Galaxy Note Tips & Tricks

Top 10 expected improvements in Galaxy Note 3

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exynos5Almost certainly, Samsung will announce the Galaxy Note 3 during (before) IFA 2013. Galaxy Note was announced during IFA 2011, Note 2 was in IFA 2012.

There are some leaked images and specifications circulating around. But none of them accurate, because Samsung surely produced several prototypes for evaluation. A few additional prototypes may be just to confuse competitors.

Based on Samsung’s track record in Galaxy S series and Galaxy Note series, it is certain, that Galaxy Note 3 will be an “upgrade” to Galaxy s4, not just an upgrade to Galaxy Note 2. This is the product strategy for Samsung. When S4 was released, there is about one year time for competitors to beat S4 with newer hardware. Note series at least shorten this window to 6 months.

So, what will be seen in Note 3? Here is the top 10 list.

1. Full HD display

Galaxy Note 3 will surely have full HD (1080p) screen. And it will surely be Super AMOLED made by Samsung. Early this year, before Galaxy S4 was announced, there was a rumor that Samsung had problems with full HD on AMOLED.  S4 stopped this rumor.  So, Samsung definitely has no problems to produce full HD AMOLED display in a bigger screen.

Full HD on a 5″ screen like S4 may be a waste. But for a 5.7″-6″ screen, the pixel density (arounfd 370ppi) is human eyes’  limit.  More pixels will be just wasted.

For Galaxy Note 2 users, it is an upgrade from HD 720p to 1080p.

2. Exynos 5 Octa  5420 processor

Exynos 5 Octa 5420 will very likely be used on Galaxy Note 3.  This is an improved  version of Octa 5410 found in Galaxy S4.  The 1.8 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A15 and 1.3 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 provide 10% more CPU raw power than 5410. But the most significant improvement of 5420 is its GPU. It will pack the latest ARM Mali-T628 MP6 GPU, which provides 130 GFLOPS at 667MHz. The  OCta 5 5410 only has IT PowerVR SGX544MP3, which provides 51.2 GFLOPS.

If we compare this processor …

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Who stole my butter? Solving slowness probelms in Galaxy Note after Jelly Bean update

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slow-jelly-beanJelly Bean 4.1 updated for Galaxy Note has been rolled out in phases since February 2013. This update brings Galaxy Note owners many excited improvements, new features and apps. Some of the new features were explained in  the Top 12 new features you should try after getting Jelly Bean 4.1 update for Galaxy Note.

However, some users reported serious slowness issues after the Jelly Bean update in their Galaxy Notes. It seems the Project Butter is nothing, or Samsung stole our butter.

What are the causes, and what are the solutions?

First, Galaxy Note is powerful enough for running Jelly Bean smoothly. 1GB RAM, and dual core 1.4GHz Exynos 4 Dual 4210 chip are still decent hardware specifications even after1.5 years. A lot of middle range Jelly Bean handsets has far less powerful hardware specifications.

So, do not suspect your hardware. Jelly Bean is not hungry for hardware. Any hardware that can run Ice Cream Sandwich should meet the requirements of Jelly Bean. A lot of manufactures do not give Jelly Bean update simply because  they do not want to put more resources on an old model. In this sense, Samsung did an excellent job.

The slowness problem in Jelly Bean update lies on the update itself. When you update the system, most of your old settings will be kept, some are necessary, some are unnecessary . Some of these settings are fully compatible with Jelly bean; some are compatible  but with degraded performance. For the known incompatible settings, the update will handle them. The biggest issue is that some old settings are not compatible to the new OS/ROM, but it is unknown yet.  Therefore, for the slowness caused by such problematic settings, a factory reset will solve the issue.

Please be careful when performing the  factory reset because it will erase your internal storage. You need backup all your data in the internal storage, including your contacts and messages. Apps can be re-installed, but the settings will be gone. If you have rooted your phone, you can use Titanium Backup  to …

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

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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
…

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

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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 …

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