Just picked up a Galaxy Note II today. I was really looking forward to this, as I thought I would enjoy Android. Here are my thoughts so far. I would appreciate any comments or suggestions.
If some of these issues are my inexperience showing itself, I'd be happy to hear it and I'd love to get a fix. Otherwise, I cannot understand why anyone would want to use this? Being able to tinker is fine, but being FORCED to tinker because the stock software is badly-designed is certainly not ideal.
- It is absolutely absurd that Android, a Google product, ships with a default mail app that does not support GMail, another Google product. I know I can use the GMail app, but seriously.
- The screen is great. I love the size.
- The maps and navigation are really amazing.
- Having the front screen taken up almost entirely by a weather prediction (for the wrong city, despite allowing it to locate me) is hideous design.
- Seriously, why can I not doodle a picture over text with the S-Pen without getting a third-party texting app? Note that this is the second (email being the first) major native function I've had to replace.
- The worst sin on this list: Visual voicemail should not require an additional subscription. It's not 2005. You're competing with the iPhone. Suck it up and give that service for free. There's no excuse for this one at all. Yes I know I can use Google Voice, but that's a kludge and replaces yet another major native function with an outsourced version.
- Google Voice isn't putting up a notice on the app icon when I have voicemail waiting. Fantastic. And it's not hooking into texts properly. Double awesome.
- Turning the phone sideways to type a text covers all previous texts. Come on - that's lazy design.
- Not being able to delete a TON of pre-installed garbage is greedy, lazy, or both.
- The Google Play store is laid out like it was designed by a team of 50 artists who had no shared vision or communication. You can't find anything your account has done in the past (such as a download history) and if you were to remove the search function, I doubt I'd ever find a single app I was looking for.
If some of these issues are my inexperience showing itself, I'd be happy to hear it and I'd love to get a fix. Otherwise, I cannot understand why anyone would want to use this? Being able to tinker is fine, but being FORCED to tinker because the stock software is badly-designed is certainly not ideal.