[cel4145]

Personally, the only thing I'm lacking with the Note 2 is desktop power. I sold my laptop (mid-2011 MacBook Air 13), tablet (3rd-gen iPad) and some ephemeral smartphones (Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4, iPhone 5) to end up with the Note 2. I find it sufficiently accomplishes the tasks I'd do on these devices, while I have a relatively high-end desktop to handle the rest. The $600 I spent on the Note 2 actually saved me a ton of money.

If I had an iPod or standalone MP3 player I'd no longer need that, too (80GB of overall storage).

Me, too. I have a Nexus 7 that I like for reading ebooks. But otherwise, the Note 2 totally does it for me except for usage where I need a productivity app that only works on Windows and really needs a a much larger screen, keyboard, and mouse.

My only complaint is that I wished Samsung made an extended battery and extended battery back cover, so that it would be a standardized size and easy to find cases for. I would love to double the battery life on it given how useful it is for so much. It really needs the battery life of a good phone and a tablet combined.

 

[Ashade]

Quote:

Me, too. I have a Nexus 7 that I like for reading ebooks. But otherwise, the Note 2 totally does it for me except for usage where I need a productivity app that only works on Windows and really needs a a much larger screen, keyboard, and mouse.

My only complaint is that I wished Samsung made an extended battery and extended battery back cover, so that it would be a standardized size and easy to find cases for. I would love to double the battery life on it given how useful it is for so much. It really needs the battery life of a good phone and a tablet combined.

 
I am fine with the battery but when I carry a backpack, I bring this with me just in case:
http://www.amazon.com/Lightning-Thunderbolt-Blackberry-connectors-customized/dp/B009USAJCC
and just stick it to the back of the note II if needed. With two amps you can charge this thing really fast.
 
What I am really considering is getting rid of the phone and move to a nexus 7 3G as my principal device... 

 

[cel4145]

What I am really considering is getting rid of the phone and move to a nexus 7 3G as my principal device... 

My Nexus 7 is just a little too big for me for phone usage. That, and the USB audio support on the Nexus 7 requires a different kernel. Seems stupid that Google didn't require Asus to enable the USB audio support on the Nexus 7 :mad:

 

[Ashade]

Quote:

My Nexus 7 is just a little too big for me for phone usage. That, and the USB audio support on the Nexus 7 requires a different kernel. Seems stupid that Google didn't require Asus to enable the USB audio support on the Nexus 7

 
Well, at least you got that possibility, I couldn't find a kernel for usb in the Nexus 10 yet... 

 

[Migou67]

The best think for me is that Samsung has choice a Wolfson DAC for the Note 2, it's my first smartphone as I also use for music listening.
 
Edit : Get the most from your Note II sound!! - UPDATED v2.0.1.10
https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...eizo.rewirepro
 
Install this (just updated) and follow this modelling:
>>Go to Settings > Sound > Music Effect > Noozxoide EIZO-rewire™ PRO > OK.
>>Open Noozxoide EIZO-rewire™ PRO and configure it according to guide below.

ATTENTION: Please don't flash your phone with any audio mods before using this, it's not necessary, just install this one and forget the other audio mods. This apk already include every sound libs needed. If you install/flash any other sound mods, the sound will be terrible!

▼ SETUP 【configure as default filter】【reboot when necessary】
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Settings > Sound > Music Effects > Choose "Noozxoide EIZO-rewire™ PRO Series"

▼ ADVANCED MODELING for【MUSIC】
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
TURN ON Noozxoide Balanced X-EQ™, Choose "UNIQUE III" from Digital Presets.
TURN ON Noozxoide LogicSurround ES™, set your VSUR room size "Focus/Studio".

▼ ADVANCED MODELING for【MOVIE/GAME】
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
TURN ON Noozxoide Psychoacoustic™ II, set the effect strength "Large".
TURN ON Noozxoide Balanced X-EQ™, Choose "Cinema/Game" from Digital Presets.
TURN ON Noozxoide LogicSurround ES™, set your VSUR room size "Focus/LIVE I/II".
 
Source : http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2039716

 

[Ashade]

From Laptop Magazine:

"On our light meter, we measured 229 lux for the Note II, versus 165 lux for the Note and 213 lux for the Galaxy S III. We had some difficulty reading the Note II's screen in direct sunlight, but it was easier to see content than on the S III. The average smartphone is 298 lux, and the iPhone 5's 4-inch display (525 lux) is significantly brighter."


Sorry, my mistake. The iPhone is 2.29x as bright. 


amoled and super amoled displays are horrible in direct sunlight,  This is a fact, not speculation. I own both the Note 2 and the iPhone 5. I would rank the Note 2 display as almost unreadable in direct sunlight, the iPhone has the best direct light mobile phone screen I have found. 

I hope this is enough data to support my comment. 

About the brightness again, I found this:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2278824

 

[ddoyle777]

Woohoo! HeadAmp Pico USB DAC/amp back today - can confirm it is now working perfectly with the Note 2 and International S3! Thank you so much Justin.

Also, FWIW, his fix also allows it to work with the Nokia Pureview 808 (it didn't before).

It doesn't work with the HTC Butterfly, and I suspect that is because it can't output enough power - it is obvious that HTC have severely curtailed USB OTG power-output in that handset (one presumes because its battery life is **** enough already). Will try it with a powered hub and see...

 

[Rpg2]

Quote:

The best think for me is that Samsung has choice a Wolfson DAC for the Note 2, it's my first smartphone as I also use for music listening.
 
Edit : Get the most from your Note II sound!! - UPDATED v2.0.1.10
https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...eizo.rewirepro
 
Install this (just updated) and follow this modelling:
>>Go to Settings > Sound > Music Effect > Noozxoide EIZO-rewire™ PRO > OK.
>>Open Noozxoide EIZO-rewire™ PRO and configure it according to guide below.

ATTENTION: Please don't flash your phone with any audio mods before using this, it's not necessary, just install this one and forget the other audio mods. This apk already include every sound libs needed. If you install/flash any other sound mods, the sound will be terrible!

▼ SETUP 【configure as default filter】【reboot when necessary】
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Settings > Sound > Music Effects > Choose "Noozxoide EIZO-rewire™ PRO Series"

▼ ADVANCED MODELING for【MUSIC】
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
TURN ON Noozxoide Balanced X-EQ™, Choose "UNIQUE III" from Digital Presets.
TURN ON Noozxoide LogicSurround ES™, set your VSUR room size "Focus/Studio".

▼ ADVANCED MODELING for【MOVIE/GAME】
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
TURN ON Noozxoide Psychoacoustic™ II, set the effect strength "Large".
TURN ON Noozxoide Balanced X-EQ™, Choose "Cinema/Game" from Digital Presets.
TURN ON Noozxoide LogicSurround ES™, set your VSUR room size "Focus/LIVE I/II".
 
Source : http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2039716

 
Seemed fairly good, and easy to use for an EQ. I found myself using Neutron Player + Nooz with just the Psychoacoustic enabled on Small - I as a bass boost. Didn't like any of the other options. What I do like is that there are separate profiles for the phone speakers and headphone/line out.
 
Going to try flashing kernel to NEAK now and see how that is. I think NEAK seems to have the best battery life with the wolfson audio improvements but are there better kernels for audio and battery life out there?
 

 

[Ashade]

Quote:

 
Seemed fairly good, and easy to use for an EQ. I found myself using Neutron Player + Nooz with just the Psychoacoustic enabled on Small - I as a bass boost. Didn't like any of the other options. What I do like is that there are separate profiles for the phone speakers and headphone/line out.
 
Going to try flashing kernel to NEAK now and see how that is. I think NEAK seems to have the best battery life with the wolfson audio improvements but are there better kernels for audio and battery life out there?
 

 
I don´t know if it's better but I am using Perseus and I am pretty happy with it. Will give a try to NEAK though.

 

[whatthefunk]

Coming from the Droid Charge, a Galaxy S1 variant, I have owned the Verizon Note 2 for about a week. Initially tried Perseus kernel and wasn't convinced. Maybe I didn't have it configured right. Now I'm on PBJ Kernel, with boeffla sound. After using Boeffla sound control app to enable DAC direct and turn on the volume service, which like Voodoo control, will maximize digital volume and minimize the analog amp volume, SQ is improved. I'm still not sure it's as good as my Galaxy S1 but it's getting there...

 

[Rpg2]

I was under the impression that most kernels used the boeffla sound modifications to improve the dac audio so they should sound about the same between the differing kernels. They all seem to have the same options such as 128x oversampling, FLL clock tuning, and DAC direct. I have all 3 options enabled and things sound fairly good!
 
Definitely go download Neutron Player from Google Play store. It is supposed to be the best music player app in terms of sound quality, but has a poor UI design. It has options like 64 bit processing, crossfeed, dithering, it's own DAC controls, and high quality resampling.
 
Both NEAK and Neutron Player support USB OTG for using a DAC. My Corda 2Move works fine with it. The only issue is the USB out doesn't provide enough power to my DAC so I need to have a battery in order to use it. Headphone out sounds fairly similar to my DAC after turning on NEAK DAC options and 64 bit processing in Neutron (for lossy MP3, FLAC files stay 16bit). It's nice to know that I can get similar quality without having to tote my DAC set up around!

 

[deadguy99]

All of the kernels that support boeffla sound great but implement EQ differently, the perseus kernal i dont like because with the built in equalizer boosting bass just results in massive distortion even with the compression thing built in to prevent it ... its horrid, Adam Kernal uses the actualy boeffla control app which does the same as the rest using Stweaks but its the only one that has the sub bass checkbox that eliminates all distortion and sounds really really clean at any volume.... but theres a downside the volume is always going up and down depending on the passage of the music if its quiet the boeffla app increases sound so its actively monitoring output and clipping and thats just unacceptable. My favorite is RedPill i get good battery life and the built in equalizer works fine as long as you set the preamp reduction 3db more than your EQ offset IE 6db bass boost = -9db preamp setting... also redpill is the only kernal i can set the headphone amp gain setting to 50 and get no distortion at any volume.
 
The only kernal i havent tried yet is NEAK because it doesnt natively support exfat which is what i left my SD card set for stability/performance but i might reformat fat32 and recopy my music just to try it but from what i've read its the same as the others but neak has an app that has alot of DSP's that can alter sound even further.
 
I use poweramp with all sound eq's turned off because they are horrid and clip with even a couple db of boost and use the hardware EQ because it works really well with redpill. Ive tried neutron but its interface and excessively useless options seems like a waste. I've always read oversampling music adds nothing to the music and can add artifacts aswell so i've always tried to stick to simple music playback.
 
Also for some reason redpill kernel defaults the 3rd boeffla option turned off (bypass analog channel mixer) I'm not sure why but i cant tell a differnece with it on or off so i left it off.

 

[deadguy99]

On a side note This phone really does everything so well even with the small gripes like the akward volume increments that start off fairly loud then increase in large increments and at the end of the steps have almost no increase lol. I only wish the output was maybe 20% louder so i can play it at say its current maximum with extremely clarity. But overall i get a little over 6 hours of screen on time and it lasts all day using 3g(h/h+) While playing music the entire time with it in my pocket with spotty coverage and around 10 hours using wifi and is so big i have sold all my tablets phones and mp3 players and amps to finally have 1 all in one device and i've never been happier with a purchase in my life. Just a man with his phone and headphones and no more bulk.
 
I hope they keep the audio quality the same or better in the Note 3 at the end of this year because an increase in screen density and possibly a 64gb internal option with a 64gb flash would be the cherry on top. But so far results for the S4 haven't been all that promising on the audio quality and with my XBA4ip people are talking about clipping on bass heavy tracks so i hope they find a better implementation on the Note 3 like they did the N2 vs S3.

 

[Rpg2]

I hate the UI and options in Neutron Player, but I'll put up with it for the audio quality. You set your preferences and basically all you have to deal with after that are the tracklists and Now Playing screen. Oversampling (128x) does seem intended only for files such as 96Khz/24bit so I may turn that off.
 
I originally went with the international S3 for the DAC, but ended up going with the Note II because of 2GB RAM and costing $20 more. Luckily for me, the DAC implementation in the Note II is better because of it's larger size.

 

[cravenz]

I hate the UI and options in Neutron Player, but I'll put up with it for the audio quality. You set your preferences and basically all you have to deal with after that are the tracklists and Now Playing screen. Oversampling (128x) does seem intended only for files such as 96Khz/24bit so I may turn that off.

I originally went with the international S3 for the DAC, but ended up going with the Note II because of 2GB RAM and costing $20 more. Luckily for me, the DAC implementation in the Note II is better because of it's larger size.

Same. The Neutron UI leaves a lot to be desired unfortunately.