Let's take a look at the Galaxy Note 2 settings.
If you're used to Ice Cream Sandwich, or a previous version of android
you'll find things have been moved around a fair bit by Samsung.
Partly that is because of Jellybean
the latest operating system update from Google
partly because of criticism that some of their stuff was just buried under
many levels of menu.
So the top area here,
which in wireless networks is pretty much unchanged, you have your wifi access,
bluetooth,
you can check your data usage
so how much data you've actually been using and also set warnings and thresholds
on there
to prevent you from going over any bundles you may have.
In more settings
you have a flight mode,
access to mobile network changing, tethering to important hot spots is in here
as is virtual private networks
and where you can turn your nfc and communication for
other features on and off,
and also DLNAs for nearby devices as well.
And if you happen to be using Kies by wifi which is Samsung's updating
software pushing information backup between the device and pc.
Home screen mode.
Allows for two different modes really for using the device.
If you're someone who is new to android or if you're coming from an iPhone where things
are a little more basic,
you can switch to a basic mode and it just cuts down on the home screen
the amount of clutter.
Basic mode is the standard mode and then you've got easy mode which puts it into a
more slimmed down fashion
it's much easier to use.
This is really aimed at those people who aren't all that au fait
with mobile phones or coming from a different uh...
operating system and might be overwhelmed by the pure
number of features that
Samsung provide here.
if you come into blocking mode here, that allows you to turn off certain
types of alarms between certain times
so you can set your your incoming calls, notifications, set up times
to allow them etcetera,
really really useful feature.
and something that in the past was done by third party apps.
Sound, this is self-explanatory this is where you are going to be setting up your ringtones,
vibration settings
everything relating to how the phone is going to communicate
to you by audio.
Vibration intensity is in there as well
you've also got the screen lock sound which is turned off, that ripple
effect is quite annoying.
Display
self explanatory again but
in here
is where your wallpapers will be found but also LED indicator as well
The phone has a little LED
and when you get notifications that LED will flash particular colours depending on
the notification you've got.
You can go in and tweak all of this here along with
your wallpaper.
Page Buddy,
this is a really useful feature which detects
what you happen to have just done with the phone, so if you
pull the S Pen out it will automatically flip to S Pen mode
put your earphones in
it will switch to music mode. Docking it will go into a dock mode etcetera.
Really, really useful and it saves all that fiddling around going into
this mode or the music app.
If you've plugged the headphones in then clearly you want to use music.
You also have your brightness controls
auto rotation and screen time out and two useful features that I found were
turned off by default, smart rotation and smart stay.
Smart rotation and smart stay
use the camera and sensors to work out whether it needs to leave the screen on
or whether the screen needs to be rotated intelligently.
So if you happen to be lying down when you're using the phone, you may have
noticed on some devices that the screen will start flicking backwards and forwards
and it can't quite work out if you are
lying down or standing up.
Smart rotation helps to alleviate that problem and smart stay makes sure that the
screen stays on
if you happen to be looking at the phone.
It uses the camera, detects your face and says you are still looking at the device
I'd best not turn the screen off now, he's probably using it.
A worthwhile feature and
quite welcome actually
to see that on this device. Little user experience 5things can make a big difference to
how frustrating
using a device can be.
Really good to see that coming in.
You can change your font styles as well if you are that way inclined, touch light duration
which is how long these lights stay on at the bottom,
display battery percentage if you want it at the top, personally I find that
rather scary, I'd rather not know,
it's about 50%.
Auto adjusts screen tone as well.
The storage areas
this provides
a running list basically of
what you have stored on the device and what category that would fall into
and you can then go into those areas to see those individual apps as listed
and the movement etcetera as you need to.
Power saving,
really really useful if you happen to be
out and about and the battery's getting low and you're going to be away from charge for a while
flip this on
it will drop your power to your cpu
and the processor that is running your phone and doing all the action.
Power saving will be turned on for the screen to drop the brightness right down,
background colors will be muted
on the internet so
if you got a lot background colors strong background colors use more power
white doesn't really use an awful lot of power.
And turn off haptic feedback, anything that happens to be drawing a lot of power
off the battery.
All of that can then be disabled on the fly.
You could check your battery usage
and you can see which elements are actually using the most battery power.
Clearly, the screen is always going to be pretty close to the top
but it allows you to see if you've got an application that happens to be running in the
background that is maybe drawing a little bit more power than you wanted.
You can close that one down.
And the application manager provides very similar functionality
to the storage area
provides everything you've got and all of your running apps as well and you can
see the cash processes.
Useful if you need to free up
memory or to try to find something that happens to be chewing up system run times.
Locations
How is it going to find out where you are?
Using GPS will drain your battery very quickly.
but on wireless network it's pretty much OK
it's reasonably accurate and good enough to get your basic
fix.
Your lock screen has loads of information in here.
The controls how your phone is seeing
when you first turn it on
and before you actually enter. So this area here, basically.
Within that lock screen
you have various security options
so swipe, motion, face unlock, face and voice pattern, pin
and password
and each of these options then gives you even more options
depending on what kind of security you are going for.
and then you got the lock screen options as well.
So the lock screen itself can have more information included on there
like a ticker, dual clock, weather
you can turn the ripple effect in there on and off if you want to.
Quick access to the camera quite useful, with that turned on
if you take your phone out of your pocket like this,
put your finger on the screen and then rotate, it will automatically go into camera
mode for you so you don't have to fiddle with the buttons or anything like that.
And with the camera starting up in a
fraction of one one-and-a-half seconds,
really really nippy and quick to work with your camera on the fly.
So those were all your lock screen options, worth having a play in there
see what kind of functionality you want to turn on.
One handed operation.
Shall we say security next?
This handles all of your encryption on the device.
So if you happen to be working within a business network
there's a very good chance you will need to have this turned on and enabled.
It will allow all of the data that goes in and out of the phone
and the data that is stored on the phone to be encrypted.
Very very useful and very important if you're working on a corporate network.
One handed operation.
Because this is such a big device five point five inches,
the vast majority people can't actually reach with their thumb from one side to the other.
of the screen so what we have is one-handed operation.
What it does is it puts the keyboard into a floating window which allows
it to drift from one side of the screen to the other.
Or for you to drag and position it exactly where you want on the screen
whatever's comfortable to then one thumb board it.
Litterally, it's a small size keyboard but if you measure it and compare
to something like a Galaxy S3 or something else
you're actually getting the same size
keyboard
just properly positioned
for where you want to use it.
It actually works pretty well and I found the accuracy
is just as good.
You've got that flexibility there
really useful if you're a one-handed operator like I am.
Language and input, another self explanatory
one, this is where you are configuring what language your device will be operating in
and also what language it will respond to for voice
recognition and so on. And text to speech input.
All of that can be controlled in there.
Cloud services are from Samsung.
That allows you to back up all of your data in your device such as
SMS messages, MMS messages and logs..
It's a bit weak
frankly, I don't know why they include that and dropbox.
It's useful I suppose but so limited there are better options out there
third party for it.
Backup and reset
allows you to back up the physical device and also reset and wipe all the
data on the device.
And then this is where accounts are held now
If you are coming from Ice Cream Sandwich
accounts used to be a separate option called accounts and you had to go into that
then into the account you wanted and settings and everything like that
Now just down at the very bottom of your settings list
and you can then go in to configure each one of these independently or add a
new account.
Add a new account gives you
oodles and oodles of different options including Microsoft active sync and bespoke
custom service as well if you want to.
LDAP is in there
everything you could possibly need.
As you add new apps to your device
if they have an account option
it will appear in your account settings.
At the very bottom you have the system settings motion controls are from
Samsung
and these are very
useful ways that
you can use your device by using various motions to create actions
within the device.
So direct call. If you
have the phone number up on the screen you don't have to press the call button you
can just lift the phone to your head,
the phone will detect that you want to make that call
it will then start the dial for you.
Smart alert for captionless messages
everything available in here there's really really useful features
and to move the icons
If you turn over the phone you can immediately mute or pause what it's
doing.
Some useful stuff in there that's worth taking a look at.
S Pen controls are in here as well, including detachment sounds, dominant hand
battery saving
popup notice
and the alert if you happen to
walk out of the room and not put the pen back in.
Accessibility, date and time, developer options are all pretty standard stuff really
and I won't go into those in too much detail.
But if you go into developer options,
you can actually make your device a little bit faster again.
Where you have window animation scale transition scale and animated duration scale
put all those on point five
by default they are on point one. If you've got a really fast device
the phone won't actually need to wait at all for
the animation to redraw on the screen It's fast enough to just transition
really really quickly.
Works on the S3, works on the Note 2 beautifully
and just makes the phone feel
a little bit nippier again by
a fraction of a second. Hey, we're all about squeezing every last
bit of performance out of these devices.
So those are the settings, and the software of the
Samsung Galaxy
Note 2.
Truly a beautiful device, truly a beautiful software implementation as well.