A little bit more about the Original Galaxy Note

I did a fly by posting that I'd upgraded to Samsung Galaxy Note sgh i717 on AT&T (aka OG Note).
It was a free upgrade to keep my business after all the kerfuffle AT&T had put me through. I don't want to go off on a rant about AT&T but I will say that I see how they have the worst carrier rating according to Consumer Reports. This article is about my time spent with the OG Note, I was offered the SIII or the Note and I wanted the Note because of the stylus and the size. Now I'm sort of rethinking that decision because AT&T OG Note users have yet to see the Jelly Bean update. I digressed once again. My bad.

Okay, the OG Note is awesome and I'm loving it. I adore the S-Pen, even though I wish more apps worked with it. I did go in a store and play with the Note II and to be very honest the upgrades, both software and hardware weren't enough to make me wish I'd I gotten that one instead. A lot of the features do sound really cool, but I probably wouldn't use them enough to miss them, with the exception of the better handwriting to text feature. The Premium Suite along with ICS update did sweeten the deal.

image courtesy of Samsung USA

Handwriting to text recognition is the primary thing I want to be exceptional with the device, and it falls short on both Notes. I had a Sony Clie back in the days, and once you learned how to write the letters in the specific way it was a 95-98% the recognition software got it right. I was able to write papers on that sweet little thing. I actually still have the memory stick for it somewhere. I may pick one up for nostalgia's sake.

 

 

picture courtesy of shopping.com

Other than the hand writing recognition, the OG Note is actually interchangeable with my ASUS TF300. The battery time with a screen of 5.3", 4G and Auto Sync and light to moderate use is surprisingly amazing, at the end of a 9 hour work day I'm generally hovering around 68-70 percent every single day. I'm not using any battery saving apps, running completely stock ICS 4.0.4, the screen on auto-brightness and using the Touch Wiz interface. The OG Note transitions smoothly between screens, apps and Net Flix play back is like butter. I have noticed however, that certain apps that seem to add more tweaks and work across all platforms do tend to freeze the phone up; Facebook, Words With Friends and occasionally Pulse are the ones that come to mind. I have to blame the fragmentation of Android for most of that. 

That is the one place where I feel Apple shines, no matter which generation of device you have you can have the same iOS across the board. My 3rd generation iPod touch is running the same software as the current Ipod touch, even though it doesn't have all the features. (Yes, this is part where I mentioned that I wasn't a total Apple hater comes in)

My final thoughts: The OG Galaxy Note is an amazing phone and got me to fall back in love with Samsung, and maybe I'll look into getting the Note III when it comes out :) 4.5/5 stars from me.