I owned the iPad4 and 5. Mostly used those devices for email, web surfing and reading. Frankly, that's about all the capabilities the iPad has. Bought the Note 2014 hoping it would have more useful work application. I'm fairly sure I'm going to take it back.
There's a lot to like about the Note. Incredible screen although I prefer the iPad aspect ratio. Not a huge deal. I like the flexibility. Widgets are nice. I love that I can use swype, great keyboard solution IMHO. SD Card very nice. However, even after following the advice here to a T and turning virtually everything off, it is a battery hog. That beautiful screen and all those capabilities hardly matter when you have to keep them all disabled. Even so, it still won't compare battery wise to my iPad5 that is a year old. That's probably the deal breaker right there. The back key, reset key and I guess search key on the left long side has to be one of the stupidest ergonomic cluster F's I've seen. I've not been able to find a way to disable any of them. I'd certainly disable to search function key.
Wifi is very funky. I have an extender out in the man cave. Sometimes the Note works on it, sometimes not. Overall, it simply doesn't have the range for picking up a wifi signal the iPad has. Very disappointing and a big concern since it isn't offered with a cellular radio. This is the second biggest deal breaker. The Samsung bloatware is obscene. Again, without rooting, I haven't seen a way to get rid of it.
Finally, the primary upgrade I was looking for was the S pen. Nice but also disappointing. Unbelievably slow. I can't believe the lags and stutters. Given the hardware processing power this device has, this must mean the software is just written incredibly inefficiently. While the S Pen functionality sounds enticing, once reality set in with this device and the slow, stuttering responses, I'm not finding it very usable for real business needs. My handwriting is quite need yet I find the translation to be lacking substantially. The S Voice tool versus the iPad voice recognition is nowhere close.
Despite all this, I really want the Note to work. I am tired of Apple sitting on their **** and not making any significant enhancements to new products. I simply don't see evidence that is a long term platform that will work for me. I bought at Best Buy so I have until mid Jan to take the Note back. I'm going to give it a fair chance to succeed. If it doesn't, I'll look at a Windows Tablet to come out with digitizer pen capabilities or continue to monitor Android progress. No, the Surface doesn't qualify. That isn't a tablet, that abomination is a laptop in my opinion.
I bought a couple of Tablet PC's in the late 90's, early 2000. It is rather sad to see the lack of progress with pen based computing in the past 10 years. It's encouraging to see Samsung make an honest effort with it and perhaps with a few iterations will get it right. It might help if they would do some market surveys with real business people to determine how they might use it. Given how it is designed now, it seems obvious they didn't get any market input from the business sector or totally ignored it if they did.
BTW, even if I take the Note 10.1 2014 back, I'm giving serious consideration to replacing my iPhone 5 with the Note 3. Love the form factor and big screen. I have serious concerns though after reading reviews on Verizon which is my carrier. Seems to be an unusually high number of reviews knocking the Note 3 signal strength/reception and call clarity. My first need as a phone is just that, that it work great as a phone. While the iOS has lots of limitations, I must give it to Apple, the 4S and 5 have been incredible phones. I switched over from a Motorola dual core device, I think it was the Droid2 maybe? It was the worst cell phone I ever had, simply rancid. I had a number replaced by Verizon and they all had problems. I finally just paid out of pocket for the iPhone as the Motorola device was unbearable. Makes me a bit hesitant to switch back again when I'm seeing bad reviews.
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