1. Takes too long to charge
It takes slightly more than 8 hours to charge the device.
When the battery level reaches 15%, the device will typically shutdown to prevent damage to the lithium-ion battery (li-on batteries can be permanently damaged if their battery level is allow to drop to 0%). I have charged the battery from 15% to 100% many times, and in almost all cases, it takes slightly more than 8 hours to reach 100%.
Now, this is ridiculous because the tablet itself typically offers about 8 hours of usage. In other words, it takes just as long to charge it as it takes to discharge it. This is absolutely not okay for a tablet.
With my previous Asus tablet, it only takes 1 hour to charge from 15% to 100%. I can then use my tablet on wi-fi for close to 9 hours. Unfortunately, the Asus tablet uses a proprietary power charger connector, and Asus sells the charger for $69 (price gouging - as typical of Asus).
With the Galaxy Note, Samsung uses a micro-USB connector for charging, which is better than the proprietary connector. Unfortunately, Samsung provided a USB 2.0 interface instead of a USB 3.0 interface, and this is the problem.
Because of the outstanding hardware on the Galaxy Note (3 GB RAM, outrageous 2560x1440 screen, Exynos 8-core CPU etc), the Galaxy Note comes with a massive 8200 mAH battery to satisfy all this power draining components. Unfortunately, the USB 2.0 interface restricts the current to just 1A, or 1000mA. If the charger can only at charge 1000mA, it will take slightly more than 8 hours to fully charge a 8200 mAH battery.
If Samsung has adopted a USB 3.0 interface, the interface will allow the charging current to be increased to 1.5A (ie. 1500 mA). Theoretically, this should reduce the charging time to 5 hours, which is admittedly not a lot in terms of time saved, but which is still better than the 8 hours to fully charge the tablet, which is the case now.
Unfortunately, there is no company in the world right now that offers a design that incorporates USB charging connectors (versus proprietary connector) with fast charging. Just imagine - if the charging current can be increased to 5A (or 5000mA) - then the 8200mAH battery can be fully charged in just 1.5 hours. Unfortunately, despite the massive hardware engineering department that Samsung possesses, it is not able to provide this kind of engineering. Instead, Samsung focuses their hardware engineering on things like more pixels on LCDs, more pixels on camera lenses, bendable LCD screens, more cores on their Exynos CPUs etc. It is a crying shame they have not improve on the battery power technology.
In the future, when consumer electronics become even more commoditised, I think the differentiating marker between different manufacturers of such commodity stuff like tablets or phones will be the battery technology. If you can perform a full charge from 15% to 100% in one hour, and then use the tablet for up to 20 hours, that would be amazing.
Charging cable is too short
On a side note, the included charging cable is only 1 metre long. Trust me, 1 metre is too short.
Ideally, the charging cable should be at least 2 metres. Samsung used to offer chargers with 2 metre long cables (I have such a charger which came with my Samsung Galaxy S-LCD phone). However, the Galaxy Note tablet comes with a truncated 1 metre cable, probably in the name of costs savings. It is unfortunate because I ended up paying $10 to buy a 2-metre micro-USB cable so that I can charge the tablet in a more convenient environment.
2. Unresponsive User Interface
Although the Samsung tablet comes with a massive 3 GB of RAM, a fast Exynos octa-core CPU, and Android 4.3, the user interface still "stutters" and lags.Obviously, this is down to the customisations in Samsung's Touchwiz interface that has been much derided in the IT world. Samsung wants to hide the Android interface completely (there is no other explanation for why they offer exact duplicates of what Android is already offering - what with extraneous functions like S-Voice, S-Finder that replicates Google Now, a Samsung App Hub that replicates Google Play etc), and Touchwiz was their solution. Unfortunately, Touchwiz is not well written, and slows down the performance of the tablet itself. If Touchwiz is not such a resource hog, and does not impact performance on such a high-spec machine, people would not complain. But it isn't, and hence the derision.
Actually, there are many interesting stuff in Touchwiz. I especially like the multi-tasking view which allows running 2 apps side by side. It is most unfortunate that all this features cannot be optimised to provide a "fast and fluid" interface that the Android Jelly Bean update was all about.
3. Lousy Clock Chip
I discovered that the Samsung tablet has a very lousy clock chip. I have only been using the tablet for just 2 months, and already, the internal clock has slowed down by a massive 5 minutes. On my Asus tablet, the clock was off by only 1 minute after years of use.
Some people claim that if the internal clock is wrong, it affects the reading of the GPS. Not sure if this is true, but I seldom use GPS on the tablet, so GPS is not a concern. However, in this day and age, I do not expect clocks to keep such lousy time. Samsung prides itself on things like smartphones and smartwatches. Yet the clock on this tablet loses 5 minutes after just 2 months?
On my Windows notebook, Microsoft has a function that automatically sets the computer time to that from an atomic clock on the internet. This is very useful on many older PCs/notebooks whose internal clock battery have been completely depleted. Although the computer will start up with the clock set to 1 January 1980, I only need to configure the PC to run an atomic clock synchronisation command during startup to automatically synchronise the PC's internal clock, and everything will be right as rain.
When I look at the Android settings on the Samsung tablet, there is no function to synchronise the internal clock with an atomic clock over the internet. The only way to change the clock is to do so manually.
I decided to download an app to synchronise the internal clock with an "NTP server" (Network Time Protocol server). I installed one called Smart Time Sync from Masterco. However, when I tried to run the app's function to synchronise the internal clock, an error message popped up saying that because "root access" is not available, I need to change the internal clock's time manually.
This is rather stupid, don't you think? Even with Windows, I will be able to synchronise the internal clock with the NTP server using an app despite not running as Administrator. Yet with Android, I need "root" to allow a clock app to synchronise the time.
Unfortunately, because Samsung does not provide the capability to synchronise the clock with an external time server, this has become another minus.
But why "root" access?
But why should installing "root" access void the warranty? This isn't the case with Windows PC, where owners have the right to run as "Administrator" to install any software they like on the PC. Why should a tablet be any different?
Indeed, I think power users should be allowed to install "root" access to make the tablet more like a PC. Having "root" shouldn't void any hardware warranties on the tablet. Although this is not the case with Samsung, perhaps in the future, other manufacturers may make this a "feature" and selling point on their tablets. Why buy a "restricted" tablet from Samsung when a competitor is selling a less restrictive one?
