[Galaxy Note II Accessories] Jade Eyed Wolf:
Cool hardware lacking software... Sub par combo :P

Am I the only one who feels underwhelmed and disappointed by this product? I feel like Samsung really missed an opportunity here and it shows.

Fortunately, all the issues I have with this dock are issues that can be solved with software. Allow me to elaborate on my gripes:

We all know about Canonical and the amazing plans they have for Ubuntu on Android, which we've been hearing about for more than a year now, with nothing materializing yet, disappointingly. That's not even what I'm talking about here, although that would have been about the biggest, baddest, most awesome bombshell Samsung could have dropped on the mobile industry today, had they implemented that.

However, Samsung doesn't even have to go that far.

At the very bare minimum, I would have liked to see the phone automatically switch and stay in a landscape orientation without having to use apps to accomplish this. However, I don't feel even this would be enough to really make the dock something truly special.

Let's take it a step further Samsung. Let's be honest here, the over-sized UI of a phone interface blown up onto a proper HD monitor looks bloody awful, even when it is in landscape. Considering how Android automatically switches UI layouts based on DPI, and since all those layouts are already baked right in, let's not only have the device re-orientate itself to landscape when docked, but also show up on the monitor in full tablet UI layout, replete with soft buttons and everything. Maybe even add TouchWiz mini-apps for things like messaging and phone, etc, much like how you get with the Note 10.1, and of course turn off the phone's display, while connected, in order to improve power efficiency and prolong the life of the phone's screen.

At THAT point, I would be much more inclined to drop money on this glorified MHL adapter with USB ports. (Not that that isn't cool, but not worth $100 as it stands IMO.)

But wait, there's more! Let's take things even one more step further than having the phone shut off its screen, orientate itself to landscape, and re-display in tablet mode. Let's step away from device screen mirroring altogether for once. I mean, it's not as though the Note 2 isn't capable of such things. The Mali-400 controller has long been touted as being capable of outputting to multiple independent displays, so let's take advantage of that!

Imagine a scenario where you've got your Note 2 sitting in its dock next to a nice 27" monitor on your desktop. You Note 2 itself doesn't change its main display; it just continues to behave as it would if you had it on a charger. The dock, however, is connected to your keyboard, mouse, and an external disk drive. On the 27" display, you've got a full 1080p tablet layout Android desktop, and your phone sitting in its dock, is still in phone layout, operating independently of what you're doing on the external monitor. So, imagine having your Twitter feed on the phone display, in portrait, and on your external monitor, you have a browser running in full screen, and at the same time watching a windowed pop-up of a movie from the external hard disk, and chatting to people over SMS via the messaging mini-app.

Now, if Samsung had an agreement with Canonical and gone the UoA route instead, that just would have been the cherry on top, but those expectations would have been too high...

Samsung could have done this. It wouldn't have been too hard really. They can STILL do this in later firmware. Considering how BADASS this experience would have been for the Android community, can you see now why I'm disappointed and underwhelmed?