LONDON: Carrying a phone with a screen larger than 5.5 inches would be cause for people to stop and ask about it. This week I’ve been using the Samsung Galaxy Mega 2, and its 6-inch screen doesn’t even merit a second look.
Have we really become accustomed to phablets in such a short period of time? Oh, yes.
Samsung remains on top of the smartphone world when it comes to sheer numbers of handsets available, especially models with larger screens.
Its Galaxy S 5 and Galaxy Note 4 are nice phones on the high end. The Mega 2 is a step below in features — especially the screen.
The Note 4 has a 2,560 x 1,440 pixel, 5.7-inch Super AMOLED (active matrix of organic light-emitting diodes) screen that I think is one of the best. It has a screen density of 515 pixels per inch. The Galaxy Mega 2’s 6-inch screen is certainly big, but in order to make the phone more affordable, its screen resolution is 1,280 x 720 pixels with a pixel density of 245 pixels per inch.
The Mega 2’s CPU is a quad-core Snapdragon running at 1.5 GHz (the Note 4 uses a 2.7-GHz Snapdragon). The Mega’s 16 gigabytes of storage and 1.5 gigabytes of RAM are half those of the Note 4. Both phones have an expansion slot for a microSD card.
The Mega’s main camera has an 8-megapixel sensor vs. the Note 4’s 16-megapixel version. Sure, there’s a faux-leather plastic cover on the back, but it’s covering a replaceable 2,800-milliamp battery, which is getting rarer to find these days. The Mega 2 is really mega only in the size of the phone. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Samsung’s philosophy of building a full line of phones means there should be some models that are larger but not as expensive.
The 6-inch screen with a relatively low resolution is perfect for users who want a cheaper phone with a big screen but don’t want the pixels so close together that the text is too small to read.
Sure it’s loaded with software from Samsung and AT&T (which provided the review unit), but most phones are preloaded these days.
