Galaxy Note ICS upgrade - TouchWiz or CyanogenMod

Galaxy Note running CyanogenMod

We finally saw what Samsung are going to offer up for their high-end SmartPhones when it comes to Android 4.0 (ICS), last week when they send out the update for Galaxy S II. Even though I’m disappointed I can’t say that I blame them for the way they have gone about incorporating TouchWiz on to ICS. It gives the millions of Galaxy S II users an ICS upgrade without changing the experience they had before. Only a small group of hardcore Android users are going to care, and they are rooting the Galaxy S II and loading CyanogenMod CM9 on it anyway.

As a Galaxy Note user I look at the Galaxy S II ICS update and hope that Samsung are going to stick with what they have say so many times already. The Galaxy Note is not a phone and not a tablet. Personally I don’t like the ‘phablet’ name, but if Samsung is serious about the Galaxy Note being something new, I hope that is reflected in the ICS update coming in just a few weeks. ICS have both a mobile and a tablet mode build in, one could hope that Samsung would take this upgrade just that one step further. If Samsung ends up letting me down on the ICS update, and my money is on that they will, I’m going to be looking hard at what the CyanogenMod team is going to do for the Galaxy Note. I have been using the CM7 version on a HTC Desire and a Release Candidate CM9 on a LG Optimus 2X. Both bring out the absolute best in the two phones, and gives them both new life. I know that CyanogenMod are working on as CM9 port for the Galaxy Note, but it’s still in Alpha, and that got me thinking about what I would really like from ICS on the Galaxy Note.

Back when Android 4 was released I wrote about it, and I had this comment,

“… I had expected that a phone running Android 4, would have behaved a lot more like Honeycomb when used in landscape mode.”

I truly believe that the Galaxy Note have the potential to be the crossover device that bridge the gap between phones and tablets. With ICS the software now support the hardware in a way that makes it even more possible. I would love to be able to use the Galaxy Note as a real tablet when I had that need, and I it would be nice if apps optimized for tablets recognized the Galaxy Note as such.

CyanogenMod team, if you by any chance happen to read this, here is what I hope to get in CM9 for Galaxy Note. Full support for the S-pen in all apps. A custom setting that enables ICS tablet mode, then the Galaxy Note is in landscape mode. Support for external keyboards with selectable language layout. Full support of MHL output for connection of an external monitor. If this happens, either from Samsung or the CyanogenMod team, the Galaxy Note will be the perfect computing companion. A phone then used in one hand, a tablet when used with two hands, and a PC when docked a home or in the office.

Quad-core phones - Time for a paradigm shift

Make a quad-core phone make sense with modular computing

Mobile World Congress 2012 brought us a very large amount of new products. Most of the high-end models were based on a quad-core processor, and all mid-range models used dual-core. The tech press is mostly impressed with the lineup from LG, HTC, Huawei and ZTE and I’m personally looking forward to spending more time with the HTC One X. So all should be well and good, right?

No, there is a large problem. The mobile tech world is more and more about specs. This has been coming for some time. When the dual-cores CPU for mobile was introduced nobody asked how it should be used. Everybody just loved the fact that their mobile now could have a dual-cores processor. Now we have quad-core processors, and still nobody is trying to explain to the customers what it supposed to do for them.

The evolution of the mobile market the last 1 - 2 years is starting to look a lot like the PC market did 4 years ago. The high-en models are so powerful that only games can manage to utilize all that power. No normal app has the need for quad-core processing power, and the manufactures have a hard time explaining to the customer why they should buy high-end model. The reaction from the customers back then was to buy Netbooks in large amounts.

If this is not too happen in mobile, company's like Samsung, HTC and LG needs to very quickly come up with something that make sense to the customer. Games are all well and good, but it’s not enough. There needs to be some type of app or user scenario that validates the quad-cores phones in the market place. It’s not something they have the time to figure out over the next 1 - 2 years. No, these very powerful phones are coming to a store near you in 2 - 4 months.

Last year I did a post on what I expected the processing power of a quad-core processor would be used for in a phone. I only did the post in Danish so I’ll list the highlights here.

• Games
• User interface enhancements
• Video, photo and sound editing
• Improved voice control
• Modular computing

Some of these things need apps from third party developers and some relies on Google and improvements in Android. The last thing, modular computing, will only happened if somebody educates the customers and shows them how it’s done.

I’m not sure who that someone should be, but manufactures are going to lose the ability to sell high-end phones in maybe 1 - 2 years if the other things on my list do not succeed to move the market. I believe that the manufactures of Android phones are in a unique position to do something very different right now. Apple owns the tablet market, and Microsoft is about to eat up what is left of it. Microsoft and Apple is the only contenders in the desktop OS world and no new OS is about to change that. Android is growing in the mobile space and needs to do something new to keep growing.

Google should stop trying to make Android a tablet OS, if they really ever started, and focus on mobile. Introduce either a dual-boot system in Android, or use Chrome as a springboard to improve the modular computing experience. Google also need to work with accessory manufactures to build docks and keyboard/mouse solutions that make the transformation of your phone to a computer easy and not too expensive. This way Google with Android and the manufactures building the phones can look to expand where there is no competition. Make modular computing popular and quad-core phone will seem like a logic choice to the customers, and keep them asking for more.