Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

Are there any news on the official ICS update? Or is it still "sometime in Q2"?
I have VERY bad experience with Samsung Update promises, worse than Nokia even. I'm holding back my purchase because of it. Also has already lowered the price by 200+ € for me :)
Although now im tempted to get SGS3 instead....
(I don't like to use cooked ROMs)

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

Still tempted by the Note, was holding out to see if the S3 was worth waiting for but to be honest there's nothing but slight spec bump that it has going for it..

Still going to wait for its release, as it will probably mean that the note comes down a bit in price...

Still slightly worried I'll find it too big after some time though...

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

The NOTE has the fastest and best dualcore processor.
...with that said there's barely any performance jump going with the S3 (despite having the best quadcore processor).

You can get the NOTE anytime you want.
The prices have stabilized, they wont be dropping that much/fast. Which means if you don't like the features/size you can sell it, get your money back and then buy an S3.

Things to consider:
-TouchWizz is the best OEM ROM out there (its closest to stock)
-There's perm root/unroot you can use on the 2.3.5 OEM ROM
-You can apply a CWM and save the original rom that came on the phone
-Flash anything you like (neobuddy's AOKP 1.4.26.1 or m3dd0g's Liquidsmooth v1 or pvillasuso MIUI RC1 or official CM9 beta)
-Revert to original for repair/warranty/selling

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

I wont buy it before official ICS is out. I dont want another Android 2.x device, and i dont want to use a cooked ROM. And prices are constantly falling. Just this week it dropped another 30€ where I usually buy my stuff.

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

Waiting for it to be free on (300 mins) contract with o2...

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

It depends on your definition.
I'm switching between neobuddy's and m3dd0g's ROM. Both are very stable, fluid and feature-full.

The only missing things are the FM Radio function and the Samsung Proprietary Apps: S Pen App, Calendar, Samsung Hub/Apps, All Share, and Widgets. But you can get those on ICS Kingdroid ROM which is based on the LP6 leak.

If you wait for the official update, it could take a while (carrier lag, I call it) and by that time you might not want it anymore because a better alternative may be available. However, it will be expensive and you would have to wait a while for it to also get updates, get cheaper, become rootable,cwm,custom roms ...which seems pointless to me given your situation.

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

I wrote that nine months ago. Now my N900 has died, and I did get the Note as a replacement. I haven't been disappointed.

For me the biggest downside is that the Note only has a mono speaker. I've owned the N800, N810 and N900, and they all had very nice stereo speakers. I also miss the FM transmitter that the N900 had, but it's not a big deal.

The device is huge. It's almost too big. The ideal size for my pocklet would be a device with a 4.7 inch screen, but there are so many plus points about the Note that I will accept the large size. Because it's so thin, and nicely curved, it slides into my pocket really easily. I usually have it in my jeans pocket, but when I'm recording GPS tracks I keep it in my shirt pocket because it gets a better view of the satellites. It's slightly lighter than an N900, by the way.

The GPS gets a lock very quickly. The N900 would occasionally embarrass me in front of iPhone users because it could take several minutes to get a GPS lock without a network connection, but the Note is very fast (from 5 to 30 seconds for a lock from cold, then around 2 seconds to regain a lock). Wonderful!

The onscreen keyboard is pretty good. If I use it two-handed, it's at least as fast as the N900 hardware keyboard. And for complex typing it's even better because it has a dedicated row for the numbers. This saves lots of time. I'm also getting faster on the Swype keyboard, and may soon be faster with Swype than with the stock onscreen keyboard.

Multi-tasking is not as good as the N9 (which has a very efficient user interface), but it's adequate. Some of the apps are stupid, but there are so many to choose from. The ecosystem is enormous, and you soon learn to narrow it down to those apps that meet your needs. There are plenty of open source apps available, for those who care.

The screen is wonderful. It's expansive and sharp. Reading ebooks on it is delightful. The stock browser is fast, and so far has rendered everything at least as well as MicroB. Flash and JavaScript seem to work well.

The device happily accepts a 64GB uSD memory card (although you need to format it on the device), so you can have 80GB or 96GB total depending which version of the Note you bought.

There's full USB OTG. You can plug in any USB mouse, keyboard, or memory stick.

One thing I noticed is that many Android apps want to use your cellular data connection in the background, so it's worth being aware of whether apps have "WiFi-only" settings. I'm using Virgin Mobile in the UK, which has a £5 per month data bundle called "Data5" that gives 1GB per month, which is enough for my needs.

The stylus is a Wacom digitizer, pressure-sensitive with a button. Very nice, although perhaps not quite as precise as a well-calibrated N900. However, all I use it for is drawing diagrams and pictures. It's simply not needed for web browsing. The big screen is so precise that it's easy to click the right link on a web page, even without zooming. I was very pleased to find that, because even with the N900 stylus I would often enlarge the web page so that I could make an accurate selection. And it's so nice to leave behind the N900's spiral-zoom gesture. Pinch-to-zoom is just so natural.

One thing that MicroB does very well is that you can double-tap to zoom a column of text so that it takes up the full screen width, then it stays nicely lined-up if you flick-to-scroll. On the Note's stock browser, you need to flick-to-scroll very precisely if you don't want the column to wander a bit to the left or right as it scrolls. These little things can make a big difference.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. I've had many pleasant years with the Nokia devices, and at this forum (starting when it was called Internet Tablet Talk). But the Note is such a great device. Nokia should have been making devices like this one, because Harmattan on the Note would be truly awesome. But Nokia's application ecosystem doesn't seem to have a great future, so I don't regret jumping ship to Android, which is likely to improve over the life of my device.

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

The note is looking more and more like my next phone, the way people describe it sounds very familiar : Niche device, not suitable for everyone etc etc etc...

Plus one of the main drawbacks people cite is that it isn't really suited to one handed operation... Coming from the n900 that's not really going to be a great issue...

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

The note is excellent at almost everything used it for 6 months.

Two issues:
-Multitasking could be better and it will...
-Can't write comments in some blogs and newspapper(browser issues)

The rest ok or excellent :D

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

Oh by the way, to get an idea of how wide it is, it's almost exactly the same width as an n900 in portrait with the keyboard open.

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

but it seems the benchmarks show otherwise.

http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_gala...-news-4201.php

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

You might want to re-check that dude, lmao.

The NOTE has the fastest dualcore SoC.
The others are in another league, the quadcore league. I also place the 4S in there because of iOS (lower level coding for some software), and the S4 chips because they are not A9 chips (like a hybrid of a9 and a15).

Besides, when loading webpages (real world test case of SunSpider) there is little, scratch that, no difference between the two. Until there is heavy/powerful software involved you would not know the difference between the two. Its potential unrealized.

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

Before the Note, I had for like a month the S2 and it is faster. Not a metter of processor, I mean, the user experience.

There is not lag at all in the S2. I still prefer the Note, and hope ICS make it run smoother.

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

What should I recheck?
The Galaxy note scored around 2900 in sunspider the SIII scores 1479 which is almost twice as fast.

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

what? My n9 scores 2604 in sunspider benchmark

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

Well, the bench marks for the SIII are quite impressive but not enough, at least at this point, for me to be interested in trading in my Note for one. For most applications I use, the Note is plenty fast enough. For example, when I scroll through pages on the web I'd have to take a speed reading course to keep up with it. So a faster rendering of pages doesn't buy me much here. I'm sure there are exceptions and situations, like multitasking, that the extra speed would be appreciated. But I would have preferred more ram and better multitasking due to smarter OS. It would be interesting to see how well, say, ubuntu performs on it when loaded. When I first got the Note I didn't use the stylus much but now I find myself pulling it out more often. Also, I really love the size of the screen on the Note. It is actually ironic how nicely the maemo.org webpages fit on that size screen. It makes it a much more pleasurable experience reading than any mobile device I've ever used. Hopefully ICS and premium suite shows up soon on Note so there is a lot to look forward to!

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

Maybe it is because it is NOT in that benchmark ??
The NOTE =/= NOTE 10.1
And the FACT that the Note 10.1 did NOT score 2,900 it fared much better than that with a score of 1,891.

I just ran it now on standard browser and my score is 1,520.
I could make it run faster (lower number) if I stopped all background tasks, used Chrome browser (much faster js), and increased screen timeout period (reduced interacting with screen).

Besides a difference between a 1,500 and a 3,000 figure is not double the performance. On paper it may be, but in reality both can (browser)perform relatively the same speeds.

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

lol, give n9 dualcore, and latest gpu, boooom, ur note is nowhere, :p

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

I know it's not in that list, never said it was but the SIII is what I was showing. I know that the Note != Note10.1 Hence why my 2900 value does not match the 1891 of the Note 10.1 in that list

I used the Note established default sunspider benchmark score found here
http://www.ubergizmo.com/2012/02/sam...ark-sunspider/

or here

http://tinyurl.com/bnmsnah

which is between 2900 and 3000 ms.

They browse at "relatively the same speed" because for non taxing sites it is the difference of a small figure, does not mean it isn't double the speed. Waiting 0.5 seconds instead of 1 is not going to be noticeable but it's still twice as fast. However it still means if you visit a very javascipt heavy site which takes say 2 minutes to load on a Note, that would take 1 minute instead (some sites disqus.js and thread.js take an awful long time). Of course that depends on the actual tasks.


Edit: a word is censored in the second url so link was broken. Had to create a tinyurl for link to work.

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

Ohkay.

I didn't use any of those weblinks....I ran the benchmark off my phone.
And I'm more inclined to believe my hands-on score of ~1,500 rather than one published by an unknown. And like I said, I can get a better score if I tried.

My point still stands, benchmarks mean nothing when it comes to real performance. ibrakalifa is possibly true that Harmattan running on a more modern processor would outpace even these high-end devices.

(The only thing benchmarks can do is to prove one device is actually faster than another, when the scores are very far apart.
I'm talking like a difference between gingerbread SGS and SGS2 where they behave close/slight edge to S2...but in benchmarks the S2 proves its superiority by showing more impressive figures.)

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

well I'm certainly not making this **** up. If that's what you think

http://www.flickr.com/photos/umpcportal/6329289344/
All phones are tested stock, trying to get high scores by tweaks isn't the norm for any of these benchmarks. These are out the box devices.

I think benchmarks were discussed earlier in this thread so we are covering already covered ground. Usually I would agree for a benchmark that uses hardware not currently supported by any software other than the benchmark itself but again sunspider is a realworld test which explains why ibrakalifa might be showing a better score with lower hardware. Which was what his assertion was based on anyway, his sunspider score. Sunspider is a realworld test that takes these things into account ( eg OS and browser) and is based on actual javascript tasks you would encounter in actual sites. It's not just an arbitrary figure based on theoretical potential of the hardware. It's a timed actual task on a site. Did you time the "slight edge" of the S2? to know if this slight edge matchs the benchmark difference? It seems you accept a qualitative difference but dispute the quantitative test of it.

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

I don't have anything else to add to this discussion.

While the tasks ran on the SS test maybe linked to "realworld test" it is still not a real world test in itself. Its a synthetic test that was created to measure the browser performance. When browsing the internet, each page renders different annotations, in a random order, in random quantities, with differing amount of buffer time. It is not ordered like in the SS test !

Changing browsers can affect the results drastically.
Changing the OS will affect the results drastically.

The SGS vs S2 was a hypothetical match-up. I'm disappointed you couldn't come to this conclusion personally. Basically I was saying that both on 2.3 will behave very smooth and browser will be agile. You may see the S2 browse faster. Then you run the SS benchmark and discover a huge difference in scores. This is used to confirm your suspicions, proving one is faster than the other. And in that sense "benchmarking" makes sense.
-However, running benchmarks and comparing them to other devices isn't the be-all-end-all proof of the hardware. Like I said, its more complicated than that.

(besides if it was, no one would be using an n900)

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

Not sure what to infer from that, especially about the N900. The sunspider results on the N900 are I think near the 40000ms mark. This is indicative of performance, try and open a javascript heavy page like a theverge.com article and see how long it takes to load the comments section, it will take so long that it may prompt you to stop the script from running or to close the browser.

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

Yes, and I'm presently downloading :)

Ah, and people having problems with the stock browser (Eiffel for column enlarging, and Chuck Norris for writing in text boxes: be sure you try the latest Dolphin Browser HD (which in my own experience runs circles around the stock one).

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

I am writing this on the very nice handwriting recognition of the note. I finally found a phone where firefox is actually usable. l liked that you can put handwritten notes on the desktop. Is there anything similar for them around?

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

You can with S-Memo, or if you have Go Launcher, there is a note widget which allows handwritten notes, as well as keyed-in or task lists.

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

Ι tried to write "is there something similar for the N900 around?" but the handwriting recognizer betrayed me...

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

I remember there being one for Chinese but I don't think there was any for other languages.

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

Hmm... how, where? ... :-)

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

Me too... I haven't received update notification yet.

Any of the lucky ones care to comment on ICS experience on Note.

How is responsiveness, memory usage, task management, premium suite and so forth...

EDIT: Ahh! I need to use Kies. At last! Downloading now...

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

I got lost in the posts... I was trying to ask if there is a way to add sketchy notes on the N900 desktop like you can on the note.

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

I just realized that using the pen from a wacom tablet instead of the included stylus is much more convenient and the eraser on the back of the pen works out of the box. Nice touch.

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

Not that I know of.

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

after upgrading to ics, fennec became unusable. The beta had the same behavior. So l tried aurora with the native Android Gui and it is perfect. Fast & smooth. this, along with Microb confirms that gecko with a native interface flies. Or in other words that xul runner is to blame for firefox's slowness. I wish we had a Qml UI for the N9 fennec and a newer gecko for microb.

another thing I noticed after upgrading to ics is that there is no more flicker when the backlight changes brightness

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

Thanks for the tip (no pun intended!) I tried the stylus from my X220t thinkpad (it has wacom) and it is much more responsive than the one that came with the Note.

Not sure if I have a problem but during the kies update to ICS three things were supposed to load. The S Note update, the new firmware (ics) and some new drivers. For some reason the new drivers failed to load (according to error message). Anyone know what these drivers are about? They do not show up when I connect to kies any longer so I don't know if they eventually were loaded.

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

do write the Review Guy's Before/After ICS

aspects like
SPEED, UI, STYLUS, AVAILABLE RAM, APPS BEHAVIOR, GAMING, CAMERA, VIDEO PLAYBACK, YOUTUBE, BENCHMARKS, YOUR EXPERIENCE
&
ARE YOU MISSING ANYTHING FROM GINGERBREAD, :)

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

Wait for some days before installing the LPY firmware (only stock ics so far). It has been said it could have a bug in the kernel which might brick your device.
Source:http://forum.xda-developers.com/show....php?t=1648362

Me, I've already updated and before I knew of this issue, I had engaged in at-risk behaviours like wiping from recovery console, reinstalling a nandroid backup with potentially dangerous kernel, and finally installing again ics. I had no problem, but go figure, I might have been just lucky.

Concerning performance, after upgrading to stock ics: you can feel the accellerated graphics, and this is the most evident change. Apart from look and feel that's changed, we have the S-Note app which is a S-Memo on steroids (but inexplicably without being able to show a document as a widget on the desktop screen), and all the remaining things work well.

I've yet to test USB guest connectivity. ICS should have made it more difficult to start in linux, but there are references which could help, like http://www.androidcentral.com/ics-fe...and-how-set-it

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

I played around with a Note on stock 2.3.6 firmware earlier.
It's remarkably thin, and for someone with ham hands it's quite nice (software keyboards still feel uncomfortable for me, but I haven't hit the wrong key on it because they're so damn big.)
For those asking if the Galaxy Note is laggy with Touchwiz, no, it's not. The transitions feel artificially sped up, yes, but there is virtually no lag at all.

One gripe I do have about it are the tiny, tiny mono speakers. They're about the same size as the ones on the SGSII, and the training video preloaded on it, played at maximum volume sounded tinny.
(Oh, and the tip of the pen doesn't feel right, for some reason.)

It's nice, and I think I'll be waiting for the Note 2.

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note
 

We've all been spoiled by the N900 speakers.

With the Note, you can get a worthwhile improvement in sound quality (and volume) by leaving a gap of 1cm between the back of the phone and the surface behind it. Rest the Note on a matchbox or something.