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Nabooly

macrumors 6502a
Aug 28, 2007
849
5
I have the original 10.1 and I love it. If the OS of the new 10.1 will not be available for the original I'll buy the new one for sure. The one downside for me with the existing 10.1 is that when you are using Snote the navigation bar at the bottom is still there, so when you are taking notes my palm always seems to hit it when I get towards the bottom of the screen, hitting the navi bar.

It looks like the navi bar is gone in favor of the touch buttons on the bottom...which is totally awesome. :D
 

The Game 161

macrumors Nehalem
Original poster
Dec 15, 2010
30,400
19,629
UK
I remember buying the note 10.1 from tesco last Christmas for £318 plus £50 cash back, can't imagine the new one being that cheap though

with the upgraded screen i think thats a given.

i'm so tempted to buy it..somebody tell me i'm stupid for buying a note 3 and note 10.1 when i have a note 8.0 and an ipad 2 :D
 

edhchoe

macrumors 65816
Oct 28, 2011
1,400
900
I am interested in the LTE version but it will be very expensive.
But I want the stylus function and multi windowed true multitasking.
 

tbayrgs

macrumors 604
Jul 5, 2009
7,346
4,869
FWIW, I picked one of these up yesterday and have to admit, it's a pretty slick device, my general distaste for Samsung mobile devices, not withstanding. I want to put through a serious test drive before coming to any conclusions, but thought I'd share my first impressions.

- Hardware is beautiful. Brilliant screen, very thin and comfortable to hold, nice slim bezels, faux leather on back panel looks great and offers a nice soft touch feel. Feels very sturdy with no flex. Can certainly lying feel the difference in weight compared to an iPad.

- Touch wiz is still, well, TouchWiz. I'm not a fan of all the bloat Sammy loads onto their devices and it's still here as well, though at least I don't have to deal with carrier bloat on top of it. I also was never a fan of the cartoonish nature of the design but at least on the 10.1 is doesn't seem so in your face, likely because of the larger display real estate--doesn't overwhelm it as much as on a 5" display. Still not in love with it but, hate it less.

- The S-Pen functionality is pretty nice. I've barely dipped my foot in this swimming pool but did some writing with it and the handwriting recognition is pretty accurate. Looking forward to doing more with the pen supported apps.

- And the dreaded L word....Lag. While I've seen occasional hiccups througbout all apps, it's very pronounced in My Magazine and the Gallery. My Magazine lags terribly when navigating within, no getting around it. Thankfully you don't have to use it, but unfortunately you also cannot disable it so whatever resources it uses will persist.

Gallery didn't take minutes to open as some have stated, but the lag was awful, as in I would select an album and it would finally open 10-15 seconds later, if at all. Gallery crashed and 'stopped working' the first two times I tried using it. I have tried using it again and it does seem to be improving--probably needs to build up a bit of a cache. Regardless, it's something I'll be monitoring.

- Similar to my previous experiences with Samsung devices and from accounts I have read online, it's a good thing they've included 3GB of RAM as I've been hovering between 1.8-2.3 used without doing any heavy lifting. I'm running NOVA launcher and while it doesn't lag in use, checking cached processes shows it gobbling up about 250MB of RAM, FWIW.

So far, I'm enjoying the device quite a bit. I'll push it over the next week or two (thanks to my Best Buy rewards status, I have 45 days to return it :cool:) and post a more detailed review if anyone is interested.
 
Last edited:

The Game 161

macrumors Nehalem
Original poster
Dec 15, 2010
30,400
19,629
UK
FWIW, I picked one of these up yesterday and have to admit, it's a pretty slick device, my general distaste for Samsung mobile devices, not withstanding. I want to put through a serious test drive before coming to any conclusions, but thought I'd share my first impressions.

- Hardware is beautiful. Brilliant screen, very thin and comfortable to hold, nice slim bezels, faux leather on back panel looks great and offers a nice soft touch feel. Feels very sturdy with no flex. Can certainly lying feel the difference in weight compared to an iPad.

- Touch wiz is still, well, TouchWiz. I'm not a fan of all the bloat Sammy loads onto their devices and it's still here as well, though at least I don't have to deal with carrier bloat on top of it. I also was never a fan of the cartoonish nature of the design but at least on the 10.1 is doesn't seem so in your face, likely because of the larger display real estate--doesn't overwhelm it as much as on a 5" display. Still not in love with it but, hate it less.

- The S-Pen functionality is pretty nice. I've barely dipped my foot in this swimming pool but did some writing with it and the handwriting recognition is pretty accurate. Looking forward to doing more with the pen supported apps.

- And the dreaded L word....Lag. While I've seen occasional hiccups througbout all apps, it's very pronounced in My Magazine and the Gallery. My Magazine lags terribly when navigating within, no getting around it. Thankfully you don't have to use it, but unfortunately you also cannot disable it so whatever resources it uses will persist.

Gallery didn't take minutes to open as some have stated, but the lag was awful, as in I would select an album and it would finally open 10-15 seconds later, if at all. Gallery crashed and 'stopped working' the first two times I tried using it. I have tried using it again and it does seem to be improving--probably needs to build up a bit of a cache. Regardless, it's something I'll be monitoring.

- Similar to my previous experiences with Samsung devices and from accounts I enjoy read online, it's a good this they've included 3GB of RAM as I've been hovering between 1.8-2.3 used without doing any heavy lifting. I'm running NOVA launcher and while it doesn't lag in use, checking cached processes shows it gobbling up about 250MB of RAM, FWIW.

So far, I'm enjoying the device quite a bit. I'll push it over the next week or two (thanks to my Best Buy rewards status, I have 45 days to return it :cool:) and post a more detailed review if anyone is interested.

Still no news on it in the UK..very tempted to buy this as I like the thought of snycing it with my notes and scrapbook with my note 3.

I have an ipad 2 so I just want to have an amazing screen for my tablet.
 

rhinosrcool

macrumors 68000
Sep 5, 2009
1,752
688
MN
On clove. Co. UK it has 16GB wifi only down for £480

Yikes:eek: Pretty nice tablet but that's a lot of money. In the us, it's $549 for the 16gb wifi only (at least on amazon). If you can wait a few months, the price will probably drop a lot (at least that's my experience with the Note 8). With this being more expensive, the drop should be significant.
 

The Game 161

macrumors Nehalem
Original poster
Dec 15, 2010
30,400
19,629
UK
Yikes:eek: Pretty nice tablet but that's a lot of money. In the us, it's $549 for the 16gb wifi only (at least on amazon). If you can wait a few months, the price will probably drop a lot (at least that's my experience with the Note 8). With this being more expensive, the drop should be significant.

Yeah interesting price.. Was hoping to get 32GB model but god knows how much that is
 

Oohara

macrumors 68040
Jun 28, 2012
3,050
2,423
FWIW, I picked one of these up yesterday and have to admit, it's a pretty slick device, my general distaste for Samsung mobile devices, not withstanding. I want to put through a serious test drive before coming to any conclusions, but thought I'd share my first impressions.

...and post a more detailed review if anyone is interested.

Thanks for posting this! I've had my eye on this device but haven't been able to test one yet. Would really love to be able to take the S-Pen functionality to the max in a full size tablet. I was definitely disappointed when I began hearing about the lag issue, but hopefully that is something they can cure in a future update.

Anyway, just wanted to voice a Yes, please! for a more detailed review, if you feel like doing one :)
 

The Game 161

macrumors Nehalem
Original poster
Dec 15, 2010
30,400
19,629
UK
Thanks for posting this! I've had my eye on this device but haven't been able to test one yet. Would really love to be able to take the S-Pen functionality to the max in a full size tablet. I was definitely disappointed when I began hearing about the lag issue, but hopefully that is something they can cure in a future update.

Anyway, just wanted to voice a Yes, please! for a more detailed review, if you feel like doing one :)

Here's one

http://youtu.be/snG-ZcMi5zM
 

tbayrgs

macrumors 604
Jul 5, 2009
7,346
4,869
Thanks for posting this! I've had my eye on this device but haven't been able to test one yet. Would really love to be able to take the S-Pen functionality to the max in a full size tablet. I was definitely disappointed when I began hearing about the lag issue, but hopefully that is something they can cure in a future update.

Anyway, just wanted to voice a Yes, please! for a more detailed review, if you feel like doing one :)

I'm still getting acquainted with all of its functionality but I'll hopefully put something together next week. So far though I'm really happy with it--only a few minor quibbles.
 

tbayrgs

macrumors 604
Jul 5, 2009
7,346
4,869
Should I wait for this or wait for note 12.2

Really depends on your intended use. I personally wouldn't want anything bigger from a portability standpoint and the screen on the 10.1 is big enough for effective handwriting/note taking. If I planned on primarily just keeping it at home, 12" would be great but, now we're talking laptop size territory and I find myself more productive on a laptop than tablet.

Just $0.02.
 

tbayrgs

macrumors 604
Jul 5, 2009
7,346
4,869
Thought I'd share an update regarding my experience with the Note 10.1. I'm into my third week using it and while there is still much to like about it, sadly some of the luster has worn off and I'm noticing some irritating elements. First the not so good stuff:

- I prefer to use a bluetooth keyboard quite a bit with my larger tablets and many Note 10.1 users, including myself, are having connectivity issues. I've used two different bluetooth keyboards (different models) and in both cases, the bluetooth connection is intermittently lost--for me it's every 30-60 seconds. On top of that, the tablet lags horribly when connected, as in press the home button and wait 5 seconds for the screen to change. Also, if I want to use a bluetooth keyboard I have to use the Samsung on screen keyboard as my default--not my favorite by a lot. What's also sad is that this device has been out for a few weeks and there are no third party keyboard covers/cases made specifically for this device and none announced for the immediate future. The iPad Air was just announce a week ago and Logitech has already announced a series of keyboards that will be available presumably starting next week. <Sigh>

- With all of this horsepower, there is still lag. It's always there when using the My Magazine app. I also see chronic lag in the Gallery app and intermittent incidents throughout regular use.

- The S-Pen is very nice, works as advertised, very accurate with no discernible lag. That being said, I'm just not finding the included functionality as useful as I'd hoped. Action Memo is gimmicky (can just enter info manually using the keyboard much quicker), Scrapbook is nice but in most cases is just a glorified way to bookmark webpages and offers no syncing outside of a Samsung account, presumably only to a Note 3 (not sure, don't use that phone). S-Note is the most useful of the S-Pen apps and syncs nicely with Evernote, the only element that syncs outside of a Samsung account. My question is why isn't is part of the Air Command pop up? Pen window is also a bit gimmicky, especially since only a very few apps are supported.

- I like multi-window but it also suffers from the same problem as the Pen Window (though to a lesser degree) in that there are limited supported apps. I use QuickOffice, G+, the Google Calendar app quite a lot and none are supported, not to mention many other third party apps.

- TouchWiz, while better in this incarnation, is still TouchWiz, meaning a cartoonish, bloated resource hog that you can't completely avoid, no matter how hard you try. You can turn off much of it and disable some of the apps but it's still there and IMO, a PITA. Here's an example. I use Nova Prime as my launcher--great way to hide much of TouchWiz. Nova Prime has gesture/button functionality that you can customize. Natively, holding the Menu button on the Note 10.1 will launch the S-Finder. In previous Note devices, this could be turned off and replaced with Google Now (as could using S-Voice by double-clicking the home button) but cannot be done here, so while Nova would allow me to map that Menu long-press to something else, it's overridden by TouchWiz.

- This last gripe is more Android/Chrome related, not specific to the Note 10.1, per se. I like to have my bookmarks synced across all of my devices, love how Chrome syncs all of your web browsing data. Problem is I find it to be a lackluster, in not poor browsing experience in Android. Why the hell can't there be toolbar functionality on a 10" tablet? Having to touch Menu, then bookmarks, then navigate through my layers of bookmarks is a PITA. And while I like the magnification bubble that pops up to assist with hitting proper links (very useful on smaller devices), it pops up way to much, even when I've zoomed into a section, and then on occasion is still won't register my touch. I know there are tons of other web browsers (Dolphin is nice) but I value the synced data most so I'm forced to suffer through this piece of crap. How is it that a company that puts out such a good desktop browser can't do the same on the devices they are best known for? I find it far smoother on iOS than on Android--how is that possible?

I still think it's a very good device. The form factor, build materials and quality, and display are terrific. I would've sacrificed some screen real estate to have on-screen buttons as the capacitive/physical home button make holding it in portrait a bit more difficult, else you will have accidental presses. Battery life has been average, not spectacular, not poor, plenty for a full day's use. Sound for the side mounted speakers is very good as well. Having expandable memory is also a nice bonus.

I haven't made up my mind yet--have a full 45 day return period thanks to my BB Reward status but I am probably now going to pick up an iPad Air to give a side-by-side run before I make up my mind on whether I'm keeping the Note 10.1.
 

InuNacho

macrumors 68000
Apr 24, 2008
1,998
1,249
In that one place
I'd totally be all over the 2014 if Samsung just managed to clean up TouchWiz and iron out the lag. I'm probably one of the few people on any webforum that actually likes TouchWiz and most Samsung apps but it's pretty annoying when they just lockup for a few seconds.

Hopefully you'll get 4.4 and it'll help out a bit here and there.
 

MRU

macrumors Penryn
Aug 23, 2005
25,368
8,948
a better place
I'd totally be all over the 2014 if Samsung just managed to clean up TouchWiz and iron out the lag. I'm probably one of the few people on any webforum that actually likes TouchWiz and most Samsung apps but it's pretty annoying when they just lockup for a few seconds.

Hopefully you'll get 4.4 and it'll help out a bit here and there.

Yeah I've grown to accept it and enjoy it with a few caveats on my Note 3.

It's not so much the launcher part I don't like it's the stock apps like dialer & contacts and worse still messages for example. To me they are just poorly designed and look terribly cheap and outdated.

The launcher part of touchwiz irks me in the fact I can't move the app drawer icon to the middle of my dock. For a lefty it's a long way to reach for that app drawer icon. Also the animation speed is painful until you adjust it in developer mode settings.

But I like the way it handles folders. Like how it allows you to customise the app drawer.

It just all needs a bit more coherence in stock apps and most of all in general Touch wiz just needs an awful lot of optimisation. The hardware is very powerful but often feels strangled by lack of core optimisation. Samsungs approach seems to be to throw more power and ram but that isn't always the best approach. I'm sure if they did what HTC did with Sense 5 and went back to starting block and designed Touchwiz and it's core apps to be more resourceful their whole product line would benefit.
 

Oohara

macrumors 68040
Jun 28, 2012
3,050
2,423
Yeah I've grown to accept it and enjoy it with a few caveats on my Note 3.

It's not so much the launcher part I don't like it's the stock apps like dialer & contacts and worse still messages for example. To me they are just poorly designed and look terribly cheap and outdated.

The launcher part of touchwiz irks me in the fact I can't move the app drawer icon to the middle of my dock. For a lefty it's a long way to reach for that app drawer icon. Also the animation speed is painful until you adjust it in developer mode settings.

But I like the way it handles folders. Like how it allows you to customise the app drawer.

It just all needs a bit more coherence in stock apps and most of all in general Touch wiz just needs an awful lot of optimisation. The hardware is very powerful but often feels strangled by lack of core optimisation. Samsungs approach seems to be to throw more power and ram but that isn't always the best approach. I'm sure if they did what HTC did with Sense 5 and went back to starting block and designed Touchwiz and it's core apps to be more resourceful their whole product line would benefit.


Amen.

Amen.

Amen.
 

The Game 161

macrumors Nehalem
Original poster
Dec 15, 2010
30,400
19,629
UK
Thought I'd share an update regarding my experience with the Note 10.1. I'm into my third week using it and while there is still much to like about it, sadly some of the luster has worn off and I'm noticing some irritating elements. First the not so good stuff:

- I prefer to use a bluetooth keyboard quite a bit with my larger tablets and many Note 10.1 users, including myself, are having connectivity issues. I've used two different bluetooth keyboards (different models) and in both cases, the bluetooth connection is intermittently lost--for me it's every 30-60 seconds. On top of that, the tablet lags horribly when connected, as in press the home button and wait 5 seconds for the screen to change. Also, if I want to use a bluetooth keyboard I have to use the Samsung on screen keyboard as my default--not my favorite by a lot. What's also sad is that this device has been out for a few weeks and there are no third party keyboard covers/cases made specifically for this device and none announced for the immediate future. The iPad Air was just announce a week ago and Logitech has already announced a series of keyboards that will be available presumably starting next week. <Sigh>

- With all of this horsepower, there is still lag. It's always there when using the My Magazine app. I also see chronic lag in the Gallery app and intermittent incidents throughout regular use.

- The S-Pen is very nice, works as advertised, very accurate with no discernible lag. That being said, I'm just not finding the included functionality as useful as I'd hoped. Action Memo is gimmicky (can just enter info manually using the keyboard much quicker), Scrapbook is nice but in most cases is just a glorified way to bookmark webpages and offers no syncing outside of a Samsung account, presumably only to a Note 3 (not sure, don't use that phone). S-Note is the most useful of the S-Pen apps and syncs nicely with Evernote, the only element that syncs outside of a Samsung account. My question is why isn't is part of the Air Command pop up? Pen window is also a bit gimmicky, especially since only a very few apps are supported.

- I like multi-window but it also suffers from the same problem as the Pen Window (though to a lesser degree) in that there are limited supported apps. I use QuickOffice, G+, the Google Calendar app quite a lot and none are supported, not to mention many other third party apps.

- TouchWiz, while better in this incarnation, is still TouchWiz, meaning a cartoonish, bloated resource hog that you can't completely avoid, no matter how hard you try. You can turn off much of it and disable some of the apps but it's still there and IMO, a PITA. Here's an example. I use Nova Prime as my launcher--great way to hide much of TouchWiz. Nova Prime has gesture/button functionality that you can customize. Natively, holding the Menu button on the Note 10.1 will launch the S-Finder. In previous Note devices, this could be turned off and replaced with Google Now (as could using S-Voice by double-clicking the home button) but cannot be done here, so while Nova would allow me to map that Menu long-press to something else, it's overridden by TouchWiz.

- This last gripe is more Android/Chrome related, not specific to the Note 10.1, per se. I like to have my bookmarks synced across all of my devices, love how Chrome syncs all of your web browsing data. Problem is I find it to be a lackluster, in not poor browsing experience in Android. Why the hell can't there be toolbar functionality on a 10" tablet? Having to touch Menu, then bookmarks, then navigate through my layers of bookmarks is a PITA. And while I like the magnification bubble that pops up to assist with hitting proper links (very useful on smaller devices), it pops up way to much, even when I've zoomed into a section, and then on occasion is still won't register my touch. I know there are tons of other web browsers (Dolphin is nice) but I value the synced data most so I'm forced to suffer through this piece of crap. How is it that a company that puts out such a good desktop browser can't do the same on the devices they are best known for? I find it far smoother on iOS than on Android--how is that possible?

I still think it's a very good device. The form factor, build materials and quality, and display are terrific. I would've sacrificed some screen real estate to have on-screen buttons as the capacitive/physical home button make holding it in portrait a bit more difficult, else you will have accidental presses. Battery life has been average, not spectacular, not poor, plenty for a full day's use. Sound for the side mounted speakers is very good as well. Having expandable memory is also a nice bonus.

I haven't made up my mind yet--have a full 45 day return period thanks to my BB Reward status but I am probably now going to pick up an iPad Air to give a side-by-side run before I make up my mind on whether I'm keeping the Note 10.1.

What have you decided?

I'm still in two minds on getting the 10.1 or waiting for the 12.2 note early next year. Part of me wants a new tablet for christmas though.

My only other full sized tablet is my ipad 2 which is very old now.
 

tbayrgs

macrumors 604
Jul 5, 2009
7,346
4,869
What have you decided?

I'm still in two minds on getting the 10.1 or waiting for the 12.2 note early next year. Part of me wants a new tablet for christmas though.

My only other full sized tablet is my ipad 2 which is very old now.

I ended up returning it and pickup up an iPad Air. I wasn't using the S-Pen as much as I thought I would (as previously mentioned, most of the functionality is gimmicky at best, S-Note is great though), it still suffers from lag, holding the device in portrait was irritating due to the hardware buttons and the bluetooth keyboard connectivity issues were a deal breaker. And although I could deal with it (though begrudgingly), the app quality still doesn't compare to iOS.

Whether you like iOS or not, the hype surrounding the Air is pretty much deserved. Battery life is terrific, the hardware is rock solid and a huge improvement over the 4th gen (easy to hold for long durations) and iOS is pretty damn quick. Yes, Apple should've put 2 GB of RAM in this model but even with that limitation (only had one crash due to low memory, according to the diagnostic and usage logs), it's still quicker/smoother than the Note 10.1 with 3 GB.

If Samsung could just get their s$%t together and put some effort in optimization, they would have a killer tablet on their hands.
 

The Game 161

macrumors Nehalem
Original poster
Dec 15, 2010
30,400
19,629
UK
^ interesting

To me the ipad doesn't do the things I want a tablet to do apart from apps where it really is very good. Multitasking, easy access to videos/tv shows/SD card/USB are huge for me and the ipad simply isn't good in those areas.

Ipad is an amazing piece of kit but after using android on my phone it's too restrictive on a tablet too for what I want it to do. my ipad 2 works perfectly fit for what I want it to do but I would love a HD screen on my tablet along with my phone.

can't remember the last app I used on my ipad that wasn't facebook, twitter or ESPN scorecenter...so apps isn't a big thing here.
 

tbayrgs

macrumors 604
Jul 5, 2009
7,346
4,869
^ interesting

To me the ipad doesn't do the things I want a tablet to do apart from apps where it really is very good. Multitasking, easy access to videos/tv shows/SD card/USB are huge for me and the ipad simply isn't good in those areas.

Ipad is an amazing piece of kit but after using android on my phone it's too restrictive on a tablet too for what I want it to do. my ipad 2 works perfectly fit for what I want it to do but I would love a HD screen on my tablet along with my phone.

can't remember the last app I used on my ipad that wasn't facebook, twitter or ESPN scorecenter...so apps isn't a big thing here.

Android is certainly more versatile, no debate from me there. But what exactly do you plan to do with your tablet? I watch video all the time on my iPad--what obstacles are you encountering that don't allow you to watch what you want?

Not trying to convince you one way or the other, genuinely trying to understand your needs to hopefully shed some light, considering I've used both tablets and am equally familiar with both iOS and Android.
 
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