Galaxy Note II

It has been only 10 months since I became a proud owner of the Samsung Galaxy Note. The Note has been a mobile breakthrough for me, as I stopped using any tablets and I stopped complaining on mobile phones. The Note had it all. It has been my only everyday computing device beside the faithful Lenovo laptop. I still have a number of iPads, iPhones, Nexuses and other mobile computing gadgets, but they are for professional reasons, mainly to test the concepts and applications we develop at wiho.me.

I was not sure I wanted to upgrade to the just released Note II. But then I saw this video, which gave me no room to negotiate. So I upgraded. It has been only a few days now with the II and I've yet to use the multiview and pen. But the upgrade has proven to be worth every cent. There are two reasons for that: one is the new hardware from Samsung and second is the Android 4.1 from Google. I even have the version 4.1.1, which has all the features of the 4.2, except the Photo Sphere camera.

The Note II is very fast. Noticeably faster than the I. Part of the reason is the newer hardware, but equally significant may be the CPU boost on touch, Android now implements. The responsiveness, I have been looking for, has arrived and it is now on par with the iOS. No lag at all. The screen must have a special nano coating (or is it the Corning Gorilla Glass II?) - it is noticeably smoother under a finger. The AMOLED display is as breathtaking as ever.

The Note II has now all the revolutionary features introduced by the SIII. It senses your eyes to see if you are looking at it and then keeps the screen active. It senses the position of your eyes to avoid unnecessary rotations. It automatically makes a call to a contact you have on screen when you put the phone to your ear.

All those software tweaks by Samsung are very delicate. There is no notion of any crapware, so well known from the Windows experience. The pen is handled in many smart ways. Take it our and the screen unlocks. Leave it on a table and walk away and you will be alerted. The camera stunningly has no shutter lag at all. Just like a DSLR. There is the anti-shake mode for movies (I've been missing that). There is the blocking mode that keeps the Note silent, but certain predefined calls and notifications are let through. A Swype - style keyboard too.

The radio interfaces have been upgraded. Bluetooth is now dual - mode 4 / LE (Low Energy). The LE will be a big deal looking forward. NFC is present, with the Google Wallet being the obvious use case, but it also helps sharing content - just touch the two NFC-enables phones. There is a feature called AllShare Cast, to mirror the screen on any HDMI TV without wires (I have not tried it yet and I do not know if it is compatible with the Miracast standard; hopefully it is...).

But the biggest news to me has been the introduction of the Smart Dock. Which transforms the Note II into a regular computer. The Smart Dock now goes to the top of my most - wanted list. In the office we run everything in the Cloud, everything in a browser. The only application I use on a regular basis is Putty, but for this one there are a number of replacement options in the Play Store. I am very curious to try the Note II with the Smart Dock as a desktop replacement. Wonder what the experience will be, but for that we have to wait a couple of weeks, as the dock is not shipping yet.

The bottom line is the Android crowd is moving at a highly accelerated pace. Google has done very welcome improvements in the Jelly Bean. Samsung introduced even more in the SIII in the Summer and in the Note II now. The package now exceeds the Apple offering in every tiniest detail. Android always had a big heart, but was a little rough on the edges. Now it is extremely well polished and can be honestly recommended as a choice even to a non - technical audience, where Apple used to be the #1 choice. I find it difficult to name a single feature present on the iPhone and not available here. At the same time there are many the iWorld can only dream of.