If you’re not in love with your warranty… I highly recommend stopping by xda-developers, and checking out the AOKP milestone 6 by DAGr8. None of the Samsung bloat, extremely fast and incredibly stable.

I am not sure what you mean with the flick. If u flick slow. ..it scrolls slow, and if I flick fast it scrolls fast. I am running 2.3

Where can I find this “3500 mAh battery is same size, weight as the original one.”?
My friend google can’t seem to find it for me. I can find a case that has a 3500mah
but not a battery the same size as the original 2500mah.

I’ve been running ICS for a while now thanks to leaked builds. All I can say is the things the XDA folks are doing with ICS, Tablet mode and the Galaxy Note is unbelievable. By far well worth the price of admission.

I use an app called iSyncr Wifi (http://www.jrtstudio.com/iSyncr) — total cost of about $4. Works with iTunes so you can sync your playlists over. Also allows you to schedule syncing – so overnight you can automatically sync iTunes as well as any photos or videos you’ve taken on the phone over to your PC or Mac. Super simple and works great. Highly recommended.

Hey Brandon, great article and review. I’m torn between two lovers, Note and iPhone. Now that Ice Cream is available on the New Note, have you had a chance to upgrade? If so, are the improvements justifiable to make Note the true “MONSTER”?
MAHALO

Given some time with the Note and some custom ROMs I don’t regret the decision in the least. I love this device and the level of customization it has.

iOS/iPhone would have a lot of work to do to win me back any time soon.

Responses:

1. Anti-Virus can / should be a concern if you’re playing around with warez/cracks etc. If you’re going exclusively with downloads from the Play Store you have a lot less to worry about. I’m honestly more concerned with dropping / losing my not than anti-virus. If you’re concerned though there are excellent AV packages available and I recommend looking at Avast (Play Store).

2. The S-Pen takes some getting used to and can be calibrated. It’s basically a Wacom tablet – and I’m sure you know how powerful those are.

3. There is no “Official” ICS for the AT&T note at this time. But I’ve been running a custom rom called “The Hybrid” which is an ICS build with tablet functionality and customized resolutions. It’s incredible to say the least.

4. I have two “accessories” – an SGP Oleophobic screen protector on the front and a Zagg skin on the back. Beyond that – I haven’t felt the need for much more. I have a request in to Otterbox for a Defender review unit.

5. Known issue. Some apps are set to 16 bit instead of 24 bit and produce poor gradients. There’s lengthy discussions about the issue – and it is software not hardware related.

6. Battery only because if you intend to use the device ALL day (like constantly playing a movie or a game) you can swap the battery. A second SPen though I would not complain about having as a backup.

7. Sorry – english only!

Where do you find a battery that cheap?

1. I read that Android has more malware than the iOS. This is one main factor holding my purchase of the Note. An iPhone with a larger screen does not seem to come out soon. In case of buying the Note, what programs do you recommend to get to protect the Note from being infected with malware and virus?

2. I tried out the S-pen on an application which came with the Note. When I launched that application, I saw many small grids. I used the S-pen to pick on the corners of the small grids. The resolution wasn’t that good. For example, when I clicked on the corner of a small grid, a dot was displayed at the center of the grid.

3. Has anybody tried the official ICS on the Note? Has it fixed the lag issue? I experienced a long lag when I switched between landscape and portrait modes with the calculator launched.

4. What accessories do you recommend? What are the top 3 cases and screen protectors to protect the device from fall and scratch?

5. I played several youtube videos. In half of the videos, I could see the images made of coarse, square boxes. Is that due to a defect of the OS/Note? The store staff said that it was due to the low resolutions of the video files. I picked the videos randomly. Half of them had this problem.

6. Give an extra battery or a S pen as a gift, which one should I chose?

7. Has anybody tried a Japanese keyboard App on the Note?

Thanks.

the whole OS doesn’t have that polish that iOS does. Scrolling is jumpy. Zooming in is messy – especially double tap to zoom which seems to randomly zoom into any area of the text. The scrolling physics are completely wrong. On the iPhone, if you slightly flick your finger it will scroll slowly and if you flick really fast, it will scroll really fast. This is missing on Android and really shows through when you compare it to the elegant iOS where the creators seem to care about every last detail. I think android is a really good OS that can do a lot of things but I don’t like finish of it.

You know, ICS has built-in functionality that allows you to disable and hide system apps, like carrier bloatware. It doesn’t remove them from the flash memory, but they’ll be out of your app drawer/face, and won’t be able to run in the background and hog precious resources. No root required either, just go into Settings, “Apps’, locate your annoying carrier apps and disable themas you please.

In general, I like almost everything about the note! The S-pen rocks too cos it’s convenient to scribble something down when I’m out sometimes and I can write and see my handwriting again (we type so much that we don’t really write nowadays do we?)

Reasonable and fair enough. If you’re a heavy one-handed user, you will definitely not like the Note. In that case, they should make the largest device that people in your usage category would use.

Thank you for clarifying.

As a fellow Android fan and Galaxy Note user, I would like to say that this is not a good way to reach out to the other side. I’m beginning to understand that Samsung mocking iOS/iPhone users was a very bad idea.

The correct strategy should be to recognize the good points of iOS and the iPhone. And they are there without question. Conversely, Android and Android phones have a good measure of great things going for them too. Without question.

Maybe you did not direct this against Brandon. But if you did, shame on you. We should be encouraging people to test Android phones and the system and let them decide what they like AFTER A FAIR amount of time. The human condition is such, that one is used to something and they begin to like it, a change is not readily acceptable to them. This applies to you and me too. All of us. It is simply a matter of finding ways to make things for work for you. And seeing good and maybe not so good things in that journey.

Lastly, I think constructive criticism is good. When you have a large enough base complaining, companies are forced to listen to stay competitive. I say let people complain if it’s genuine. It benefits us all ultimately. Otherwise, companies would rest on their laurels.

As for the follow up review – I’m going l there’s an “official” ICS available, but I’ve been running the leaked version and it’s a huge improvement over the stock Gingerbread install.

I’ve noticed a lot of my complaints with copy / paste (or at least cursor placement) have been improved with ICS. I’ll check those videos out here shortly!

I’ve used Swype a few times, but I’ve never really fallen in love with it. I’ve been sticking mostly with Smart Keyboard Pro which works really well for me.

It developed a crack on the right side of the screen bezel. Not the screen itself, but the white edge around the screen. Knock on wood, that has been a rare issue and only a few cases have been reported so far.