How does the Note II hardware stack up today?

[dawheat]

The best part about the Note 2 is the battery life. I'm still somewhat disappointed that Samsung didn't pull that off with the GS4.

Agree X 10. You forget how nice it is to never work about charging it during the day. Just came back from Paris where I used a SFR SIM in my phone and I was able to go all day pulling maps, tripadvisor, and yelp with no worries about battery life.

I work in the far out burbs of NYC and my connection fluctuates all day between LTE, 4G, and 3G on AT&T, no wi-fi until I get home.

On my S3 running a debloated ROM, I could only get maybe 2 hours of on-screen time.

On my Note 2 running a deboated ROM, I can get minimum 4 hours of on-screen time.

Not oddly, when I work from home where I have wi-fi all day, I can get up to 6 hours of on-screen time.

 

[ChronoReverse]

I've been getting decent screen-on time with my GS4 after some trimming and custom work.

I guess my expectations are rather high because I was commenting to my friend that "I was using my phone and it was down to 40% after 4 hours of screen on time" but was told that's actually quite good =X

 

[s44]

Agree X 10. You forget how nice it is to never work about charging it during the day. Just came back from Paris where I used a SFR SIM in my phone and I was able to go all day pulling maps, tripadvisor, and yelp with no worries about battery life.

Just curious, how much data did this eat? Wondering what the average consumption is for travel purposes.

I guess my expectations are rather high because I was commenting to my friend that "I was using my phone and it was down to 40% after 4 hours of screen on time" but was told that's actually quite good =X

Yeah, I'm guessing you never had a GNex. The S4 has literally twice the battery life.

 

[dawheat]

Just curious, how much data did this eat? Wondering what the average consumption is for travel purposes.

I don't recall the exact, but the pre-paid plan included 300mb of data (along with unlimited talk/text) for something like 20 euros (+10 for the SIM which was totally lame). In the week I was in Paris, I didn't exceed this (I think it ended up being around 225mb on my phone).

Caveat - I was extremely disciplined to not surf, turned off all auto-syncs including email, and we had 2 phones which we split time on. Surfing/email was only done back at the hotel under wifi.

London was way easier where 10 pounds got 500mb and 15 pounds got 2gb - with no separate charge for the SIM.

 

[jacktesterson]

I disagree that Mali GPU is weaker, at least as far as GUI performance is concerned.

It posts ~800Mpixel fillrate stock, and 1.2-1.3Gpixel fillrate @ 800mhz (and everyone can pretty much reach at least 733). This puts Mali ~ @ the same fillrate as Adreno 320, but only needs to fill a 1280*720 screen. Overclocked Mali has a significantly higher fillrate.

Its pixel shader performance seems similar to Adreno 320, although geometry performance is ~ 1/5. GUI performance is not be limited by triangle throughput however.

This suggests that for GUI, Mali holds its own against Adreno. To wit, I receive ~ 2450 Vellamo 2 HTML5 (730-750 Metal), running Carbon Rom 1.7 @ 1920mhz CPU/533mhz GPU. Benchmarks aren't the final say, but may be indicative.

You're talking Overclocking the GPU though, by at least 38%

You do realize only a tiny percentage of people out there overclock their phones, right? (We're talking less than 1%)

I think my statement holds true - the Adreno 320 will last longer than the Mali

I never said the Mali was bad at all. Hell, the Adreno 220 is still fast enough to run almost any game on full settings today.

 

[ControlD]

I have certainly been learning the ins and outs of ROM flashing over the last couple of days. I think I finally found one that works well and still lets me connect to my network extender without putting me in roaming mode. It is a fun process though.

 

[Zaap]

Having had mine for months now, it amazes me how the Note 2 doesn't even seem big at all anymore.

This is now my 'norm', and other phones just seem ridiculously small in comparison. Only thing that bugs me, is now I'd have a hard time going back to anything smaller, so I hope the industry keeps making 'normal' sized phones.

 

[ChronoReverse]

Yeah, it took me a while to get used to "small" phones again when I sold my Note 1.

 

[pakotlar]

You're talking Overclocking the GPU though, by at least 38%

You do realize only a tiny percentage of people out there overclock their phones, right? (We're talking less than 1%)

I think my statement holds true - <b>the Adreno 320 will last longer than the Mali</b>

I never said the Mali was bad at all. Hell, the Adreno 220 is still fast enough to run almost any game on full settings today.

I don't think I ever spoke to this. I was just stating that regarding UI performance, Mali @720p should be at least as capable as Adreno 320 is @1080p, owing to the fact that most operations will be fillrate bound, or pixel shader bound (less likely), both of which Mali excels at (although Adreno 320 should be faster in pixel shader operations).

Regarding overclocking, it's not necessary to reach Adreno 320 fillrate @ the same resolution.

 

[ChronoReverse]

I doubt fillrate limits anything at 2D for either phone. The fillrate advantage has no real-life implications.

 

[pakotlar]

Really? Do you have a source?

I seem to recall Google talking about GPU acceleration limitations owing to insufficient GPU fill rate.
In fact, at the last Google I/O, two members of their GUI group spent quite a bit of time talking about optimizing to limit overdraw, which is primarily a fill rate issue.

Here's the talk: https://developers.google.com/events/io/sessions/325418001

Here is some more info:
"GPUs are fillrate limited": http://www.google.com/events/io/2011/static/presofiles/android_accelerated_rendering.pdf

"Avoid overdraw": http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/graphics/hardware-accel.html

Etc. Im just starting to move into android app development, so maybe you know something I don't.

 

[ChronoReverse]

You'll notice that it's talking about the Nexus S and Xoom which are ancient devices on the mobile end. The Nexus 4 has more than 5 times the fillrate but less than 3x the pixels. Those Honeycomb slides turned out to be crap anyway since Jellybean came along later and then suddenly 60FPS UI was actually possible after all (showing it was just Android being stupendously inefficient - but we already knew that from the iPhone).

Every modern phone running Jellybean already pegs the framecounter at 60 and lag spikes are always due to CPU or IO access (e.g., when populating a list). So even empirically it bears out.




Besides, we know the raw achievable fillrates here. 880 MTexels/s for the Adreno 320 is enough for 6x overdraw at 60FPS for 1080p. So while it's not unlimited, it's certainly should be enough.

Interestingly enough, the fillrate of the i9505 and Note2 are equal (so the Note2 can deal with twice the overdraw) but the i9500 has twice the fillrate of the i9505 (so it can handle equal overdraw). Nonetheless both GS4's have similar UI performance (i.e., smooth whenever Samsung bloat isn't creeping in)



Even more interesting is how Android dev suggests aiming for at most 2x overdraw. If you turn on the dev settings to show overdraw, anything 4x and above is dark red implying you should never have dark red. And yet the i9505 has enough overdraw provision for beyond that for 6x overdraw.

 

[pakotlar]

You'll notice that it's talking about the Nexus S and Xoom which are ancient devices on the mobile end. The Nexus 4 has more than 5 times the fillrate but less than 3x the pixels. Those Honeycomb slides turned out to be crap anyway since Jellybean came along later and then suddenly 60FPS UI was actually possible after all (showing it was just Android being stupendously inefficient - but we already knew that from the iPhone).

Every modern phone running Jellybean already pegs the framecounter at 60 and lag spikes are always due to CPU or IO access (e.g., when populating a list). So even empirically it bears out.




Besides, we know the raw achievable fillrates here. 880 MTexels/s for the Adreno 320 is enough for 6x overdraw at 60FPS for 1080p. So while it's not unlimited, it's certainly should be enough.

Interestingly enough, the fillrate of the i9505 and Note2 are equal (so the Note2 can deal with twice the overdraw) but the i9500 has twice the fillrate of the i9505 (so it can handle equal overdraw). Nonetheless both GS4's have similar UI performance (i.e., smooth whenever Samsung bloat isn't creeping in)



Even more interesting is how Android dev suggests aiming for at most 2x overdraw. If you turn on the dev settings to show overdraw, anything 4x and above is dark red implying you should never have dark red. And yet the i9505 has enough overdraw provision for beyond that for 6x overdraw.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply.

Well I'm not sure about the assertion regarding dropped frames, I honestly don't know enough about this, but what you say make sense, neither devices should be fill rate bound, when observing recommended design practices.

Would any Mali performance characteristic put it at a disadvantage compared to adreno 320 devices wrt GUI performance?

 

[ChronoReverse]

I don't think so. As you noted, the Mali in the Note2 has more fillrate available relative to its resolution (2x in fact) vs the Snapdragon GS4. Everyone I know with the Note2 tells me it's smooth.


Oh, here's something amusing, an Acer Aspire 4738G with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470 has only 639 MTexels/s fillrate, which is lower than the Adreno 320. Completely destroys the Adreno 320 in actually 3D tests though since fillrate isn't a limiting factor.

 

[ControlD]

So last night my wife asked me how I am liking the new phone now that I have spent a couple of weeks with it. I told her "You know, now that I have gotten used to it I could stand for it to be a little bigger". In any case, this thing is pretty awesome.

 

[s44]

I told her "You know, now that I have gotten used to it I could stand for it to be a little bigger".

That's what... ahem

Enjoy it.

 

[Chocu1a]

That's what... ahem

Enjoy it.

lol...perfect setup

If you decide to unlock the bootloader & root/rom your Note(which I highly recommend. Checkout CleanROM ACE), Check out the section at XDA. Lots of great roms, both Touchwiz based & AOSP

 

[ControlD]

lol...perfect setup

If you decide to unlock the bootloader & root/rom your Note(which I highly recommend. Checkout CleanROM ACE), Check out the section at XDA. Lots of great roms, both Touchwiz based & AOSP

Yeah, I realized my mistake after hitting "post" lol.

Right now I am running the MeanBeans ROM. I also like Jelly Beans quite a bit as well.

One strange thing I have found is that if I run any ROM that uses the international base as opposed to the Verizon base, whenever I connect to my network extender at home I am on roaming. That sort of limits the options but I still have a few ROMs I want to check out.

 

[Chocu1a]

Yeah, I realized my mistake after hitting "post" lol.

Right now I am running the MeanBeans ROM. I also like Jelly Beans quite a bit as well.

One strange thing I have found is that if I run any ROM that uses the international base as opposed to the Verizon base, whenever I connect to my network extender at home I am on roaming. That sort of limits the options but I still have a few ROMs I want to check out.

MeanBeans is great, So is JellyBeans. There is a CleanROM VZW SE based off the official Verizon base, too.

 

[poofyhairguy]

So last night my wife asked me how I am liking the new phone now that I have spent a couple of weeks with it. I told her "You know, now that I have gotten used to it I could stand for it to be a little bigger". In any case, this thing is pretty awesome.

That is great to hear Dave!

 

[arch113]

I still haven't seen another phone that I want more than my Note 2. As far as hardware, the phone is plenty fast and has no issues.

This ^

 

[Raduque]

Every once in a while while I'm out, I'll see someone on a Note and I'll walk by and say 'Nice tablet!'

I haven't gotten beat up yet.

Somebody said that to me while they were using an iPhone 4 (or 4S). I told them to stop using a kid's toy phone.

 

[shortylickens]

I love it but theres one minor issue.

Whenever I pull up the gallery it takes forever to display images, even local ones on the phone or SD card. I think its checking picasa first.

Does anyone know a way to make the gallery display local images first and then pull cloud ones up in the background?

Changing wallpapers is annoyingly slow.


- HOT DAMN! -
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2206868
Touchwiz stuff I was not aware of! Everything is old news to me though.

 

[Zaap]

I love it but theres one minor issue.

Whenever I pull up the gallery it takes forever to display images, even local ones on the phone or SD card. I think its checking picasa first.

Does anyone know a way to make the gallery display local images first and then pull cloud ones up in the background?

Changing wallpapers is annoyingly slow.

Haven't seen either problem.

For gallery- make sure it's not displaying lots of unwanted images out of places other than your pictures folder(s). Something could be dragging it to a halt.

(Example: I have a ton of eBooks on my Note 2, and Gallery was displaying hundreds of cover image files from my eBooks folder.)

Solution: put .nomedia file in the eBooks folder (and any folder with images that doesn't need to show in Gallery) clear the Gallery app cache and data, also media storage cache and data. Reboot- no more unwanted images in Gallery.

Better yet- kick Gallery to the curb and just use QuickPic.

 

[pakotlar]

I don't think so. As you noted, the Mali in the Note2 has more fillrate available relative to its resolution (2x in fact) vs the Snapdragon GS4. Everyone I know with the Note2 tells me it's smooth.


Oh, here's something amusing, an Acer Aspire 4738G with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470 has only 639 MTexels/s fillrate, which is lower than the Adreno 320. Completely destroys the Adreno 320 in actually 3D tests though since fillrate isn't a limiting factor.

It's pretty amazing to think that we're running around with Nvidia Geforce 6800gt - 7800gt performance in our pockets.