I've had the Note for a few weeks now, so its time for a re-review. A lot of the points I will make here will probably come across as criticisms. This is not intended in any way to rubbish the phone though. Its just a natural consequence of having discovered more of its limitations through use and experiment.
In fact, the Galaxy Note is a really really good phone. I'll stand by all the points I made in my initial impressions review. It is a very convenient size, very powerful, and very user friendly. Possibly even more so since updating to Android 4.0 on Sunday night. But it is probably that power thing that is the real flaw in the machine.
The battery life on this thing is dangerously low. And, by 'dangerously', I mean if you take your phone out and about all day and use the net or listen to music as you go there is a pretty good chance of running out of juice. Yesterday, for example, I unplugged my phone from its charger at 10am and got in a train for London. I affluent a few hits walking round the ships, almost always listening to music. I may have looked at a dozen pages on the net at lunchtime along with checking in on Facebook. I got back home at around 5 at which point I got my first 'low battery' warning. By the time I plugged it back into a charger at about 9pm the battery was down to 1%.
According to the phone itself, around a third of my power usage that day was down to the internet access. Another third went on display. Knowing how I used my phone all day, these numbers seem 'questionable'. But, whatever the cause, its still a real shock to find my fully charged phone could barely make it through a day of usage.
Full days out like that, with no access to a power point, are a rarity for me. And I could probably buy a bigger, better battery. But I shouldn't have to, really. This phone guzzles power - watching video while recharging slows the process down so much, at one point I wondered if it was actually discharging the battery.
But, let's assume toy do have a full power pack.How much fun is the Note to use? Honestly, a lot.
Samsung's Swype is a lot easier to use than it was on the Tab, and it was already a really really user-friendly experience then. You only have to tap once on wrongly typed words to get a list of likely alternatives and adding new words to the dictionary is a one-tap thing too.
The screen still feels too small for a fun video experience for me. But as I mentioned in my first impressions, I am coming from having the Tab's massive screen. I suspect most people will find the Note's screen a great improvement on their old mobile's.
Coupled with Evernote, the Note is, appropriately enough, excellent for writing on. The use of the stylus gives a much more precise feel to using the onscreen keyboard to a point where I can write on the Note amost as fast as I can using pen and paper. Not as fast as I can type, granted, but still easily fast enough to make taking actual notes and even writing blog posts like this one very practical.
There are a couple of things the Tab could do that got left out of the Note's specs for unknown reasons.
For one thing, not every screen rotates to landscape. The home screens don't and its kind of annoying when you have your phone on a desk stand to watch videos but then switch out to check an email and have to turn your head sideways to figure out where and what your icons are. This Phablet really wants to be treated like a phone.
I had planned to record some video on my trip to London yesterday, then edit it together and post it here so I could talk more about how easy the bundled software is to use. Sadly, it rained so hard, all through the day, I literally had to buy an umbrella in order to not just get thoroughly soaked and miserable. Suffice to say though, based on previous experiments, it really is easy and the stylus helps an awful lot. There are ins and outs, tricks and shortcuts to learn, of course. But that is always the case and I look forward to working with it on better weathered days.
All in all then, my enthusiastic first impressions have not been tempered by time. The Note is a great little (big) phone with oodles of power and features. It does take a lot of power though, so its possibly not the first choice device for people travelling off the grid. But, for writers, bloggers, artists and video makers, it includes a lot of great features and abilities and should definitely be tried.
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