Sketching
Android's sketching app of choice is generally Autodesk Sketchbook Mobile (£1.32), regardless of what phone you've got, but no phone pulls off Autodesk's app quite like the Samsung GALAXY Note II. Why? It's all about that Wacom digitizer.
The 1024 levels of pressure sensitivity make sketching on the Note II as lifelike as possible, and Sketchbook Mobile takes full advantage of the fact. You can import pictures to trace or start from scratch. With a range of brushes and tools, you've got a huge amount of freedom to make an illustration look exactly how you want it to look, and what's even more impressive for designers are the export options.
Naturally, you can save your results as a JPG, but what you might not have expected was the option to export your Sketches as a multi-layered Photoshop file. This means that once you're done sketching on the fly, you can get right back to your workstation and pick up exactly where you left off.
Working with colour
Any designer knows how important colour is. More importantly, colour consistency across projects is priceless, and the Samsung GALAXY Note II's HD Super AMOLED screen can be coupled with some great tools to ensure you get just that.
The first app worth a mention is incredibly simple, and it's called Magic Color Picker. The app presents you with a colour spectrum wheel, you pick a colour and it gives you the colour code in a number of standard formats such as RGB, HSL and even hexadecimal code for web safe colour work.
The second colour app worth shouting about is all about your Note II's fantastic 8-megapixel camera and it's called SwatchMatic.
Just open the app, point your Note II's camera at anything and SwatchMatic will make a colour swatch based on what it sees. Tap your screen to save the swatch and once again, it'll give you all the colours in standard formats.
The app is free to try ten times, after which it'll cost you £1.93.
Unsurprisingly, it wasn't particularly difficult making a case for the S Pen as a designer's best friend – Samsung clearly had creatives in mind from the get go with the Samsung GALAXY Note II.
It doesn't stop at the Samsung GALAXY Note II though. The Note range is expanding. The GALAXY Note 10.1 is already available to buy, packing the same core specs and features as the Note II with a 10.1-inch display, and the Samsung GALAXY Note 8.0 is en route, expected to land in the next couple of months, complete with phone call capabilities and a stunning 8-inch HD display.
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Also check out on Your Mobile Life:
VIDEO: A Beginner's Guide to the Samsung GALAXY Note II
Living with the Samsung Galaxy Note II
Writers, designers and gamers: how the Note II brings innovation to the smartphone space
