Note to Note: My Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (Part 1)

So I'm one of those lucky few who had managed to obtain a device as early as the month of launch. Admittedly I was quite excited to get the device but also sad to let go my prior Note 2. It had been a workhorse for me till today but we need to move on right ?

As I got hold of the device for the first time and performed my own reset (yeah, the maxis folks just run through the setup for me earlier to check for dead pixels), the first thing I notice is the vibrancy of the screen. With QHD display 2,560 x 1,440 resolution, the screen is like popping up onto your face with all the vibrant colors and clarity you ever known exist! While many may argue that the color profile is wrong when viewing photos and such but come on, how many of us would really bothered to check on these details? And of course if I have to park my Note2 against it, it would be quite a bit of difference in terms of visibility and clarity...

You can tell the difference instantly if you can bring both devices together and compare them side by side

The size dimension and shape also differs from Note2. Perhaps it's more like a Note3 in terms of shape and bezel size but then again if you're about to buy a device called "Note" from Samsung, do expect something that is of this kind of dimension and size (Note4 screen size is 5.7 inch compared to Note2 of 5.5 inch)

Back (White color is Note 2)

And front comparison (White color is Note 2)

After booting up, I'm being greeted with the standard TouchWiz interface (which I never like). The launcher is the least of my favourite and so I took the liberty to customize it to my heart's desire...

 No TouchWiz for me !

 Now I can breathe a bit...

Setup Observation: It may be quite a challenge for the newbies to move from other non Note devices as this guy had so much features packed into it that one would wonder who the heck is going to explore and use every single feature available. (I'm quite sure I'm not the one - for a very good start)

Performance Observation: Once all the apps had been installed and working correctly, the next thing I realised is the speed and fluency of the device. While I am not going to compare the smoothness against the iDevices but I'd reckoned that the 1.9GHz Octa Core Exynos processor had served it's purpose. Running at 1.3GHz in 4 cores in most situations and powering up to 1.9GHz in more demanding scenarios. In most cases, folks may not care or bothered with what's running under the hood but at least I can start boasting that I'm running a 8 cores smartphone in my pocket which is double the cores in my home PC ! Moreover the 3GB RAM is a must when there are so many stuff running all at once - some which you can disable or uninstall while others not...

Battery Charging: Like a little boy, when I got back home, I straight unwrap the Fast Charger and plug in to charge the device. I was told that the device can charge to 50% within 30 minutes. While the claim is not far from the truth but yes, you may actually achieve that if you're charging with the screen turned off. But if you're as excited as me - poking the device as and when there are still juice left, call it about 40% increment for half hour charge (which I happily accept it as well !). On top of that, the battery size and capacity is also different now... Its more rectangular in size but with higher capacity compared to stock battery

3220 mAh with rapid charging VS 3650mAh 3rd party battery without rapid charging... Hmmm...

Camera: One of the main reason of choosing this device over Xperia Z3 was the camera. I was watching a fair bit of YouTube and sites on comparison between Note4, Xperia Z3 and iPhone 6 camera quality. Here's what I noticed... As and when I power up the camera (it starts within 2 seconds), there are a few pre-set modes which I can make use for the regular camera shooting of standard single point and click photos. Exploring a bit, I figured that I also can hit the Samsung App Store to download more camera function mode ! This is quite a great addition to the features of the device as you can continue to "upgrade" your camera functionality without having to change the hardware altogether (at least for me). Of course, if you're one person who wants a higher pixel camera, I would suggest you to look at the Xperia Z3 or Nokia 1020 for their 20 and 40 megapixels shooter :-)

Download more camera features please

And if you ask me which mode I would like the best ? It's definitely the BOKEH mode (Or known as "Selective Focus"). Basically you can blur the background and focus the camera onto the object which is of interest. It sorta like brings out the vibrancy of the object and somewhat like a 3D feel on the photo itself

After taking a photo, you still can choose the object of focus

Not bad eh ? (Nope this is not taken using my Panasonic Lumix MFT camera)

S-Pen: Ever since the beginning of evaluating Samsung Note devices, I had always been sold on the S-Pen features and functions. This is the other reason why I had chosen to stick with a Galaxy Note device after reviewing on so much good stuff about the Xperia Z3. With Note4, the pen sensitivity had increased and the S-Note application had been enhanced with camera capturing feature. Basically it means you can capture all the drawings in a whiteboard into S-Note and then convert it into editable forms where you can erase or continue to annotate on the contents. I see that it would be very useful for folks like me who is faced with a whiteboard every now and then - to share and convey information between myself and customers and/or peers...

This is a photo...

Using S-Note, you can capture the contents of a photo and make it editable

And voila ! I got a Samsung Galaxy Note 5 (Really huh ?)

Multitasking: The multitasking now can easily be setup without having to go through the stupid multi-window bar at the corner. Basically you need to bring up the recent apps list and click on the button on the top right side of the app which you want to put in as multitask. Moreover, the multitasking goes by Windowed mode instead of Tiled mode earlier. This gives you more room to play with multiple apps within the screen itself. One point to highlight is that NOT ALL APPS support this kind of windowed mode. It's more of a hit and miss for most applications 

Task manager is enhanced for you to pick which app you wish to use as multitasking

Multitasking at work. This looks like Windows 3.11 ? Now where's the WINDOWS->TILE VERTICAL ?

I'll stop for now... over the next few days I am going to go through various different tests like SmartWatch and BT Headset connectivity, Chromecast compatibility, Health Features, Fingerprint scanner, Gaming and such. Check back a few days later for more updates ! :)

Choosing a new device: Different Stroke For Different Blokes

So my faithful Samsung Galaxy Note 2 had come to 2 years of age. I had since did many things with the device which is obscene if I have to list it all here. My overall experience on it; very good, durable and robust. If only the device can upgrade itself to be faster, with better camera and features, I would had kept it - but lo and behold, as chinese sayings goes..

"The old one never goes, the new one will never come"

So choosing a new device may seems to be trivial for many folks out there. See which one you like, check price, check if anyone using it (it wont be wrong) and just pay for it. But chances is that we are all currently using a generation of smartphone - which one way or another buying a new device is an upgrade. So would the usual way of choosing a device of choice is applicable ?

First and foremost, let's not talk about what the manufacturers are producing but instead, we look into what we want as priorities... (Overall, we aren't going to just limit ourselves by some products of a fruit company right ?)

Some basic layman questions:-

1. What device size are you looking at ? Are your vision limited by the size of the screen ?
2. Would the camera be your higher priority ?
1. At least how many megapixels ?
2. Would you take a lot of selfies ?
3. Can it perform well in low lighting conditions ?
4. Do you need a great photography flash light ?
3. Do you want water proofing or water resistence features ? Would you consider your device to go to places where electronic devices aren't recommended ? (like Sea, Swimming Pool and such)
4. Do you want fast charging feature, a high capacity battery or super power saving mode in the device as to address the power consumption / management issues ?
5. Do you want a device which is nice to look at (curvy wavey) or don't bothered because you're gonna get a case anyway ?
6. Would you have a preference of brand of device ? (i.e. My TV at home is Sony and my gaming console is also Sony PS4, so getting a Sony device wont go wrong)
7. Are you an advanced user who would customize the device to your heart's intend or just buy and use whatever that comes out of the box ?
8. Would your secondary priorities on the device to be gaming, productivity use (like office) or health tracking ?
9. Would you foresee that you'll keep the device for 2 years until the battery juice is all gone and of which you wont change the whole device just because of a dead battery ?
10. Would you be storing movies, music and other large files in your device ?
11. Would you be running multiple applications at a single go and wont care if you close the previous one or not ?
12. Would additional features like a stylus, finger print scanner, heart rate monitor makes sense to you in your everyday life ?
13. Would update of new feature in Android excites you a lot ?
14. Would you be bragging about processor speed or screen pixel density of your device to your other friends ?

These are just some basic questions but remember; there are continuation from here as we are not buying the first smartphone. The usual question is "Is it BETTER than whatever I have today ?" or "Does it STILL HAVE whatever I have today ?". At the end, it all adds and minus from your base experience and thoughts of what you have today. While folks like me can tell you what is great for myself because of some super duper hyper feature of the device which we like but ultimately you need to make the decision if it makes sense to you. In a nutshell...

"Different Strokes for Different Blokes"

App Review: KII Keyboard

Keyboard in Android: a component which makes heck lots of difference compared to many other mobile OS out there due to the fact that we can change our keyboards and replace it with another. But as we are spoilt with many choices of 3rd party keyboard, looks, feel, features and functions, the final question remains - which keyboard should I use ?

Having been in the Android platform since version 1.5, I had been using quite a few keyboard replacements. Be it the stock keyboard or 3rd party ones, there is always a demand for some features and functions which generally helps in making our live easier. Overall, if you think about it - you ought to use the keyboard the most in your smart device right ?

Today I'm writing about a keyboard which I am using quite extensively - the KII Keyboard. This article highlights the features of KII keyboard which I had placed my money upon. There are other basic functionality which is expected from a third party keyboard which I believe everyone is using and exploiting.

Sliding input Gesture Input / Swype / Flow)
These sliding input between one keyboard button to another had existed since days when Swype was introduced into the market. Since then, many of us Android users had been showing off this feature as to how we perform text input by sliding from one key to another. For many of us, this feature is more like a standard when it comes to keyboard selection.

Advanced Slide to Word
So here's the thing, what would you do when you need to get a punctuation character ? Press and hold a key until it turns up ? It's a bit tad sad when you're performing all the sliding from one key onto another and finally have to press and hold onto a key because you want a question mark character right ? With Kii keyboard they had added the feature whereby you can slide from SPACE to the Key of the punctuated character to give you quick access to it.

Delete Word
Ever encounter a moment when you typed out something stupid and wish to delete the whole word with a single gesture ? Word deletion may not be available in all keyboard, it's even harder to imagine if you wish to use it along with the gesture input as above. But Kii Keyboard had made it so that you can delete a word by simply sliding your finger from space to backspace. How convenient is that !

Customization Gesture
Some of us may not like the slide to word functionality and if you are one of those who would rather off this feature, you can customize the sliding gesture into a different function altogether. Well, it's good that this feature exist as an additional option for you to control your keyboard if you're not the slide to word kind of person.

Numerics and Arrow keys 
What are the other keys which you wish that it's always there but it's not in the standard keyboard ? The numeric keys of course ! You can now customize the numeric keys as well as the directional keys for easy access as and when you need it.

Shortcuts
Every encounter times when you are stopped at a traffic light with an incoming SMS but you wish to quickly reach for your smartphone and type simple text like brbdrv ? (Be Right Back, Driving). The shortcut features allows you to quickly type some text and it will automatically convert it into a whole word/phrase for you. Of course you can also customize your own dictionary (like some odd English or Malay jargons to go along with it)

Alien Text
This perhaps is more on the fun department. I have a friend who likes to type in alternative case (mix of upper and lower case characters) - for many years already, it's like her trademark. With Kii keyboard, I discovered that I can also do the same, but with more finesse. This feature is called "Alien Text" whereby it will convert each word you type into similar alphabet characters. You can choose the different sets of Alien Text to go along with your preference - How cool is that ! For fun I mean :)

Emoji Support

Emoji is getting to be very useful in use of the different chat and social applications in our device. Having a standard sets of emoji on hand kinda standardize the sets of icons you ought to use across these different apps and services. Kii keyboard supports emoji (download separately) and can be triggered off from the standard keyboard easily.

Crazy input styles which you may/may not use

There are alter native input styles which is made available in the keyboard which you may or may not use in your everyday life. To start off with, it's basically there, it's just up to when or where do we use it. Holding on the ABC key at the bottom left of the keyboard brings out the different options which you can pick and choose. 

Pressing the ABC button activates the alternative input selection

Google Voice Input

Extended Smileys

Navigation Input

Extended Characters

Extended Characters (WingDings ?)

Numerics

Changing layout

I own a smartphone as well as an Android tablet. At times, it may be frustrated to have different keyboards when switching from one device onto another. While some keyboards developers had created different keyboard for both smartphone and tablet use, Kii had managed to provide you options in which you can switch between different layout so that it can be used between small or large device (depending on your requirements)

Conclusion

"A man's meat is another man's poison" is the conclusion I have for you today. While I may like all the features which I had portrayed here, it may not had been worth for some others to explore as we are so attached into the keyboard which we had chosen since we picked up our device. For me, Kii Keyboard today remains one of the most rich in feature and is my preferred choice of keyboard. I may change to another keyboard as and when I see some new features which is unique and excites me

After reading this review, what would be your choice ?

Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 Edition) first look and use

Do you write a lot of stuff ? Or better still, do you feel that there are better ways to interact with your tablet besides the standard on screen keyboard? I had just purchased a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 edition) recently and here I am writing a "first look and use" review for the curious ones.

Why a large Galaxy Note ?
If you're a Galaxy Note (Note 1, 2 or 3) user and had been using the stylus as it was meant to be, you ought to realize that the stylus remains one of the most important feature of the device itself. I had heard of people using it to sign documents, crop and edit pictures, annotate documents, draw pictures, play games and so forth but then again, isn't the standard 5 inch Galaxy Note which is pocket-able is large enough?

Let's check with the basic paper and pencil; most of us were brought up with these tools and I can bet that most of us would always be more happy if we are greeted with a large enough paper to continuous writing without having to go back to the next line (Just compare a small notebook against a larger one). More still if you're doing a sketch or drawing, the size of the canvas is more important as you can draw in more creativity on it.

Fast forward and look what what we have today - the stylus. The real estate of the canvas which you can interact with would now be one of the important aspects for your text scribbling as well as multimedia editing. Can you imagine the hardships of writing on a device when you need to wait for the handwriting recognition to kick in and recognize your handwriting after 2 or 3 words due to lack of canvas to write? Here are some other means of using the stylus which I had found difficulty in the Galaxy Note 2:

• Trying to read a scanned document and sign the big lovely handwriting
• Having to zoom and read the fine prints at Arial size 6 when the whole bloody document is all size 12 with 10,000 words in total 
• Trying to explain a diagram to your peers or customer while trying to annotate on the same canvas together

I had blogged about this before in my past writings over at this link
http://androidss.blogspot.com/2013_05_01_archive.html

Weight, dimensions and "feel"

While the size of the canvas which you can interact with remains important but there are also other aspects to consider - the bezel. So what the heck is a bezel ?

The bezel of the tablet is the additional space between the side of the device from the screen. The larger the bezel, the larger the overall size of the device. Samsung had made it so that the previous Galaxy Note 10.1 bezel had been shrunk a bit yet still offering the same 10.1 inch canvas size for interaction. In other words, you're still holding a 10.1 inch device but with an overall smaller dimension in size. This upgrade is very welcome because many of us would be using a case and with it would had added a few more inches to the device itself rendering it to be bulky and hard to handle.

Leathery Feel

Grip Lines

Weighing about 550g, while it may not be the lightest tablet in the market but the reduced weight is very welcome in terms of long usage for browsing and annotating without a hard surface to put the device on. The back of the device is now like the Galaxy Note 3 - which offers a "leathery" feel while the side of the device is also engraved with grip lines which saves your device from chance of slipping and making it one of the "drop test" videos in YouTube.

615gm of the original Note 10.1

548gm of the Note 10.1 (2014 edition)

 

                    VS





RAM and processing power
Galaxy Note 10.1 is packed with 3GB of RAM and powered by Quad core Krait 400 processor  running at 2.3GHz (For Malaysian market). While these specifications looks impressive on papers but the test of performance is more than meets the eye until you throw in tons of software running in the background. Some sites had been testing it out with some heavy duty and graphics intensive games but I think the best test of it all is when it works along your everyday life.

Display
Just when I pop in my old MicroSD card and use the in-built Gallery app to view all my past photographs on the device (which was taken by my Galaxy Note 2 at 8 megapixels), it totally blown me away ! I had never seen so much details over the device which I took and preview the photographs! The 2560 x 1600 Super LCD screen was like you're watching HD movies compared with the non-HD version ! Every single detail in the photo had been shown in it's most awesomeness ! Perhaps the next logical step is to buy a larger MicroSD card and store more HD movies :)

Picture taken from my Note2 camera directly from the device screen. Some may see it as a normal picture but with a HD display, it's totally different

Other welcome upgrades (Nitty gritty but still useful)
The stereo speakers are still available as with it's predecessor, it's now facing sideways on both side of the device giving you loud and crisp sound to go with the awesome display. The sync and charge port is now based on the standard micro USB - which means you can jack in your Galaxy Note 2, Nexus, Sony Experia, LG, Nokia charger on to it - just make sure you provide it with sufficient electricity/current for charging (No lightning connectors please, *ahem).

Micro USB port is most welcome !

And finally, the stylus is symmetrical - which means you can insert the stylus back to the slot in any orientation you want, this is useful when you wish to pack and go immediately when you had hijacked someone's meeting room and that party is here to claim it from you - shooing you away IMMEDIATELY

Now we can slot in the stylus anyway we want ! (Comparing with the old Note 10.1 stylus in white)

Not so welcome upgrades

Fingers on the back button, look where's the back button !

The software buttons are now removed altogether. You're provided with 1 hardware button (HOME button) and 2 touch sensitive area (for Menu and Back button) like many standard android device. These buttons are located in the middle of the device when positioned in landscape mode. While it seems right when using the device in landscape orientation but when you're using it in portrait position, the buttons is awkward to reach upon. You may end up having one hands on the left hand side trying to reach the back button from time to time...



In-Built Software and functionality
Admittedly, this is a section which I can write a 10k words essay and I can still go yada-yada like a grandpa. Samsung had made this device internal software so integrated with the use of the stylus which makes you a dummy if you just buy it for mere PDF reading or web-browsing. Let's detail some features which comes with the device

Air-Command (Also available in Note3)
This is the main feature of the device (which had made me upgrade as well). Pulling off the stylus from the device (or hovering the stylus near the device and click on the stylus button) and you will be greeted with a small (almost full) circle of feature. Divided into sections, this air-command menu allows you to perform one of the following:-

Translate your scribbles into content via Action Memo

Action Memo -  Action Memo is like a popup note which you can quickly jot down some small pieces of information (like phone number, email address, street address and such). After which, you can use the software to recognize what you had written and translate it into content (like add to Contacts for a phone number which you had jot down or activate email on the email address which you had written earlier). Moreover, you can also save these pieces of information, publish it as a Widget memo and work on it later

Capture contents and store in your collections

Scrap Booker - We usually read a lot when using a large screen device like this (at least I do). There are times when we see something of interest in the contents we read (like magazine, websites or news article) and we wish to clip a section of it to work on later. This Scrap Booker feature allows you to immediately capture any part of the screen which you're interacting with (any app) and lets you categorize it in your device called ... "ScrapBook" (No surprises there). Some contents would automatically be OCR (Optical Character Recognition) after the clipping and the translated into text. You also can tag these clippings for easy reference and search over in the next feature called "S-Finder"

Highlight sections of the screen and share !

Screen Write - More often when you're using the device and you wish to share some screen shot or take a snapshot of the screen and immediately share it to other applications (like posting it in Facebook or Whatsapp). The Screen Write feature allows you to capture a snapshot of the current screen, crop a section out from it, annotate and immediately share onto the next application. If you're an existing Note2 user, you would realize that you can perform the same but with more iterations compared with this.

A very necessary search utility

S Finder - S Finder is basically a universal search functionality for contents (video, music, images), calendars and tags in your device. If you had been creating a lot of contents in your device, this feature would had been very useful in locating all related contents under a single interface

Actually you can't launch 5 YouTubes here...

Pen Window - With 3GB of RAM, it is all ready for those who are crazy enough to launch 5 YouTube videos and run all of them together. The Pen Window allows you to draw a rectangle area in the screen which you can launch the app of your choice (like YouTube). The app would only be encompassing the area which you had drawn the rectangle. While you can only launch a selection of predefined app but those apps remains one of the more important usage for your everyday life (like Calculator, Phone, YouTube, Internet Browser, Google Hangout, Contacts... etc)

MultiWindow enchancement

MultiWindow is a multi-tasking feature by Samsung. In a nutshell, it simply means you can launch 2 apps side by side to each other. But if you had been using the other Samsung Galaxy multi-window feature, it is now enhanced with drag and drop feature. You can drag contents from one window and drop it over onto another. For example, you can browse the internet on the right hand side while doing whatsapp chat on the left side. Of which you can drag and drop contents from the browser onto your whatsapp window to share URL, Images and text also.

Drag and drop files from one Window to another

While the cascade window feature (in previous Note10.1) had been removed  (We have Pen Window now !), you can also launch multiple applications at the background of each section of the MultiWindow. The new MultiWindow allows you to move active apps at the background whenever you do not need it.

Other in-Built feature: 

Hovering your stylus on a text entry would bring out a small icon which you can tap on. Upon tapping on it, a handwriting recognition box will appear and you can write over it (which will translate into text for you). This saves you the time to interact with then standard keyboard which is at the bottom of the screen

1. Hover the stylus over the entry box and tap on the appeared icon

2. Handwriting recognition entry appears

Summary

In a nutshell, I am quite excited with all these new features and functions which comes with the new upgrade. The ROI would be priceless if it is able to fulfill all my work related tasks - which I think it would. If you're asking me if it's worth YOUR upgrade ? I can't be sure about that, you need to know if this big brother of Galaxy Note would be of useful to you and your daily life with that price tag.

Wait, did I forget to mention that it's also a phone with LTE capabilities ? :)