First impressions from G-Note owners?

[kharrigan]

The G-Note has been released in Europe so far. For you lucky owners, what was your first impression? Anything that surprised you?

 

[trilotus]

I love my new G-Note. For me though, coming from a Dell streak, it's not an overwhelming change, I'm just gradually finding more and more to like about it. It's a fast, silky smooth experience, and the addition of the stylus just raises it above anything else at the moment, whether you use it or not. It's slightly shorter and wider than the Streak, so looks bigger,but completely pocketable in anything but the skinniest of skinnies. It's quite a bit lighter and slimmer than the Streak, and whilst I don't mind the textured plastic back, it's doesn't feel too grippy so I'm paranoid about dropping it! The screen is gorgeous and makes full use of the available size, however therein less the only slight niggle I have found - the menu and back soft buttons are a bit too easy to hit unintentionally as they are real close to the edge.

 

[scaots]

The screen is awesome. The best feature and my main interest in GNote is the great screen real estate. I can still see pixelation/pentile effect if I look for it but do not notice it normally. Reading on it would be great. It is bright and beautiful and makes my N1 AMOLED look pale in comparison.

As mentioned above, I am concerned about dropping it. It is a bit too big to handle with one hand. I am anxious to get a silicone case to help hold on to it and protect it, though I have never used a case with any phone before. You really need to use it with two hands due to the size.

Typing with two thumbs in portrait is amazingly fast and accurate. I used to be very happy with swype on my N1, but that is not as good on Note due to the size. I am just as fast if not faster with two thumbs on the Note. I am using thumb keyboard because I like cursor controls and the split layout in landscape works much better due to the screen size.

I like the stylus feature. It is accurate and will be handy and appreciated, but even though I was very excited about it I could probably live without it. I wish it had a calibration feature because you have to hold the pen at a certain angle for perfect accuracy and that may not be the way some people hold a pen. Samsung did a great job with the memo app.

I am still considering the GNex as an alternative or second device. GNex should be usable one handed and easier to hold on to, plus get the stock experience which I appreciate. Though my first experience with TWiz isn't bad. GNex does not have as large a display, pixel-wise or in size, and has the buttons taking up some of the display so you won't be able to view as much on it which is really nice with the Note. So I am a little torn between the two. Have to see what GNex is really like to use and if they have a GSM version in the US at good price. For $700+ to import a GNex, I think I would stick with the GNote.

Also note that I have had the browser hang on me once in two days as I heard some others have had. Need to kill it from task manager and start it again. Assuming that will be fixed in an update.

 

[dippytwitty]

WOW

That's my first impression. OK so maybe my first impression was Oh Crap! Because I bought it off ebay and it was initially in like Turkish or something and I had no idea how to change the language, but I mashed the most obvious button and that was the language chooser

The screen blows you away, it really does. And having lots of room for app icons, widgets etc is really sweet.

Also, I didn't know beforehand if the stylus would work for *everything* instead of using your finger, but it does, and that's great. Up here in Canada it's handy to use your phone with gloves on, and this allows me to do that, plus a stylus is actually a pretty natural way to interact with it. Not perfect, but still natural.

So far I'm on my first day, but it seems really fast, I haven't had any problems with apps so far - Netflix, facebook, handcent, swype, it all seems to work great.

I use my phone for RDP on occasion, and I'm still finding the perfect app for that - they all seem to have the odd little quirks, but the bigger screen is a huge boon for this. I was hoping the stylus would make for more accurate clicks on buttons, but for now each RDP app has minor mis-calibrations. It can help in some cases, but be awkward in others. Should improve as developers get a chance to test more.

Hope to have more helpful news on battery life, etc but that will take time. So far I LOVE it.

Only minus is my kids joking me about it being "big like those books for old people" lol

Rob

 

[kwilsonjr]

I am in love with this phone but using on T-Mobile with edge speeds is getting on my nerves. I am so used to lightning fast 4G on my GS2 I am getting impatient for the US release (which is why I imported it in the first place).

I have big hands but am scared to death I will drop it while attempting to use it one handed. That one icon you need to press always seems just out of reach. Two handed it is a wonder to behold.

The action feels a little choppy at times, even though it does a great job of shutting down unused apps. All my appstore apps loaded just fine and all seem to get along with the massive screen size with no problems.

The speaker volume could use a boost. Watching movies without a headset is challenging. Call volume is adequate but most will likely find themselves maxing out the volume there as well. Would be nice to have an extra button press available for noisy situations.

The screen is amazing and I find myself unable to fill the real estate, mainly due to my eccentricity of grouping games together, web and social apps, productivity etc.

The one gripe I have is that the apps menu is not sorted alphabetically and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get it sorted that way...except for list view, but I prefer a sorted grid view. They appear to load in the order they were installed. Oh well, maybe ICS will solve this.

All-in-all I wouldn't trade this phone for anything else out there. This will most likely be my phone for the life of my 2 year contract, and perhaps beyond. Unless of course they come out with a quad core version ;-)

p.s. The BEST thing about being an early adopter....went into Radio Shack to ask about Go Phone and the guy freaked out when I whipped out the Note and explained what I was trying to do. He was amazed. The one other employee was helping a little old lady and walked away from her to look at the phone. The poor little old lady was like 'excuse me? can I finish paying for this?' hahahaha.

 

[scaots]

Ken,
Unfortunately my GNote is in RMA process, but I think from the app drawer you can select menu then edit and rearrange icons a you like. You can even add pages. I had games, media, utilities, etc grouped by page.

 

[kwilsonjr]

Ken,
Unfortunately my GNote is in RMA process, but I think from the app drawer you can select menu then edit and rearrange icons a you like. You can even add pages. I had games, media, utilities, etc grouped by page.

Yes, that appears to be the only way. My GS2 autosorts new apps so everything is alphabetical. Guess the only way to get it done on the note is manually as you suggest.

 

[scaots]

I created a folder in the app drawer today and put all my games in it. Somehow it got deleted and all those shortcuts are now gone from my app drawer! I don't see any way to get them back. You can still create home screen shortcuts to them, but no other way to start them now.

Browser performance in 2.6 is good. Only thing I would like to see is more control of the task manager (or get rid of it) so it does not kill my browser while idle and then I have to pull pages I was saving back up again.

 

[feek]

My first impression in a BIG WOW..

it's a bit love at a first sight.. i always love big phones 'coz its matches me and when i use it I blown away with the screen, how easy to use and quite user friendly.

How ever the S Pen and the cropping pictures quite tricky to mastered (i haven't mastered it until now) but so far i love what i bought.