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Galaxy Note 2: the first Jelly Bean phone will reach your hands as early as this October

August 30, 2012 in Galaxy Note News, Galaxy Note Reviews

GALAXY-Note-IIAs rumored  (or expected), Samsung announced the second generation of Galaxy Note, Galaxy Note 2, at IFA 2012 yesterday. Now, the first Jenny Bean(out of box, not through update) phone.

So, here is a short list of changes (from Galaxy  Note to Galaxy Note 2):

  1. Jelly Bean  (aka, Android 4.1), vs Ginger Bread (Android 2.3). So Galaxy Note is the first Jelly Bean phone.
  2. 5.5 inch display, vs 5.3 inch
  3. 16:9 ratio (1280*720, HD), vs 16:10 *1280*800, WXGA)
  4. Quad core 1.6GHz CPU, vs dual core 1.4GHz or 1.5 GHz
  5. 2GB RAM, vs 1GB RAM;
  6. dimension: 146.9 x 83 x 9.7 mm, vs 151.1 x 80.5x 9.4mm
  7. 3100mAh battery, vs 2500mAh
  8. NFC is included, vs optional
  9. Bluetooth 4.0, vs 3.0
  10. New S Pen, longer, thicker
  11. New feature: Screen Recorder (record a whole sequence of actions taken on their screen). most useful!!!
  12. New feature: Popup Note (open an S Note instantly as a pop-up window anywhere on the screen)
  13. New feature: Quick Command ( quickly activate frequently used apps with the S Pen)
  14. New feature: Easy Clip (quickly outline and crop certain kinds of content on the screen)
  15. New feature: Idea Visualizer ( provides illustration images that match the handwritten keywords), too fancy!!
We hope Samsung will port some of these features into Galaxy Note!!!
The shipment will start from October. So, just wait one month, you may start to try.
What do you think about this new generation of Galaxy Note?
Here is the full press release. For your reading pleasure, I quote it below.
Be Creative, Be Expressive with the GALAXY Note II
August 29,  2012

 

The most powerful smartphone sparks everyone’s creative inspirations
BERLIN, Germany - August 29,  2012 - At the Samsung Mobile Unpacked event held today at IFA, in Berlin, Samsung introduced the GALAXY Note II, a whole new level of innovation for the GALAXY Note category. The new Samsung GALAXY Note II enables unique experiences in personalized and expressive content creation, making it the ultimate smartphone for on-the-go creativity.

 

“Last year at IFA, we launched the GALAXY Note, which opened a new category of smart mobile devices. This year, again at IFA, I am proud to announce the GALAXY Note II, which will encourage users to ‘unleash their inner creativity.’ With a perfect viewing experience and unique and differentiated features, users can discover information and capture their ideas faster, express thoughts freely and manage tasks more efficiently. For anyone who wants to be creative, expressive and unique, the Samsung GALAXY Note II will be the ideal device, allowing users to live a life extraordinary,” said JK Shin, President of IT & Mobile Communications Division at Samsung Electronics.

 

Since the first introduction of the GALAXY Note category, Samsung has continued to enhance and expand the GALAXY Note product experiences. In May 2012, Samsung introduced ‘Premium Suite,’ a software upgrade which provided enhanced user experiences. With the Ice Cream Sandwich OS upgrade, Samsung offered innovative new features such as Shape Match and Formula Match, providing a new way for organizing and expressing ideas in their personal and professional life. Also in August, Samsung expanded the category further with the GALAXY Note 10.1, which has a 10.1-inch large screen, a Multiscreen feature for the ultimate multitasking, and enhanced features for users’ productivity, creativity and learning abilities. With further enhancements, Samsung GALAXY Note II will help users unleash their inner creativity by letting them discover information faster, capture ideas, and express them in a more organized and efficient manner.

 

Perfect viewing experience

 

The GALAXY Note II features a 5.5” (140.9mm) HD Super AMOLED screen, providing breathtaking visuals and crystal clear detail. Its 16:9 screen ratio ensures an immersive and enriched cinema-like video viewing experience, perfect for watching HD videos on-the-go. Its larger screen allows users to see content clearly and vividly, with much enhanced readability. In addition to the stunning content consumption experiences on a larger screen, users will also be able to accomplish more tasks efficiently and create content freely on-the-go, as the GALAXY Note II comes with a thinner and portable body.

 

Easy multitasking

 

Air View allows users to hover with the S Pen over an email, S Planner, image gallery, or video to preview the content without having to open it. This feature enables users to quickly search and see more information in one view without screen transitions.

 

Thanks to the breadth of the GALAXY Note II’s amazing viewing experience, a feature called Popup Note extends the concept of Popup Play, which lets users open an S Note instantly as a pop-up window anywhere on the screen. For example, when a user pulls out the S Pen during a phone call, the S Note application automatically pops up on the screen, allowing users to jot down a quick note.

 

In addition, the device’s new gesture pad feature, called Quick Command, lets users quickly activate frequently used apps with the S Pen. The command pad appears when a user just swipes upward on the screen with the S Pen button pressed. Users can quickly send an email, make a call, or search a location as they draw pre-registered marks on the command pad or register a unique mark to allow for quick and easy access.

 

Furthermore, users will be able to share their experiences with others quickly and easily using Screen Recorder. It allows users to record a whole sequence of actions taken on their screen — a demonstration of how to use an application, for example — and then share it with friends for comment, or just for fun.

 

Amazing expression tools – Advanced S Pen & S Note

 

The new S Pen is longer, thicker and ergonomically designed for the perfect grip. Therefore, it provides a more precise, comfortable, and natural writing and drawing experience.

 

The S Pen’s advanced features also provide enhanced capabilities to capture ideas and inspirations instantly, and to combine handwriting with any digital content directly on the screen. By simply pressing the dedicated S Pen button, the S Pen magically recognizes that users want to clip or edit the selected content on the screen. The Easy Clip feature allows users to instantly outline and crop any content on the screen in any shape to save, share or paste. Once done cropping the image, users can freely edit the cropped content through coloring, shading, or their own personal handwriting. It is quick and easy.

 

Another amazing expression feature called Idea Visualizer allows users to easily add illustrations by handwriting keywords on the S Note. It provides illustration images that match the handwritten keywords. It’s a fancy illustration match function that will allow users to express, organize and visualize ideas in a more innovative and creative way. Users can even customize and add in their own illustrations library.

 

Powerful Performance

 

Powering content creation, sharing and multitasking capabilities, the GALAXY Note II comes with the latest hardware technologies. A mighty 1.6GHz Quad-Core processor and HSPA Plus or 4G LTE connectivity delivers easy multitasking, lightning-fast screen transitions, powerful browser performance, and minimal app load time. The GALAXY Note II is powered by Android™ 4.1, Jelly Bean. This brings stunning graphical capabilities and an upgraded Google Now service, including new features such as contextual search, to the GALAXY Note II. The memory options are 16 GB, 32 GB, and 64 GB with an expandable micro SD memory slot. Thanks to a 3,100mAh battery, users can enjoy multimedia content, always be productive on the go, and capture ideas whenever, wherever without suffering from power limitation.

 

The GALAXY Note II comes with an 8 megapixel rear-facing and 1.9 megapixel front-facing camera with HD video recording. The camera has great features like Buddy Photo Share, Burst Shot and Best Photo, which were introduced on the GALAXY S III earlier in the year. In addition to that, the GALAXY Note II features a unique camera function called Best Faces. Best Faces allows users to choose the most preferred face or pose of each person from group portrait photos. Users can also personalize photos by leaving handwritten notes on the backside of a photo using the S Pen. Handwritten Photo Notes can be shared with others in jpg format.

 

Available in Marble White or Titanium Gray color options, the Samsung GALAXY Note II is set to launch in October starting in major European, Asian, and Middle East markets.

 

The Samsung GALAXY Note II will be on display at the Samsung booth # 20 at IFA 2012 from Aug 31 through Sep 5.

 

The full press release can be found here.

 

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Why did I get less free RAM after the ICS update in my Galaxy Note?

June 28, 2012 in Galaxy Note Guides

Some users felt the sluggish immediately after the ICS update on the Galaxy Note. Some users even want to go back to Gingerbread, as commented by some users on the post of Top 10 questions on ICS update for your Galaxy Note and Ice Cream Sandwich is coming to your Galaxy Note

Of course, it is NOT necessary to go back to GB. Don’t over-react on the feeling. In this post, I will share with you how to read your available RAMs, and some tips to make your Note more responsive.

During the ICS update, for some unknown reasons, all apps will be started (we all know all apps will be re-installed by the updater, but I am not sure why they are started). So, after the update, your Note will not so responsive. A quick solution is rebooting your phone after the update. Most apps will not run automatically, so, after the reboot, only some apps started.

Now, you can check your memory (RAM) usage through Settings–Applications–Running. You should have 200-400MB free RAM. This is more than sufficient for most apps!! For example, for my note as shown below, it still have 299MB free RAM after running a few days.

ram-reported-by-system

This shows the actual available RAM.

But if I use the bundled Task Manager, it reported only 101MB free RAM as shown in the screenshot below. This is why a lot of  users get scared!. Do not trust any task manager or system info apps. Most of them suck. Most of apps report available RAM inaccurately.

ram-reported-by-task-manager

This shows why most Task Manager suck!

Wait a minute, the specification says my Galaxy Note have 1GB ram, but it shows I only have about 800MB.  Is Samsung cheating us? Surely not. The about 200MB RAM is reserved by the system, mainly for GPU.  In your Galaxy Note, there is a GPU (Mali 400-MP, to be precisely) whose duty is to render whatever to be shown on the screen. All such embedded GPUs do not have “dedicated” memory: they have to share the system RAM (your 1GB RAM). As GPU need contiguous (both physical and virtual)  address, memory should be reserved.  This is something similar (but not identical)  to your integrated graphics card on your PC (if you still have such a PC).

Your Android kernel (ICS) and drivers will use about 200MB RAM. Another about 200MB were used by your launcher and other bundled apps (both essential and bloated). So, after rebooting your Galaxy Note, you should have 300-500MB available RAM. Don’t use any task manager to check!! 

Android (and its father or mother? Linux)  is very efficient in memory management. Any unused RAM is wasted!  Android caches some apps in the RAM so that when you want to launch these apps, it will be super fast because they will be loaded from memory instead of from the storage card. Most of the time, your newly closed apps get higher priority of being cached. Of course, Android will not use up all your RAM; it will always leave 100-200MB as unused in your Galaxy Note so that you can launch any apps without feeling the sluggish. If the unused RAM is not sufficient, some cached RAM will be released immediately based on priority and other factors.

So, you should never worry about RAM management in your Galaxy Note. Most task managers and RAM boosters are useless.

If you feel the phone is sluggish, the problem can be caused by some poorly-written apps or some other settings (e.g., excessive power saving settings). You can always check the running apps from Settings–Applications–Running to find out which app is hogging the resources.

As mentioned, some apps start itself automatically when you reboot your phone. If you are curious to know which apps in your phone will start automatically (usually during boot time), you can install this Autorun Manger (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rs.autorun). If your phone is not rooted, you can only temporally stop such apps through Settings–Applications–Downloaded–choose the app–Force Stop. Anyway, for most users, this is NOT necessary.

Ok, a few tips to make your phone more responsive:

  • Turn off Power Saving. Based on my personal experience, the Power Saving can extend the battery life only about 10%, and your CPU seldom goes to 1.4GHz with Power Saving on. I tested for a few days. When it is off, my Note became far more responsive,and may battery is still enough for my daily use. Occasionally I still turn it on if I know I need user it for longer time on some days.
  • Turn off Screen Rotation. You can always turn it man when you need it, e.g., browsing web pages, watching videos.
  • Turn off Touch sounds and vibrate on touch. You can do this from Settings–Sound–System

What are your tips to make your Galaxy Note more responsive? Or do you have comments to share with us?

 

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How to solve battery issues after ICS update in your Galaxy Note

June 17, 2012 in Galaxy Note Guides

galaxy-note-battery-issuesAfter ICS update, some Galaxy Note users complained about poorer battery life compared with that with Gingerbread. Initially, I thought it is a problem of “feeling” because I personally felt similar battery life after the ICS update. I was a bit disappointed because I had expected some sort of battery life improvements.

Suddenly, last week, I encountered the battery drain issue: battery just draining crazily. In one hour it can drain 3-10% battery capacity when the phone is idle. So, I know the users complaining are not alone.

As I finished my investigation and found the culprit, now I share with you how to solve battery issues on your Galaxy Note after the ICS Update. If you already have battery issues or you feel you have battery issues, you may follow my steps.

First, I installed an free app called CPU Spy (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bvalosek.cpuspy), which will give you the duration of  each CPU state. When your phone is idle (screen off, no music playing, no downloading), normally, your CPU should be in “Deep Sleep” state. For example, after one night, you check your CPU Spy, it should look like this.

cpuspy-normal

Normal CPU state in a Galaxy Note when you are sleeping.

As you can see, this is the normal situation. In the night, 95%of the time, the CPU is in deep sleep, and after 11 hours, about 6% battery was drained (I also checked emails before sleep).  If your phone does not go to deep sleep, you will find the duration on other state is higher. Very likely, you have battery drain issues if more than 20% battery are drained when you are sleeping (6-10 hours),  You probably will find far larger percentage on 200MHz state. If more than 30% are drained in one night, very likely, your phone never goes to Deep Sleep state.

So, install the CPU Spy (free), use your Galaxy note as usual for a few hours,  fully charge your phone, disconnect your Note from the charger, close all apps (it is NOT necessary to clear the cache; but is a good idea to disable WiFi). Then go to sleep. Check the battery status after 6-10 hours (if you can sleep that long).

If the battery drain is less than 1% per hour  (this gives discharging rate of less than 25mA, as your Note has a 2500mAh capacity) in idle state, you phone should be able to go to deep sleep state and don’t worry for the battery drain issue for the time being (as you may encounter another issue as I did).

If your phone drains battery faster than 1% per hour when you are sleeping. It means the phone has an insomnia problem. You need find out which app casues the problem.

Now you need installed another app named Better Battery Status (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.asksven.betterbatterystats&hl=en). If you want to support the author for this incredible app, you can buy it for about $2. Yes, if you are just want to do a short time test, you can download the identical (and also official) free one from XDA-Developers (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1179809). This is an official copy the author released for XDA-Developer community for free. You can find the download link for the APK file in the second post. Once the APK file is saved on your Note, you can then use any file exploer (e.g., MyFiles) to browse it and you will be offered to install it. Please make sure the Unknown sources is checked (under Settings–Security–Device Administration) if you install from APK file instead of the paid one from the Play store.

Once you start Better Battery Status, you can straightaway see a lot of info. You can select Partial Wakelocks since unplugged if you want to find out which app prevents your phone from going into deep sleep.  Here is an example (normal situation, no issues).

better-battery-status-app

This is a normal situation; no major issues.

So, in the past 19 hours, some apps just keep the phone awake for a few mins. If you find any apps that listed here has long time associated with it (do NOT judge on the length of the bar; you should make judgement based on the percentage of this time to the total time), congratulations, you find the culprit. You can proceed to check the app settings.

Again, the image above indicates there are no problems. The longest partial wakelock is only a few mins. Don’t be panic when you look at the bar.

As I told you at the start of this post, last week I encountered battery drain issues caused by the kernel, possibly a kernel bug. All of a sudden, my Note went crazy: draining the battery very fast. Initially I though it could be caused some apps. But after I checked the battery status, I found out it was caused by the kernel  (fuel_alerted).  and here is the screenshot.

better-battery-status-kernel-wakelock-fuel-alerted

If you encounter this fuel_alerted guy, you have to shutdown your phone, remove the battery.

Anyway, this is a kernel bug in ICS, we have to wait for new update. The solution for this is: shutdown your Note, peel off the back cover, remove the battery; hold the battery for more than one min, put the battery back, put back the back cover; start the phone. Then, everything goes back to normal. Reboot your phone will NOT solver this issue, at least for me.

Next time, when you encounter this issue again, try the procedure again.

But it seems it is hard to hit the bug again. I tried to enable/disable power saving; tried to reboot, tried to turn on/off GPS, I simply cannot get the problem again. I know the problem is NOT fixed, it will come out someday, but I don’t know when.  We have to wait for another update to permanently fix this issue.

Do you have any other battery issues?

 

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Galaxy Note will land US on Feb. 19

February 12, 2012 in Galaxy Note News

samsung-galaxy-note-us-version

Note the 4 capacitive buttons in the bottom.

Finally, US pundits will be able to put their hands on this tablet smartphone on Feb. 19. AT&T is now accepting pre-orders for Galaxy Note, with a price of $299.99 (for 2 year contract) through its online shop.

The major appealing points for US consumers include:

  • 4G LTE network support
  • Dual core 1.5GHz CPU
  • 5.3″ (not 3.5″) Super AMOLED with a resolution of 800*1200 HD

Please note, the US version of Galaxy Note gets 4 capacitive buttons on the device. This is different from the models offered in Europe and Asia, which come with 1 physical home button and two capacitive buttons.

 

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Galaxy Note TV Commercial:Phone? Tablet? Feel free! It’s GALAXY Note

February 11, 2012 in Galaxy Note Videos

 

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