One of the greatest parts of living in the time that we is that we have such varied choices technology. You can walk into a Best Buy and choose from all kinds of different smartphones: big ones, small ones, Android ones, iOS ones, Windows ones, ones with physical keyboards, and even ones that come with a digitizer pen. If you want it, there’s a good chance you can find it on a smartphone.
My point is this – with so many choices in things like smartphones, everyone is going to have their own opinion about what is best. I’m personally an Android guy, and I’m not afraid to admit that. That doesn’t mean I don’t think some people just prefer an iPhone; I have a friend who has an iPhone and had a problem. She sent it in for a replacement, and when she got her replacement unit, that one was broken too. Did she want to jump ship and get an Android or Windows phone? No, because she would rather have an iPhone. And I’m OK with that, because she is the one that has to use it everyday. That’s the key to everyone’s choice in technology. They are the ones that have to use it everyday, not you or me. A device that someone else hates might be the best thing since sliced bread to me
Battery Life
I’m going to start with the battery – the reason for this is because the battery life has blown me away in the last four weeks. Granted, the battery is huge in comparison to most other smartphones, but so is everything else. A quad-core processor and a 5.5-inch screen will drain just a little bit of battery if you let it. But even with all of the processing power in the Note II, the battery still lasts what seems like forever.
The first day I got my phone, I fully charged it and then pulled the plug to have some fun. 24 hours later, my phone finally died for the first time, but not before I used the crap out of it. Before it died, I took a look at the battery stats. The screen was on for over six hours at full brightness. Six hours! Under the best circumstances, I could maybe get two or three hours of total screen-on time out of my HTC EVO 4G before it died. I had a charger at my desk at work, next to my bed, in my car, and by the back door. Now I have just one charger and use it sparingly.
Of course, one of the qualifiers for battery life is how it gets used. I am typically not what I would call a moderate or even heavy user of my phone. I probably average 10-15 minutes or less of actual talk time each day. My average number of texts each month is somewhere around the 400-500 mark. The only time I will play games is if I am waiting for something like a doctor’s appointment and have nothing better to do, which doesn’t happen all that often. However, in the last four weeks since I got my Note II, I had quite a few occasions to push it to its limit.
Two days after getting my new phone, I left for Kentucky with a couple of friends. It was a quick trip as we were only down there for one night. On the way back to Michigan, we were using my phone for navigation. We also were using it to stream a local radio station because they were having their Christmas party, and my wife was live on the air. I also used my phone to look up the lyrics to some popular Christmas carols so that one of my friends could call into the radio station and win some prizes while we were hundreds of miles outside of its listening area. And, of course, I was texting my wife, letting her know how great she sounded live on air. This all went on for three or four hours, and when the show was finally over my phone had barely scratched the 50% mark.
Fast forward to the week after Christmas. I was again headed to Kentucky with 25 other people from my church for a youth convention. Before we left, I loaded up my new 32GB SD card I got for Christmas with the final episodes from BBC’s Merlin and five or six movies I wanted to watch. I had Spotify for my music and was all set for the eight hour drive in the charter bus. What happened on the trip down and back I would consider to be heavy usage. On the way down, I streamed some classical music from Spotify for a couple hours while sleeping. Then when I woke up, I watched all five episodes of Merlin. That’s over three hours straight of watching videos at max brightness.
Then on the way back, I watched two full movies plus took a lot of video of the great game of charades that was happening on the bus. An iPhone user that was sitting near to me commented on how crazy it was that I watched all that on my phone and it wasn’t dead yet. Not only was it not dead yet, but it still had close to 50% battery left!
S Pen
The S Pen is one of the features of the Note II that almost no other phone comes with even the ability to use. The reason for this is quite simple: with screen sizes of less than four inches, no one would want to use one. Andreas has looked extensively into the different styli and pen solutions on tablets, and after playing with the S Pen, I’m sure he would love it. I don’t have the experience that he does, but I have used a couple different styli on my various tablets. While I didn’t not like them, I don’t think they added a whole lot to my tablet experience. The best part about them in my book was that I didn’t have to clean my screen as often from my overly oily fingers.
The S Pen brings the idea of the stylus to a whole new level. I know that I have barely scratched the surface on using the S Pen with the Note II in the short time that I have had it, but of course one of the first things I used it for was to draw on pictures. I remember seeing the commercial with Lebron James’s kid giving him a red afro. So I had to give it a try. On the way home from Kentucky the first time after getting my Note II, I took a picture of one of my friends in the car and proceeded to give him a fluffy white beard, green spiked hair, pink eyebrows, and an orange mustache. I was cracking up the entire time! (He didn’t think it was quite as funny as I did.) I also decided to take a picture of myself, write a quick love note on it to my wife, and send it to her so she could see my smiling face when she awoke that morning.
Drawing on pictures isn’t the only thing the S Pen is useful for however. Since I was at a conference the week after Christmas, I decided to give the Note II a try as a note taking device. I had my iPad with me on the trip as well, but left it in my room most of the weekend so I could try out my Note II more.
The S Pen brings the idea of the stylus to a whole new level. I know that I have barely scratched the surface on using the S Pen with the Note II in the short time that I have had it, but of course one of the first things I used it for was to draw on pictures. I remember seeing the commercial with Lebron James’s kid giving him a red afro. So I had to give it a try. On the way home from Kentucky the first time after getting my Note II, I took a picture of one of my friends in the car and proceeded to give him a fluffy white beard, green spiked hair, pink eyebrows, and an orange mustache. I was cracking up the entire time! (He didn’t think it was quite as funny as I did.) I also decided to take a picture of myself, write a quick love note on it to my wife, and send it to her so she could see my smiling face when she awoke that morning.
Drawing on pictures isn’t the only thing the S Pen is useful for however. Since I was at a conference the week after Christmas, I decided to give the Note II a try as a note taking device. I had my iPad with me on the trip as well, but left it in my room most of the weekend so I could try out my Note II more.
I’m still getting used to the power button being on the side, since I was trained by my EVO 4G that it should be on the top. It does feel a little more natural being able to hit the power button without moving my hand to the top of the phone, but that is also easily solved with a simple Widgetzoid widget to turn off the screen without even pushing the button.
I’m also indifferent about the headphone jack being on the top. That’s the way my EVO 4G was, and it never bothered me then. It was only slightly annoying while in a car dock to have the power cable coming out one end and the aux input to my stereo cable coming out the other.
So far, in the time I’ve been using the Note II, I have found nothing to complain about with the hardware. The camera is great, the external speaker is loud enough, using it as a phone is great, heck even the LED for the camera works great as a flashlight! Any cheapness in build quality of the case will be reinforced with my Otterbox, so no concerns there, either.
The Note II has a removable back cover, removable battery, and an SD card slot. I’ve already mentioned the quad-core yumminess and extra large screen. In my opinion, what’s not to love about this phone?
Conclusion
In the last four weeks, I have really enjoyed getting to know my Note II. I know there are a lot of things that I still need to learn about it. I also can see me writing about it quite a bit, which judging by your comments is something that a lot of you would like. I am primarily a weekend writer, so keep an eye out on Saturdays and Sundays for more about the Note II.
If I were to rate this phone, I would give it four and a half stars. It does everything I could want it to do, and more. Is it perfect? No. Is it the phone for everyone? No. Is it the phone for me? Yes!
I’d love to hear what you think in the comments below.
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