 2 have the same pair of cameras with a 8MP camera at the back and 1.9MP camera at the front. Each of them have a LED flash at the back. One thing to differentiate both the phones here is that the Galaxy Mega 5.8 runs on the latest version of Android 4.2.2 and has the camera app from which has a few more options and shooting modes.
The Galaxy Mega has the same screen for capturing photos and shooting videos while the Galaxy Note 2 has a toggle switch to choose between shooting photos or recording videos. The image quality is quite similar and the details were pretty nice on both the phones.
With the Note 2 getting the Android 4.2.2 update, the Note 2 will probably have more shooting modes than the Galaxy Mega. Both the devices record videos at 1080p and the quality is slightly better on the Galaxy Note 2.
Check out the camera review video below to get an idea of the camera quality of both the phones.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQ6tGN07RAA
Software features
Galaxy Mega 5.8 and Galaxy Note 2, both have the same TouchWiz UI, but Mega runs on Android 4.2.2 while the Note 2 currently runs on Android 4.1.2 Both the devices have Multi-window feature, pop-up video and smart-stay.
The Note 2 has the S-Pen and set of apps designed for that, which takes productivity and note-taking to a whole new level.
Gaming
The gameplay experience was better on the Galaxy Note 2 because of the better GPU and processor. The games were pretty detailed and the gameplay was quite smooth. In the Galaxy Mega 5.8, Ashpalt 7 was smooth, but lots of details were missing and when we tried other games, there were occasional lags.
Battery and Connectivity
The Galaxy Mega 5.8 has a 2600mAh battery while the Galaxy Note 2 has a 3100mAh and in terms of battery life, we found that the Note 2 was much better.
In terms of connectivity, both the phablets have WiFi, 3G, Bluetooth and microUSB. The Note 2 has NFC and S-Beam while the Galaxy Mega 5.8 has dual SIM connectivity.
Conclusion
The Galaxy Note 2 was Samsung’s top range device last year, while the Galaxy Mega was not meant to be the top line device but a mid-range device and it clearly shows in various features. The Galaxy Note 2 is better than the Galaxy Mega in terms of display, battery, performance, gaming and build quality. The Galaxy Mega is by no means Galaxy Note 2’s competitor and while it comes at a much lesser price point, it also offers dual SIM connectivity.
Contributed by Monish Kumar