Transformed from a turd to a star.. GB to ICS

[shure2]

Ok so referring the note to a turd might be a bit over the top, but with my first day going from gingerbread to ics I have to voice my opinions.
When I first booted it up this morning I was underwhelmed. I'm coming from a desire z with asop ics which is a fantastic device, still smooth and great all round.

With GB everything was ugly to start off with, and the general performance felt a step down from my modded desire z (truly a credit to the developers). The browser was clunky (even in opera mobile) , the whites were more yellow than I expected, the was quite some lag waking it up and audio with headphones was terrible. I gave the desire z credit for its audio quality, I'm no audiophile but the difference was massive and it was actually painful to listen to the songs I used to love.

Now I'm using the latest stunner and the difference is unreal, it has literally transformed the phone. Everything is faster, this is how the note should have been in the first place. I was gutted with the audio performance on GB, even tweaking the equaliser in power amp couldn't get me to an acceptable quality. Well somehow the dev's have done it again. In ICS the clarity and range is even slightly better than on my desire z, something I never expected.

I tested the Note in store before I brought it and it was terrible on the stock rom there, who knows why people would buy it (I'm talking a 1 second delay between swiping and recognition) but I had faith in the developers and it's paid off.

This is mainly for those pondering on whether they should get the note because of initial bad reviews on the audio and using the stock rom. The audio and general performance is now fantastic on ICS.

I feel sorry for the many out there on the stock rom, here's to you developers.



Sent from my GT-N7000 using xda premium

 

[Mystic38]

Thanks for your opinion that 5 million people like to buy turds at $600+ a pop

Ok so referring the note to a turd might be a bit over the top,

 

[Rayan]

Ok so referring the note to a turd might be a bit over the top, but with my first day going from gingerbread to ics I have to voice my opinions.
When I first booted it up this morning I was underwhelmed. I'm coming from a desire z with asop ics which is a fantastic device, still smooth and great all round.

With GB everything was ugly to start off with, and the general performance felt a step down from my modded desire z (truly a credit to the developers). The browser was clunky (even in opera mobile) , the whites were more yellow than I expected, the was quite some lag waking it up and audio with headphones was terrible. I gave the desire z credit for its audio quality, I'm no audiophile but the difference was massive and it was actually painful to listen to the songs I used to love.

Now I'm using the latest shutter and the difference is unreal, it has literally transformed the phone. Everything is faster, this is how the note should have been in the first place. I was gutted with the audio performance on GB, even tweaking the equaliser in power amp couldn't get me to an acceptable quality. Well somehow the dev's have done it again. In ICS the clarity and range is even slightly better than on my desire z, something I never expected.

I tested the Note in store before I brought it and it was terrible on the stock rom there, who knows why people would buy it (I'm talking a 1 second delay between swiping and recognition) but I had faith in the developers and it's paid off.

This is mainly for those pondering on whether they should get the note because of initial bad reviews on the audio and using the stock rom. The audio and general performance is now fantastic on ICS.

I feel sorry for the many out there on the stock rom, here's to you developers.



Sent from my GT-N7000 using xda premium

Even though I agree that ICS on the Note is very neat and improves many aspects of the device, at least in my case Gingerbread was not that bad either!

Perhaps the only gripe was the small lag on wake, but other than that it was buttery-smooth out of the box and after the 380+ apps I usually end up installing.

I think it all comes down to what your carrier have done to it and what firmware version you got it with in the first place.

Cheers!

 

[MR.change]

I wouldn't call The note a turd!! ,it is a bit slower than the unrealistically buttery smooth SGS2 but not by much.
and since the sgs2 was more smooth than an Iphone4 (my own experience) ,then I'd say that the note is doing just fine on GB.

although ,I'm really looking forward to trying ICS ,it's just the Idea of me flashing ICS bootloaders for a "beta" that's putting me off ,or have I got this part wrong ,and I don't need to change bootloaders?

 

[madbird]

...When I first booted it up this morning...

I'd like to thank you for observing the advantages of ICS Stunner over the stock GB rom for such a long time, thats what i would like to call an an excellent base for judging a hole rom. this will make my decision much easier.

 

[darkinners]

A turd really a bit too much but I do agree with OP, gingerbread Note left many things to be desired and I am on ICS stunner now, only thing I missed is full function S-pen.

I do hate touchwiz in guts. It does nothing but crap out our beautiful Note
If I had to choose , HTC has best software development for proprietary software user experience. While Samsung has the best specced hardware.

Note with pure aosp/aokp ICS is the best phone available today

Just my opinion.

Sent from my GT-N7000 using XDA

 

[intruda119]

I love ics but if gb could get tablet mode I could care less about ics.

Sent from my GT-N7000 using xda premium

 

[p51d007]

You think the Note is a turd on GB?
Try coming from over a year with a Dell Streak stuck at 2.2.2
THAT was painful!
The note with GB 2.3.6, and Go Launcher EX, FLIES...at least it does for me.

 

[Koguchi9]

Haha yep I had a Streak over the year and it was developer Dj_Steve that saved it for as long as it did. Even though the Note is better in most regards if got a soft spot for it as it was my first real awesome device. Why? Because it was 5 inches Never selling that, great memories.

There was only one reason that prevented me from getting the Note on release and that was touchwiz. But a couple of months ago I got one and enjoying it. Waiting patiently for ics but most likely once the spen apps work on osap ill move to that. I just love the experience of vanilla android that I had on my Streak.

 

[GallardosEggrollShop]

Well stock GB left much to be desired but after the Devs did their magic it was great. Going to ICS and Stunner made my Note just the way I wanted it. But overall the phone was always a winner to me just for screen size alone lol but I do miss the S-pen apps.

Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk 2

 

[smalmagal]

100% agreed. I didn't buy the Note because of Touchwiz or the S-Pen really...I bought it for its awesome screen. As an Android fanatic, knowing that I could change the firmware to whatever I wanted, made it an easy buy. Most "normal" people couldn't tell you what phone they have let alone what version of Android they have, if they even know it's an Android phone to begin with. But I feel even to people like this, Touchwiz is something of a joke. It's butt-assed ugly, laggy, and just a UI disaster in general. If I was stuck with what Samsung offered me, I wouldn't have ever bought the Note in the first place.

 

[shure2]

I'd like to thank you for observing the advantages of ICS Stunner over the stock GB rom for such a long time, thats what i would like to call an an excellent base for judging a hole rom. this will make my decision much easier.

I spent half the day using apps I would normally use (xda, opera, youtube, bbc app etc) and every single one was faster on my desire z with a custom rom (no games however). For me it doesn't take days to work out how good a rom is, I've been a serial flasher for years, and I'm sure lots of others can work out how good a rom is in a few hours. Maybe the desire z is an unfair comparison because it's so good when modded? But this has twice the ram, probably nearly twice the cpu performance so I was expecting a great performance out of the box.

Maybe I got a dud stock rom? (la6) If I'd have heard the headset quality in the store I wouldn't have brought it, but it's massively improved in ICS which I haven't seen said here. Obviously this is all down to personal preference, but the distortion and lifeless high ends were very noticeable before.

Sent from my GT-N7000 using xda premium

 

[brooon]

The Mighty TouchWiz

But I feel even to people like this, Touchwiz is something of a joke. It's butt-assed ugly, laggy, and just a UI disaster in general.

This is slightly OT now, but I just want to leave a comment on that (of course, this is not going against your opinion smalgal ): I´m not really into TW as well, just because of the one fact that Ißm using my note on smaller DPI settings, where TW really doesn´t make sense anymore.

But beside that I want to get the facts straight (at least imao): TW is far from being laggy or a UI disaster. Quite the opposite: It seems like TouchWiz is by far the most stable launcher I ever came across. I have used a tons of devices now, including the mighty SGSII (which was the fastest till today). And even though Go Launcher Ex, Apex Launcher (on ICS) and a bunch of other good launchers are fast as well, none of them gives me the same stability and reliability like TouchWiz does.

Fastest wakeup from standby, absolutely NO launcher crash, absolutely NO launcher reload, nothing...just working.

Of course, there are some things they really should FINALLY include like compatibility with lower DPI settings, personalized sort order in the drawer etc.

But laggy? Absolutely not.

 

[hagba]

I myself like the TW,here is what I am gonna do:Wait for the official ICS to be released,and after that will get the best custom ROM based on it with least bloatware,and flash.,of course will make sure that I test all of them first and get whatever suits me the best.
Thats what I did with my HD2,and PDA2K long time ago,and was very happy,on my HD2 I have chosen one of the least known ROMs but very light CleaNex STD,and couldnt be happier.
And plaease dont come out and advice me that that kind of ICS ROM already exists for the Note,this is a personal approach and I am willing to wait.

 

[emuX]

I tested the Note in store before I brought it and it was terrible on the stock rom there, who knows why people would buy it...

And yet you bought one!

So maybe a lot of us are expecting great things from devs and the ICS stock build when it eventually arrives!

 

[clandestino123]

"but I do miss the s-pen apps".

Well why not just flash a rom that supports them, try it out, see how you go! If you don't like it, just go back to stunner.

I'm using midnote1.0. I believe you can use alba aswell. S-pen apps are working very well. For me, ICS is a massive improvement on GB. Everything is working instantly, and properly too. It really makes a difference.

 

[drachers]

GAH. Comparing stock anything to an XDA custom Rom isn't fair for a start. Put the latest RocketROM GB v23 up against Stunner and we'll see a contest.

 

[MR.change]

This is slightly OT now, but I just want to leave a comment on that (of course, this is not going against your opinion smalgal ): I´m not really into TW as well, just because of the one fact that Ißm using my note on smaller DPI settings, where TW really doesn´t make sense anymore.

But beside that I want to get the facts straight (at least imao): TW is far from being laggy or a UI disaster. Quite the opposite: It seems like TouchWiz is by far the most stable launcher I ever came across. I have used a tons of devices now, including the mighty SGSII (which was the fastest till today). And even though Go Launcher Ex, Apex Launcher (on ICS) and a bunch of other good launchers are fast as well, none of them gives me the same stability and reliability like TouchWiz does.

Fastest wakeup from standby, absolutely NO launcher crash, absolutely NO launcher reload, nothing...just working.

Of course, there are some things they really should FINALLY include like compatibility with lower DPI settings, personalized sort order in the drawer etc.

But laggy? Absolutely not.

TW is not that ugly , and it's definitely not laggy at all ,like you mentioned it's actually the smoothest launcher of them all.
But to be honest ,TW on the note is not as smooth as TW on the SGS2 ,actually the whole stock experience is a lot less refined than the SGS2 ,the launcher tends to reload on the note when a heavy app is loaded ,and that never ever faced me on the SGS2 before.

and since the note's hardware is on par with the S2 ,I'm actually very excited to what improvements ICS will bring along , in comparision I wasn't excited at all for the S2 ICS update cause it was perfect as it is.

but That's not to say the note is a turd to begin with ,far from it actually.

 

[brunte]

No, you don´t mess with the bootloader by installing ICS stunner. If you mess up your Note, you can allways flash a stock rom through PC Odin and start over.

This was a reply to post #4

 

[smalmagal]

Touchwiz is more than just a "launcher." It's a complete UI overlay...and it's ugly, and it's laggy. Maybe I didn't get the same phone everyone else did, no? Touchwiz launcher itself is clumsy and slow, and I personally think it's terrible. I don't know where you people getting off saying it's the best launcher you've ever used. Have you tried them all?