Cell phones & services

(5 of 5 customers found this review helpful)

Comment:

Big phone that does big things. Great reception! No consistant dropped calls (as with my iOS phones). Battery gets me through a day with much useage. S-pen great for taking credit card signatures over app services. Camera takes great pictures. Screen is a beautiful piece of kit. <br />I have had some issues with voice mail. Receptivity of the touch screen. My google maps voice went away. <br />Turns out the fix was to take the battery out while the phone is on (soft reset) and it also fixed most of my voice mail issues. <br />If the next version of andriod is as much of an improvement as this was over the last, it will be difficult not to get an even better phone even out of contract. Despite the fragmentation aspect, this almost a perfect phone for my uses. Just a couple of tweeks on the use of voice recognition would make this a GPS wonder!

How long have you owned it:

Bottom Line

Yes, I would recommend this to a friend.

(5 of 5 customers found this review helpful)

Comment:

Technically, the CR review is close to spot on. However I'm reminded of a long-ago comment that CR could review a lemon & pronounce it too sour in their desire to be fair and balanced. <br />Yup, this device is larger than many (all?) of what are called smartphones. But that name always seemed silly -- they do SO many more interesting things than handle verbal communications. <br />And my fingers bleed as I watch others rapidly tapping away on their teeny-tiny devices. What are they writing? Haiku? Love letters for the ages? The Great American Novel? I don't know -- but I know I could never twine my arthritic digits into anything as breathless, desperate and minute.<br />So I LIKE that it's A LARGE -- yet still highly portable -- device. It's smaller than every phone I've ever used except for one. (That's what happens when you're over 60!) It fits in my coat/jacket/& backback pockets with no problem. I haven't tried to get it into my tighty-whities ... and I probably never will. We're just not that close, me and the digital world.<br />What I love about the Note II: expandable memory (really NOT that difficult to install said the man with the fat fingers, who swaps out two 64 GB mini cards with apparent aplomb); user-replaceable battery (battery life is very good -- but it's lovely to have a $15, fully charged backup on hand just in case .. try that with your iThing); a huge screen/keyboard for old eyes & fingers that were never petite & are far happier touch-typing on a full sized keyboard. <br />I have a three-hour commute & I've dumped a 10 tablet, a full sized MP3 player & a midsized Canon powershot camera in favor of the Note II. I can easily check my email, catch up on the news, keep up with my reading, shoot interesting photo/movie ops I happen to see ... and arrive home at night without fingers turned into stubs or eyes gone terminally bloodshot.<br />So: phone usage, for me, is around number 8 on the list of uses I have for this device. It works fine, but if you're used to a smaller device, this will seem BIG. As a way to make dinner reservations, to check the tides for Saturday's kayaking trip, the weather for a weekend sail or a Monday morning commute, the internet for local event scheduling, to check your email, to play solitaire on a brain-dead Friday night commute, to read that e-novel you've just bought, to identify that bird you've just spotted in your back yard, to find a speedy route to a hot venue ... all of these & many more are very well served, portably, by this device.<br />Knowing it will be superceded soon by something better, I've given it five stars because after checking the alternatives, & using it for several months I'm convinced that, at this moment there's nothing better for my purposes. More importantly (unless you HAVE to HAVE the latest bleeding edge device,) I don't expect it to be technologically useless in the next 30 days. Heck, I might just be able to keep it for ten more years.

How long have you owned it:

Bottom Line

Yes, I would recommend this to a friend.

(8 of 8 customers found this review helpful)

Comment:

Context----- I have used smart phones and PDAs going back to the very first Palm Pilot device. Initially to sync with my calendar and phone book, I carried a separate wireless phone. I am REALLY impressed with the Note II! I run product demonstration videos on this phone as well as more conventional data look up and as a phone. <br /><br />I am older and my early technology adopter days are less appealing than they used to be. That being said, this is a pretty polished device from a design POV. <br /><br />The onscreen keyboard is large enough for my arthritic and large fingers to navigate easily. The screen size and EXCELLENT RESOLUTION adapts well to my vision which is less than stellar with my advancing decrepitude. <br /><br />Docking IS an issue for me as I am used to a landscape format dock to physically sync with my desktop computer, etc. This is an annoying minus for the Note II IMHO. <br /><br />Sound quality is quite adequate and the touch screen works very well unless the humidity is REALLY LOW (dry fingers). Additionally, I would love to have a second Micro SD slot for additional memory as the 64gb on the add-in micro card just isn't enough for all the data that I carry about. 64gb is presently the largest available card 1/2013, heaven knows when 128gb will appear and if it will be compatible with this unit. Alternatively, I would have loved the option to have more than 16gb of internal memory.<br /><br />The performance of the Note II is stellar, almost no lag when changing applications. All and all, my favorite smart phone yet, ever! The first one which really satisfies the majority of my needs.

How long have you owned it:

Bottom Line

Yes, I would recommend this to a friend.