Tablet time - Galaxy Note 10.1

After saying around a year ago I saw no need for a tablet, I’ve been musing over buying a tablet for about the last 6 months. Something to use more sociably than a laptop especially around the house, and with a larger screen than even an excellent phone like the Samsung Galaxy S3.

And so the research started. As a self professed geek I’ll take ages researching what to buy, and looked at a number of tablets. Four I considered seriously – opinions are very personal, all of these have strong merits in their own right, just not what I felt was right for me. I was interested in openness, innovation, form factor, performance,storage options, right-first-time, solid reliability, compatibility with existing services I use (many google)

Apple iPad3 – in many ways the easiest option. Lovely hardware, especially the screen, excellent app support – but frankly the whole OS is boring & it’s a separate ecosystem. Works for my mum though.

Asus Transformer Infinity – very expensive in UK form since it’s only provided with keyboard (which I wasn’t bothered by), and frankly I was concerned about performance and build

Google/Asus Nexus 7 – lovely device. Quick, responsive, running Jellybean & being a nexus device would continue to be on the cutting edge of google software deliveries, but not the size I was looking for.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 – looks decent, large discounts available for this year old device. Running ICS, solid option – Performs adequately but felt it could suffer under my usage

But in the end I went for the Galaxy Note 10.1 . No surprise it needed to be something new, and it’s probably the fastest, slickest android tablet I’ve used. Browsing especially performed well, doubt helped by the quad core cpu & 2GB ram. I’d been delighted with my galaxy s2, then s3

 

So I went for it and spent a well earnt £350 (I had a shop’s staff discount from a family member). that feels like a lot of money and did I think carefully about it! With the box home I finally got around to seeing what delights were inside:

 

 

 

 

Ah this looks nice – my first tablet

 

 

 

 

It’s actually sleeker than I expected, and feels really good to hold

 

 

Not sure how much I’ll use this – I suspect my S3 will continue to lead in that respect (brilliant camera)

 

 

 

 

All the usual bits and pieces – note the special cable for charging – not standard microUSB (in part as a tablet needs a much higher current power supply)

 

 

 

 

And the final product all ready to play with!

 

 

 

So that’s it – the tablet arrives! Watch this space for some hands on experiences .

It’s nearly time

Any guesses?

After previously confirming android JellyBean was coming to the Samsung Galaxy S III, today at the IFA in Berlin samsung specifically said it was coming “very soon”.

So what does “very soon” mean. Well for me it means checking for updates at an OCD level, though expecting it within minutes/hours was perhaps a little optimistic.
This week could still happen – here’s hoping

Oh in case anyone’s wondering I have a euro/sim free handset so there should be no delay from any carriers

Samsung Galaxy S III vs Samsung Galaxy S II

In June 2011 I switched to Android having been using Symbian for many years, and having had a Nokia N900 running maemo for the 18 months prior. The N900 was a cool device, but very geeky/techie and little activity in terms of commercial applications.

[photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/rafeblandford/ ]

The switch to the Galaxy S II was like black and white. I was stunned by just how good the S II was. Sure at some level the N900 could do many of the same things – take/share photos, video, decent web browsing – but to me this was the coming of android. The point in time at which android, married to the fantastic S II hardware was slick, usable, functional with wide appeal.


I’d come close to getting the original Galaxy S – but had been caught up thinking about what Nokia’s next move would be. Where was Windows Phone going, what about maemo followons, the relationship with Intel – but more on that in another article.
Back to the S II. What a phone. Lovely for photos. Georgous sexy display, good choice of accessories including the obligatory power users 2000 mAh battery extension. Plenty fast enough for apps. Decent Storage, a healthy 1GB ram. So good I was definately getting to the “how could they possibly improve on this” level.
In truth of course I knew what was coming – screen sizes were continuing to increase (look at the note!), resolutions were increasing (as my OH’s HTC Sensation trumped the S II specwise) and with the Galaxy Nexus we saw some attention paid to the camera to remove the lag associated with phone pictures when compared to say a DSLR.
So when the S III was announced it clearly looked great but I kept on thinking “my next phone is the S IV” – until that is an opportunity arose that made financial sense to go for the S III (and sell the old S II)


I’ve now had the S III for a few weeks so thought it worth summarizing my thoughts – where’s it better, worse, different than it’s predecessor
The screen – georgous OLED as ever, but once you play around with twitter, web browsing, doc reading for a few minutes you quickly appreciate the size boost and crucially the resolution increase. It may be tagged with the “pentile” moniker but in daily use I’d take this over a full res LCD any day. OLED quite simply is georgous to look at.

• The camera – in good light the lag is removed. I expect a big part of this is continual auto focus, but it’s really handy when taking photos outdoors. Very noticeable. I reckon the pictures themselves are improved too, and I’ve not noticed the pink spot I had on the S II.
• Notification light – YAY at last. I had this on my N900 and missed it with the S II. Nice to have it back so it’s easy to see messages are waiting. The downside? I now feel more compelled to respond quickly. Actually I’ve detuned some notifications to get a little more peace and quiet.
• Software – nice to see finally that out of the box touchwiz supports folders, and sorts alphabetically. frankly it was a little crazy there was no alpha sort before, but being android there were plenty of alternative launchers anyway. I used nova – though am still with touchwiz on the S III. Default theming is more ICS like such as in the dialler and scrolling feels a little better.  Lock screen gains functionality.
• The enhanced notification bar stands alone as a very noticeable feature – far more icons to control functions jkay style – we now have wifi, gps, sound,rotate,powersave,notifications, data,bluetooth, driving, sync, brightness all available after a quick swipe

There are other areas where the specs are up, but for me I didn’t have an issue with the S II or just

• Battery life – now 2100 mAh, Original S II was 1650 mAh, but I had a 2000 mAh official extended battery in any case. And it’s too early to compare real life hour usage figures.
• Processor – quad instead of twin, so arguably marginally slicker but then the S II was no slouch and therefore it’s not a big deal

And what didn’t I especially like?

• The samsung keyboard now has some swype like functionality built in. Except it’s not as good as full-fat swype. Easily remedied though by a visit to swype.com

So all in all some lovely improvements – with no doubt more to come software wise with jellybean, but if you have an S II still – enjoy it. It remains one of the BEST android phones around, even a year later. IMO it was truly a landmark android device and really set out what a top end android device was.

Nigel.