[Galaxy Note II General] mmk92:
I had the dilemma of choosing between the S3 and the note 2 for over a week, researching it on the interwebs was a pain in the a** as most comparisons offered a lot of uneducated and very biased answers. I finally decided to test both of them extensively for a couple of days, and I ended up loving and buying the note 2.

Because it was a pain to look for answers about what to get, and I saw a **** load of people with the same dilemma as me, I decided to create this brief comparison between the two.

Note: This comparison is based on the comparison of the international variants of both phones.

The screen:

The screens on both phones offer the same AMOLED technology, they offer very vibrant colors which are just a joy for every day use, and true blacks.

The differences between the displays on both phones are barely noticeable for the average user, but here's a slightly technical explanation for the differences between them. The Galaxy S3's screen adapts the pentile arrangement of pixels, the pentile arrangement supposedly saves energy with the cost of "jaggy" lines drawn on the screen, this effect is highly diluted by the high HD resolution on the 4.8 display, this is unnoticeable for the average user, but its very evident in texts. The galaxy note 2 offers samsung's newer revision of the AMOLED display, this new revision offers the traditional RGB arrangement of pixels, this gives the note's display a slight advantage over the S3's because there is no "jaginess", but the note 2's screen is at 5.5" in size, at the same resolution which hence gives a lower PPI.

In short, they both offer the same gorgeous color saturation, but some people might be offed by the Pentile screen on the S3. I personally think that if someone uses it for an extended period of time it wouldn't even be an issue, yet I personally preferred the bigger screen on the note 2.

Internals:

Processor:

Both phones offer the same quad core processor, S3 clocked at 1.4GHz, Note 2 clocked at 1.6GHz this bump offers a tiny bump in FPSs and benchmark scores, not noticeable by the average user.

Ram:

The note 2 offers 2GB of ram while the S3 offers 1GB of ram. After my extensive use of both phones I found the doubling of the RAM on the note 2 offered for fasted loading apps during multitasking, and a noticeable increase in the smoothness of the phone's workflow.

Battery:

The bigger size of the note 2 offers more space to include a 24% bigger battery compared to the S3, the bigger battery capacity on the note is a game changer for me, on normal to heavy use I got 7hours screen on time with 25hours on battery compared to 4hours 18hours on the same usage.

Portability:

Now this is the biggest question that comes to mind when it comes to picking one of the two phones, is the note 2 too big to be an everyday-use phone?

The answer is simply, no. The note 2 might give the impression that it's HUGE, but side to side next to the S3 its not that much bigger as you would expect. It's size might be an issue if you're using a bulky cover, wearing tight jeans, or you're a relatively a petite person.

But overall the size goes down to personal choice, I personally preferred the bigger screen on the Note, because I hate reading small text as I tend to read a lot on it. The bigger size WILL grow on you PRETTY QUICK.

I was very impressed by the added plus of having the S-Pen on the note, at first it I thought it was a gimmick, but now I use it a lot.

I hope this quick comparison was thorough and clear, if you think I missed something that you would like me to add, please comment below.