Software Features and Impressions

Prepare yourself for one of the heaviest skins you can find on a smartphone. Samsung never ceases to amaze me at just how much bloatware and other crap tin can be stuffed into the software package, everything from completely useless features to unnecessary visual changes. Of grade there are some gems to be found here and at that place, which are worth mentioning every bit well.

If you've used a Galaxy device in the past few years, you'll likely be very familiar with the pattern of Samsung'southward custom TouchWiz peel. Rather than utilizing the stock Android look and experience, Samsung has done some skinning for the sake of skinning, going with by and large night backgrounds, blue gradients and greenish highlights. Compared to other UIs and the stock Android appearance, TouchWiz is starting to expect quite dated.

Despite the larger screen size, almost aspects of the Galaxy Note 3's software are identical to the Galaxy S4'due south. The homescreen is a standard 4x4 grid with a row of four interchangeable apps in the dock, and as always in that location are a range of Samsung-made widgets to use, many of which are quite large and will boss the homescreen pane they're on. These days I observe myself using fewer and fewer widgets, preferring to caput straight into the relevant application, but some of the included widgets (such as S Planner) practice offer lots of information at a quick glance.

The notification pane includes a range of quick settings in a panel that horizontally scrolls, along with a brightness bar that allows yous to fine tune your screen level with relative ease. Network indicators, removed in Android 4.4, still remain in the status bar, and there'south also the choice to identify a battery percent beside the battery indicator graphic, which is essential for keeping accurate track of your remaining life.

The Galaxy Note 3's settings is the main dumping ground for a number of the smartphone'south 'features'. Hither y'all'll find everything from gesture controls to face detection features, about of which are extremely gimmicky and battery wasting. During my use of the handset, neither Air Gestures (hovering your hand over the proximity sensor) nor Air View features (hovering your finger/stylus in a higher place the brandish) proved to exist useful at all; in fact I probable would have saved time accessing information through traditional screen taps as opposed to trying to go gestures to piece of work.

Movement controls are another gimmick, because I often forgot they existed. Information technology seems much easier to pause music by pressing the pause push button on the screen, rather than by flipping the device over, and so I only bothered using the movement controls during testing. Most Smart Screen eye detection features are also useless, especially 'Smart Scroll' (eye-based scrolling) which is simply functional in two apps (Electronic mail and Browser) and works uncommonly poorly.

However some device settings are genuinely useful. Increasing the affect sensitivity is neat for cold winter days that demand the use of gloves, and there are lots of means to customize things such as the LED indicator, bear upon key light duration, and even the vibration intensity. Unfortunately the phone makes a lot of touch tone noises out of the box, which are extremely annoying not merely for the user simply likewise for anyone in close proximity. Brand disabling all the noises a priority after y'all set the device up.

For the serious multi-taskers, Samsung has built in a range of features that extends upon the standard Android multi-tasking experience. You can withal long press the home button to access the app switcher, but y'all also have the ability to long-press the back button to admission multi-window apps. From here, you lot can drag and drop apps that occupy half of the brandish, similar to what was seen on the previous Milky way Notation.

You can simply have two applications on the screen at once, and at that place are only a few third-political party apps that are supported, however the experience is largely fluid. The ability to resize windows comes in handy when you need one app to be larger than the other, but don't wait many other features. Some applications, such as the video thespian and Action Memo, support floating windows; most other apps simply snap to 1 half of the display.

I-handed functioning settings return for the large-screened Galaxy Notation 3, and in that location are some improvements here that actually makes it worth using. Swiping in an Fifty shape from the border of the screen dorsum to the same edge volition minimize an app into a smaller, resizable window that is easier to handle if yous're stuck with the Annotation in merely ane paw. Other settings can be enabled that just downsize the keyboard, or computer, for example.

Some other two features included with the Galaxy Note iii are largely gimmicks: South Vocalization is nevertheless too tricky to employ if you lot don't speak slowly, conspicuously and without a weird accent; while handwriting recognition is still slower and far less authentic than if y'all but typed. Overall, Samsung's keyboard offer is quite poor, with keys that are besides small and car-correction that's, astonishingly, disabled past default. I'd recommend switching to SwiftKey or one of the many alternatives available in the Play Store.

Many of the standard applications included with the Note 3 are unproblematic skins of the AOSP apps, with few (if any) features being introduced. The Messaging app still comes with an atrocious blueprint and color palette, S Planner is all the same as crowded as ever, Contacts is an junior version of the vanilla app, Gallery is also just a skin, and bizarrely a Samsung-made Net app has been included alongside Chrome.

And and then comes the bloatware. Included out-of-the-box on the Galaxy Note 3 is the Samsung Apps, Samsung Music Hub and Samsung Hub applications, which are all poor alternatives to Google Play services. Story Anthology is a shortcut to install an app that's non even included on the device, as is Due south Translator. Plus yous'll be gifted with a range of applications for your region/carrier which no-i really wants on the device in the get-go place.

Credit where credit is due though. Due south Health is a reasonable fitness tracker, WatchON is very useful for controlling TVs using the included infrared LED, and Group Play/Samsung Link/S Beam/Screen Mirroring introduce new ways to share content with other nearby devices. The music app is also quite impressive, offering an easy-to-use grid-based equalizer, besides every bit the Music Square for playing songs that accept certain moods.

My Magazine is the final feature I desire to talk well-nigh. Accessible through either swiping up from the bottom of the display, or pressing the habitation push while on a homescreen, the app aggregates news, information and social network updates in a similar mode to HTC's BlinkFeed. The app looks dainty and functions well, just I never constitute myself using information technology, preferring to jump directly into the relevant applications to run into social updates, or heading into an RSS feed app for the latest news.

The software included in the Galaxy Note 3 is everything I expected: reasonably ugly, unbelievably bloated, just still loaded with a few interesting and useful features here and there. Well-nigh of the goodness shows itself in the form of the Southward-Pen, though, which I'll be covering in the next department.