Stefan Mileschin

The Samsung Galaxy Note II is coming to America, and unlike its predecessor, it's not being as quiet about the move. In a completely unprecedented feat, the mammoth smartphone not only won over the hearts of four national American carriers and one regional network, it did so without having to make sacrifices in its design, specs or even its name. This is a considerable amount of progress when taking into account the fact that only two mobile operators adopted the original Galaxy Note -- the inaugural phablet, if you will -- and they did so months after its global launch. Heck, T-Mobile released its variant of the Note just three months ago, which likely will be a sour point to early adopters for a long time to come.

As you may have seen in our review of the global Note II, there's a reason for all of the buzz circulating around this new flagship device; it's good. It's very good. Once you get used to the idea of a 5.5-inch smartphone with an included stylus S Pen, you'll take heed of the incredibly fast quad-core processor, the latest version of Android, the high-end camera and the litany of other top-notch features that have helped the device become worthy of our praise.

This review, as you see it today, discusses our impressions of T-Mobile's version of the Note II and how it sizes up against the global model (the N7100), but we're changing things up this time around. Since there will be very few differences across the five different versions offered on US carriers, we're simply going to add our reviews of each carrier-specific unit to this space as we go along. The idea is that this review will encompass every Galaxy Note II sold stateside. Enjoy the galleries below, and continue past the break as we dig into Samsung's latest flagship... again.

http://www.engadget.com/update/samsu...y-note-ii-usa/