Innovations on the Samsung Galaxy Note 2

Taking a break from writing the Jailbreak for Dummies series, I thought I'd share my thought on the Galaxy Note 2, which in my opinion is a pretty great piece of tech. Before we begin, I would like to Note (note! get it? ha ha) that this is not a review, or a promotional write up. Just what I think is so cool about it.

Me and my dad, we're gadget freaks. We're not taking sides on the Apple vs. Samsung battle, we simply value great design, innovations, and features. He's owned the first Galaxy Note the day it launched here in Malaysia, and he bought the Note 2 the day it started selling here too. I guess being a tech freak is much easier when you're making your own money, compared to when you're a student trying to make your expenses not exceed your allowance. So me being me, I grabbed his phone the moment he put it down and checked out everything about it.

Before we begin, here's a roundup of all the features in promotional video for the Note 2 by Samsung.

Remember when the iPad 2 was launched with the Smart Cover? I don't know bout you, but I was like "OMG, that's genius! This thing can make your iPad stand, protect the screen, and turn the screen off automatically when you close it?" *BOOM, mindblown.* That's how I feel about the Note 2 as well. Here's why:

Multi Window
This is THE feature that caught me. Introduced first on the Galaxy Note 10.1, I thought Samsung's multitasking implementation was genius. Opening two apps side by side, doing two things at once. Skyping while viewing your Facebook  news feed. Browsing the web, and taking notes at the same time. No more switching back and forth between apps. I loved it. This was true multitasking.

I did notice at 3:03 in the video, Samsung skipped over how exactly SMS is written in multi window mode. I mean, if you split the screen in half and attempt to write your SMS using the bottom half, wouldn't the keyboard pop up and cover that exact bottom location? How did Samsung solve that problem?

They made the keyboard movable, and smaller in size. Here's my guess why:

Movable keyboard: well, um, I would guess it's so that you can move it out of your way?
Smaller keyboard: more space to see your content, also much easier to type with your thumb.

That's pretty smart. Well anyway, I would just open the Messages app in the top half instead, but that's just me.

Also, I should note that it does not work with all apps, so yeah, you can't play Fruit Ninja and Angry Birds at the same time. However, Facebook and Twitter works, so that's good enough for me. Hopefully in the future more and more apps work with this, but for now, this is definitely a good start.

Design
I know tons of people complain about the big size. With the first Galaxy Note, I agree that the size makes it awkward to hold at first, but you get used to it. This time round Samsung has slimmed down the width and increased the height. Having experienced it and compared the two side by side, the Note 2 is definitely better to hold.

It's large size makes it not the right device for everyone, but I know of many people who owned the Galaxy Note series and refused to buy anything smaller since. Ever upgraded to a large flat screen TV and suddenly tried replacing it with one half it's size? I guess that's how it is. Truth is, yes it's hard to hold and keep and make calls and bla bla bla, but having a huge, full wide screen display to view contents outweighs the cons (for some of us, at least). Anyway, an iPad is much larger and I don't hear users complain that it's too big.

The Galaxy Note series is a compromise between smartphones and tablets, and in my opinion they've done it right.

S Pen
The last thing I want to talk about is the huge improvements of the S Pen's functionality. Instead of just an ordinary pen with a button you can hold down to take a screenshot, Samsung made sure the S Pen is now an integral part of the Note 2 experience.

With Air View, hovering your pen over your picture folders brings up a pop up window that shows the contents. Similarly, hovering over a video pop up a video that plays it in real time. Move the pen away and the preview stops. Air View also works in messages and emails, hovering over it pops up a window containing the full message.

Popup Note is a convenient feature that pops up a notepad when you pull out the S Pen during a call. That way, you can quickly jot down directions, phone numbers, or even doodle away if it's your mum on the phone lecturing you about not eating your veggies.

There are many other improvements, but these two are what I think is the most useful to me as an average user.

Popup Play
Popup Play is not a feature exclusive to the Note 2, it is introduced on the Galaxy S3, and is also available on the Galaxy Note 10.1. I mention it here because I think it's useful, and to me it shows clever use of the powerful quad-core processor inside. 

What it does is when watching a video, you can popup a window not unlike the AirView windows, which continues playing your video while you are free to do other things, maybe checking your Twitter feed. The window can be moved around to wherever you want it to be. On the Note 2 (and Note 10.1), this window can be re-sized using the pinching gestures we're all accustomed to. 


So that's some of the cool stuff that I thought was very clever of Samsung to implement. If you want to know more all the other features of the Note 2, check out Samsung's site. Some people dismiss these features as being gimmicks. Well, they have their opinion, I have mine. As gimmicky as it may seem, once you get accustomed to using these features, you'll wish your non-Note devices has them. The amount of creativity, innovation, and quality of the features implemented certainly speaks volume of Samsung's improvement in the mobile electronics industry, and solidify the Korean company's position as a worthy competitor of Apple.