[Galaxy Note 10.1 General] HoushaSen:
First Impression on Galaxy Note vs. Infinity

So I own(soon be owned) transformer infinity for close to a month, and just got Galaxy Note 10.1 Today. Honestly, I was just thinking to try brand new Note and convince myself that I made a right purchase (infinity). Well... the decision got much harder. I have only played for 2 hours so far, so certain not extensive review/testing yet. But here is quick first impression.

*I did apply some build.prop tweak, and minFree tweak on Infinity and they certainly boosted the system significantly. So comparison here is after the tweaks and pre-tweak system you may see even further difference.

Pros

1. Speed

Benchmarks are just benchmarks and should not be taken as absolute; however, here you see a significant difference despite similarity in some benchmark. Antutu score are essentially the same between two. But where the major difference is I/O. RL Benchmark on Infinity improved after the latest update to 80-90's. Certainly I noticed difference from original but nowhere near the number of Phone devices. So one of the first thing I did was run this on Galaxy Note. The number was in 20's.

I cannot say for 100% that this is the underlying factor, but I certainly noticed significant difference in speed including browser (stock), and some other applications. For instance, I could not open a file on Mantano reader with Infinity and actually blamed Mantano as I did not have issue opening the file with Adobe Reader. Well, Galaxy Note opens the file fine.

2. Stability

After 2 hours of use, I have not encountered a single ANR or crush; whereas, infinity I do encounter couple crushes on browser every few hours. This certainly needs more testing, but so far promising.

3. Battery Life

Again I've only used for couple hours (screen on) so not ready to say for certain, but I have basically surfed web pretty much entire time. The battery late is ~10%/hr. Whereas, infinity 20%/hr. This was a huge drawback for me and in fact made me check Galaxy note for this reason.

Neutral:

1. TouchWiz

I used to own Galaxy 10.1 tablet both original and 4G version. TouchWiz did really nothing for me and in fact, it probably slowed down the system and for sure delayed Samsung device to get update on newer OS.

Cons

1. HD Display

My honest opinion about this is, if you have never played with infinity or new ipad, and thinking about galaxy note 10.1. DON'T! A few minutes of use at store is fine, and you may just say well HD display looks good. But once you get used to, non-HD screen's text look blurry. I used to use iPad 2 and went to infinity and solely used the device for couple weeks. Then used ipad 2 again, and immediately noticed the difference which I don't think would ever knew when simply saw my friends new ipad for several minutes.

So yes. this is a huge disadvantage of the system and it is real. But if you never used it, you may not know and won't even be an issue.

2. Samsung Brand

Don't give me wrong. The company is not bad. However, extremely slow on update, and build quality was not that great. I had my galaxy tablet 10.1 adapter port plastic come off and clearly it is not typical of accidental damage as how you would even give a specific force to just crack the portion... Samsung refused to fix this and price they quoted was $100+ to fix on my mere 4 months old tablet.

It is still made of plastic, so have to be careful handling. But as far as software update goes, unlike back in the Honeycomb era, ICS is well built and if what I am feeling right now is in fact real i.e. extreme stability, and speed. I may not even need Jellybean or future update. As I did not buy this tablet for the hope of "in the future, I hope this will do XXXX". That how good the system is acting for me right now.

Conclusion:

At this point, it is too early for me to say if I am keeping Galaxy Note 10.1. If it had HD display, not even single hesitation and I am even willing to pay extra money for it.. but since it doesn't have the feature, I just need to hope my eye get used to back to non-HD display. But otherwise, my 2 hours experience on Note is extremely good. This is true tablet experience I have been looking for. I always liked Android Ecosystem over the iOS, but stability and smoothness were always trade off. But with Galaxy Note 10.1, this is not the case.