Galaxy Note Tablet - Update

After using my Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 Edition) tablet for 2 months, I've put together a list of issues with this tablet that mars its otherwise outstanding design.

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?

Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 Edition) Tablet

I bought this gizmo last week (01 March 2014) at the IT Show 2014 held at Marina Bay Sands. This is my THIRD Android tablet, and wow, the hardware specifications for this is the most souped up of all the tablets I've owned. If there is one thing about Samsung, they really know how to jazz up the hardware specifications.

Why?

I have been living comfortably with the Asus TF300T Transformer tablet for the past one 1.75 years. However, like the Archos tablet before it, the Asus tablet has been stricken with a power button problem. On the Monday evening of 24 February, I found great difficulty pressing the power button to turn on the Asus tablet display. I tried depressing the power button for 10 seconds to force a reboot, and occasionally, the tablet will reboot and then proceed to function normally. But once the tablet goes to sleep, I will face the same difficulty in getting the tablet to turn on again.

As the tablet is already one year and nine months old, the warranty has expired. So this was a great opportunity to excuse myself to splurge on a new tablet.

I wouldn't mind getting the Asus TF701T tablet as I like the build of Asus tablets. But unfortunately, the Asus TF701T is stuck with an outdated version of Android 4.2.

Ever since Google introduced Android 4.3 last year (July 2013), I had been waiting for Asus to come up with their firmware update for this. Android 4.3 fixes a very critical flaw in earlier versions of Android (4.2.x and earlier) with regard to Flash Memory support. The earlier versions of Android did not implement a function known as TRIM, which is critical for the proper functioning of computing devices using solid state storage. 

When you erase a file from the internal storage, the space that was previously occupied is marked as free for use. However, the storage space cannot actually be reused unless the flash memory is first "erased". Because Google forgot to implement TRIM support in Android 4.2.x and earlier, the storage space that can actually be used became lesser and lesser, even though the OS indicates that there is plenty of "free space". And the only way to "erase" the flash memory to reclaim the "free space" was to do a factory reset of the tablet.

With my old Asus tablet, running Android 4.2.1, I had performed this factory reset twice to clear the flash memory problem. After every 6 to 9 months, the device will slow to a crawl because the OS cannot find any real "free space" in the flash memory to write new files, even though the OS was reporting 16 GB of "free space" - all bogus. After the factory reset, the tablet will run like the wind for the next few months, until all the flash memory is filled up again.

With TRIM support in Android 4.3, the OS is able to "erase" the flash memory properly and reclaim the space dynamically. This eliminated the gradual slowdown of the tablet after a few months of use. 

Unfortunately, Asus appear to have diverted its attention to Windows 8 tablets, and have stopped the Android support for their flagship products like the TF300T. There is no Android 4.3 firmware update for every single Asus Android tablet excepting the Nexus 7 (Google provides the firmware updates for the Nexus devices). When Google released Android 4.4, which boasts of more efficient memory use, and Asus is still introducing Android tablets with Android 4.2, I decided to abandon Asus for a manufacturer who is more current with providing the latest versions of Android.

Strangely enough, in Singapore, the only manufacturer of Android tablets (non-Nexus) with Android 4.3 or later is Samsung! (Lenovo, Acer, Sony, Toshiba, as well as Asus - only had Android 4.2 tablets).

It is imperative for me that any new Android purchase include the Android 4.3 OS as a minimum, given my experience with the TRIM problem with flash memory. This means that my choice had been narrowed to just Samsung.

Now, although the Nexus devices will always have the latest Android version, I have already discounted Nexus devices because they do not have a MicroSD card slot. Despite all proclamations by Google, a MicroSD card slot is a must-have if you intend to keep a lot of media files like MP3, JPG/PNG, MP4 on your device. The internal storage of the device is never sufficient. The promise of cloud storage is absolutely bogus because transferring a GB of files over wi-fi is extremely slow, and if on 3G or LTE, you will pay through the nose for each GB of data you transfer over those networks. 

So for me, devices without MicroSD slots are ruled out.

Coincidentally, my Asus tablet failed on the same week as the IT Show 2014. And at the exhibition, Samsung introduced a new 12.2 inch tablet (the Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 Wi-Fi) retailing at S$1098, and slashed the price of the Galaxy Note 10.1 Wi-Fi (2014 Edition) by S$100 (from S$798 to S$698). Their internal specs were comparable, so I decided to get either one of them. However, because I mainly use my tablet as an e-book reader and for browsing the internet, the 12.2 inch tablet was actually too large to use comfortably. It weighed 750 grams, and will be unwieldy to hold while standing in the MRT train. The 10.1 inch tablet only weighed 540 grams (which is actually 110 grams lighter than the Asus TF300T tablet), and whose smaller form factor is one that I have already grown accustomed to, and would also be easier to handle inside a crowded train. The fact that it is S$400 cheaper than the 12.2 inch tablet also clinched the deal for me.  

Impressions

A comprehensive detailed specification for the tablet can be found at various sites:

• GSMArena
• Samsung

There are also very comprehensive reviews about the tablet by professional news organisations. So, I will not cover them in this post. Instead, I will describe my personal opinion about the ones that I care about most:

3 GB RAM

This tablet comes with a whopping 3 GB of RAM. Most other tablets have only 1 GB of RAM. As most users should know, performance is better with more RAM.

However, despite the provision of so much RAM, the user interface on the tablet still stutters. There are comments that this is due to Samsung's TouchWiz interface being too resource hungry/poorly programmed.

In fact, I don't face the kind of lag/stuttering on my Asus Transformer.

Another interesting thing is the reappearance of frequent Forced Close issues when running programs. I have not experience this problem for a long time with my Asus Transformer tablet, and that has a meagre 1 GB of RAM. But the Samsung tablet faces this problem very frequently. In fact, I am encountering a Forced Close problem almost daily.

The Asus Transformer comes with a very lightly tweaked interface, so the bulk of the OS is almost pure Android. TouchWiz modifies Android quite heavily, so I suspect that all these Forced Close issues - despite the generous 3 GB RAM, must be due to poor memory handling by the TouchWiz interface.

Hopefully, future software updates (including Android 4.4) will fix these TouchWiz problems.  

2560 x 1600 pixel 10.1 inch Super LCD Screen

Small fonts are easier to read on this screen than the Asus TF300T, which only has a 1280 x 800 pixel 10.1 inch screen. Letters are indeed sharper and more legible. 

On my Asus tablet, I typically set the screen brightness to 10%. For this Samsung tablet, I need to set the brightness to 20% for the same level of reading comfort. 

2560 x 1600 pixel (approx 299 pixel per inch) may be overkill for reading, and drains more battery power. But this is the trend for displays.

Also, I suspect that the high resolution display is partly the cause of the lagginess/stuttering problem with the user interface. The Asus tablet, despite its lower 1280 x 800 resolution, never has the laggy/jerky/stuttering problem that I find with the Samsung tablet. The jerkiness is especially noticeable when browsing a big web site.

Also, I believe that the high resolution display is responsible for the "warmness" of the tablet. Even when I am just running my e-reader (CoolReader) or my browser (Dolphin) program (with "Power Saving" mode enabled), the tablet feels warmer to the touch than the Asus tablet.  

32 GB Built In Storage / SDHC microSD Slot (supports up to 64 GB)

The tablet comes with 32 GB of built-in storage, like my old Asus tablet. However, because of bundled apps ("bloatware"), the Asus tablet gave me only 27 GB free. The Samsung tablet was bundled with bigger apps, and out of the box, I only had 25 GB free.

This is why it doesn't make sense to get tablets with built in storage of 16 GB or less. With 7 GB already taken up by the system and bundled apps, a 16 GB machine will only be left with 9 GB of storage. 9 GB is probably insufficient if you intend to load a lot of programs or store lots of files (particularly media files). I am curious why Samsung bother to even produce tablets with only 16 GB of built-in storage. For such premium products, surely 32 GB should be the minimum?

I like the fact that there is sliding door cover over the microSD slot. In the Asus and Archos forums, there have been reports of people losing their microSD cards when they pressed the card in the microSD slot accidentally and ejected the card out of tablet. On the Samsung, this will not happen because of the cover door.

Unfortunately, the price of 64 GB microSD cards are still very expensive. While I can get a 32 GB microSD card for $22, a 64 GB card retails for $70. For $70, I can buy three pieces of 32 GB microSD cards (96 GB of storage in total).

Exynos Octa-Core CPU

The tablet uses Samsung's Exynos CPU, which contains 4 cores of Cortex-A15 running at 1.9 GHz, and another 4 cores of Cortex-A7 running at 1.3 GHz. And although there are 8 cores, the CPU can only activate either the four A15 cores, or the four A7 cores, but never the 8 cores simultaneously. The faster (and more battery draining) A15 cores are used for "heavy/resource intensive" tasks (playing games, multi-tasking), while the slower A7 cores are used for light tasks such as downloading emails in the background/maintaining the alarm clock.

In comparison, my Asus tablet runs on an Nvidia Tegra 3 CPU with a quad core Cortex-A9 running at 1.2 GHz. 

However, as I have enabled "Power Saving" mode on my Samsung tablet, I presume that to mean that the CPU will typically use only the four Cortex-A7 cores running at 1.3 GHz, which might speed-wise be the same as my Asus tablet.   

S-Pen

I won't be using the S-Pen stylus much, since I am primarily using my tablet as an e-reader. However, I like its availability. There are many possibilities for using a stylus if you are doing sketching, or if you prefer to jot down notes in freehand. I can also see commercial applications making use of the stylus for signatures. However, if I were to develop an Android app using the stylus, it may be restricted to just the Galaxy Note tablets manufactured by Samsung.

Another problem I have with the stylus is that my worry that it will "scratch" the screen. This is a common problem with the Windows Mobile PDA/phones and the Palm Pilots I owned many years ago. It is necessary to protect the screen from stylus scratches by affixing a screen protector. However, in the user manual, Samsung do not encourage using a screen protector as it will cause the Wacom digitizer (the S-Pen) to not work properly. Perhaps the famed Gorilla Glass is "scratch" resistant, and is thus less proned to scratches unlike the earlier devices. But I won't test this out as I simply won't be using the S-Pen that constantly.

Magnetic Sensor / Tablet Casing

One advantage of buying a Samsung tablet is the range of third party accessories available. For my Archos and Asus tablets, I simply could not any tablet cases from third-party manufacturers, and always had to buy the "expensive" ones from the manufacturer. The Archos case was actually $80 (although I bought it at $45 at a clearance sale after a year of waiting), while I bought my Asus sleeve case for $68.

For Samsung tablets, third-party cases were widely available, and at the IT Show, I saw a fair number of cases for the Galaxy Note 10.1. However, Samsung actually produced an earlier "Galaxy Note 10.1" (model N8000) and the new "Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 Edition)" (model SM-P600), and their form factors are just different enough that a case that fits the N8000 will not fit the SM-P600. Luckily, I did a Google search and learnt of the difference, so I made sure I bought a case that fits the SM-P600 model.

The case that I bought is from a manufacturer called Kakusiga. It is a pretty nice white "book cover" case for a reasonable price of $25.

After I inserted the tablet into the casing (some force is needed to seat the tablet inside the plastic protective shell - watch this Youtube video for an idea on how the plastic shell looks like), I discovered that I was actually able to turn off the tablet by simply closing the lid over the front of the tablet. Apparently, there is a magnet embedded in the lid, and when the tablet's magnetic sensor detects the magnet, the tablet turns itself off. When the cover is opened, the tablet will automatically turn itself on.

Although it was quite magical to see the automatic turning on and off of the tablet by simply opening or closing the lid, I discovered 2 big problems.

1. When opening the cover, I will flip the lid from the front of the tablet all the way to the back of the tablet. Unfortunately, the tablet's magnetic sensor is too strong, and it detects the presence of the magnet even when the lid is over the back of the tablet, and powers off the tablet.
   
   This has been really problematic because I need to fold the lid over the back of the tablet so that I can hold the tablet with one hand for my e-reading. So every time I open the lid and fold it over to the back of the tablet, the tablet will power on, and then immediately power off. I have to press the Home key to power on the tablet again.
    
2. Even though the tablet is now powered on, because the tablet detects the presence of the lid's magnet, Samsung's TouchWiz software is "tricked" into thinking that the lid is covering the front of the tablet. Because of this, TouchWiz will not allow me to open the Android Notification Tray by swiping down from the top of the screen to the bottom of the screen. If I want to open the Notification Tray, I must first flip the lid away from the back of the tablet so that it doesn't touch the back of the tablet.
   
   This is really irritating because when I receive an e-mail notification, or if I wish to activate or deactivate wi-fi/bluetooth/flight mode, or if I want to adjust the screen brightness, I cannot easily open the Notification Tray via the downward swipe if the lid is touching the back of the tablet. I must first separate the lid from touching the back before I can open the Notification Tray. But if I then fold the lid back over the tablet's back, the magnetic sensor will then proceed to power off the tablet.

I searched the forums, but was not able to find any suggestion about a software setting that can disable the magnetic sensor. Despite the plethora of settings available to configure TouchWiz, there is not a single one for disabling the magnetic sensor to automatically power on or power off the tablet. 

In fact, most of the other people who have been aggravated with the same problem resorted to buying a new tablet case - one without a magnet on the lid. However, as the current case costs $25, buying a non-magnetic case seems a waste of money. Hopefully, Samsung will provide some way to disable the magnetic sensor in a future update in the firmware.

I was hoping that there was an app that will provide this capability. I found one called Magnet Unlocker  by Rubber Big Pepper that seemed to fit the bill, but unfortunately, I can't get it to disable the magnetic switching. The app itself was a bit confusing. There is a checkbox called:

[  ]  Unlock device using magnetic field sensor

[  ]  Lock device using magnetic field sensor

And there are 2 buttons labelled [Enable Unlocker] and [Disable Unlocker]

I tried all combinations that are possible, but it didn't perform what I wanted. I think this app is designed for tablets that have a magnetic sensor, but whose firmware do not provide the magnetic switch on/off capability. For such tablets, running this app will provide the capability to turn off the tablet by closing the lid. Unfortunately, this app cannot disable the magnetic switch on/off functionality provided by another program such as the TouchWiz that is already running.

Charging via the Micro USB Port

One of my complaints with my Archos and Asus tablets were their use of proprietary chargers. With the Note 10.1, I can finally charge the tablet via its micro USB 2.0 port. As Asus was charging $60 for the proprietary TF300 charger, I gave up on the idea of buying a 2nd charger to carry around with me. I do not have this problem now that I can charge from anywhere using just a standard micro USB 2.0 cable. The ability to finally charge the tablet via the micro USB 2.0 port was a godsend.

However, charging over the micro USB 2.0 port is extremely slow. The Asus tablet can be charged from 15% to 100% in just 1 hour using its proprietary charger. With the Samsung tablet and its provided USB charger, it took almost 1 hour to charge from 15% to 25% ! Charging the tablet to 100% took another 7.5 hours. 

Also, Samsung provided a micro-USB cable that was just 1 metre long. That is too short. Asus did the right thing with its proprietary charger by providing a cable that was 2 metres long. Trust me, if the power outlet is near the floor, a 1 metre long cable will not be able to reach the top of the table. 

As I did not want to put my tablet on the floor every time I need to charge it, I spent $10 to buy a 2 metre long micro USB cable from the Popular Book Store at Northpoint. It is really surprising that the Challenger outlet at Northpoint did not stock micro USB cables (they had a lot of Apple iPhone cables though). The other computer retailer, CyberActive, did sell micro USB cables, but they were only 1 metre long (and cost $10 too), which was what I already had. Thus, I was really surprised that I could get what I wanted - a 2 metre long micro USB cable - from a non-computer retailer such as Popular.

Battery Life - 7.5 Hours

Due to the premium hardware specs on this tablet, the battery depletes pretty rapidly. According to many review sites, a full battery charge will run down in approximately 7.5 to 8.5 hours. Coincidentally, that is also the amount of time I took to charge the battery from 15% to 100%.

The wi-fi is a big drain. With wi-fi activated, I lose about 10% of battery per hour. If I activate Flight Mode - which turns off all wi-fi radios - the battery loses only 5% per hour. The battery duration is not as fantastic as the one on the Archos (10+ hours with wi-fi) or the Asus (9+ hours with wi-fi). Battery life is a price we pay dearly with for all this fanciful hardware that comes with the tablet.

In fact, Asus was selling the Asus T100 Windows 8.1 tablet for a mere $599, which boasts of an 11 hour battery life. Lenovo was selling an Android Yoga tablet for just $529 which claims an 18 hour battery life. However, the Asus T100 runs Windows 8.1, and I despise the Metro interface (I prefer the home screens and icons and widgets design of Android). The Lenovo was interesting, but its specs were very similar to my spoilt Asus Transformer TF300T, and having already used that for close to 2 years, I just wanted a tablet that was more powerful than the Asus TF300T. How nice it would be if the powerful specs on the Note 10.1 tablet was also accompanied by an 18 hour battery!

The Note 10.1 tablet uses an 8220 mAh Lithium polymer battery. One of the free gifts with my tablet purchase was a 9000 mAh Power Pack. Samsung was wise to include a Power Pack that has enough capacity to fully charge the tablet. However, this 9000 mAh power pack is bulky and heavy. Also, it took almost a full day to charge it with the Note 10.1 USB charger. According to the manual, it requires 18 hours to charge the battery pack using the USB charger! 

It is unfortunate that Samsung is not able to provide faster charging for these tablets. The new 12.2 inch tablets from Samsung (the Galaxy Note Pro 12.2) comes with a micro USB 3.0 port. I wonder if the new USB 3.0 port on the Note Pro 12.2 provides faster charging than the Note 10.1 USB 2.0 port.

Software

Samsung provided its own Samsung Apps store. I discovered that the tablet came with the following freebies which were useful to me:

• 50 GB of Dropbox for 2 years
• Evernote Premium for 1 year

The full list of software freebies can be seen here. There were quite a number of free software (New York Times, Bloomberg BusinessWeek), but I don't find them as useful. They were automatically downloaded and installed from the Samsung Apps store after I have set up my tablet.

The presence of this alternative app store just serves to highlight how amazing the Google Play store is. It is possible to use the web site of Google Play to download apps to any of my Android devices. However, this is not possible with the Samsung Apps web site, so apps that I want to install from Samsung Apps must be done via the app already pre-installed on the tablet. Also, some of the apps require using KIES to download and install on the tablet. That is not really user friendly.

Samsung did this because they wanted an independent store that will also work with their Windows Phone and Tizen devices besides Android. However, the execution is quite mediocre. It reminds me of the TouchWiz experience. Although TouchWiz has a lot of things going for it, its laggardly behaviour is quite disappointing, reflecting poorly on the polish of Samsung software/programming skills. The Samsung Apps store is another facet of this.

However, Samsung has come a long way. When I bought my first Samsung feature phone (the Ultra Edition 8.4), the software that accompanied it was absolutely dreadful. Later, when I bought the Samsung Galaxy S (Super LCD), the software was still bad, but significantly improved. Although the software/firmware on the Note 10.1 is bloated and suffers from sluggish performance, stuff like Multi View, Air View and Air Command are nothing short of amazing.

As I don't use the stylus much, I don't use Air View or Air Command as extensively. But Multi View is something that I use almost every day, as it allows multi-tasking (2 concurrent apps) on Android, something which even Google Nexus devices do not have.

Multi View is how Microsoft should have done their original Metro multitasking interface when Windows 8.0 was first launched. In Metro, the widths of the 2 running tasks were hardcoded to 75% and 25% of the screen width. Multi View allows the user to decide how to resize the width of the 2 concurrent windows.  

In Air Command, you can use the stylus to draw a Pen Window to run another app in a user resizeable/moveable window. Pen Window however is restricted to running a few apps within the small window, unlike Multi View which seems to support a larger number of apps.

I do have a quibble. The S-Pen software doesn't seem to offer a good handwriting recognition utility that will work with any third party app. In the Windows 8 tablets, there is a pretty good handwriting recognition utility that will work with Notepad, Wordpad, or any other program. The S-Pen handwriting recognition seems to work only with the S Note app, but not with other apps.

 

Final Thoughts

The pace of hardware innovation on tablets is slowing. New iterations of tablets generally come with more RAM, more storage, more screen area, more CPU cores, more camera mega-pixels. There isn't any new breakthrough component that will make one gasp with excitement. 

With hardware improvements plateauing, the only way for manufacturers to stand out is with more gimmicks (thumb print scanner), or with more innovative software. As the hardware that Samsung is providing is already top notch, Samsung should strive to improve on the firmware/software by optimising the tablet for performance or battery life. I hope Samsung will roll out the update to Android 4.4 for the Note 10.1 quickly, and to vastly improve its responsiveness.