Galaxy Note owners internationally have been able to enjoy the benefits of Android Ice Cream Sandwich on their devices for two full months, but only now are US Note users getting the opportunity to join in on the fun. The Samsung Galaxy Note, with its phablet form factor and S-pen stylus received its ICS update two months back and with it came a new TouchWiz UI experience as well as a number of extra S-Pen friendly applications.
The Verge spent some time with the Stateside update ahead of its release to AT&T Galaxy Note customers. Naturally the update brings all of the uniform ICS improvements as well as some performance tweaks behind the scenes. Features like face unlock and Android Beam are present as well as notification dismissal and mobile data management. In truth, aside from the design differences between the international and US Note (the replacement of the hardware capacitive button combo for the four capacitive Android keys), the OS update is near enough the same.
Samsung are in fact releasing the update under the name of the ‘Premium Suite’ due to the inclusion of a number of new apps and additional S-pen features. S-Note now allows shapes and handwriting to be converted into polygonal images and actual text, respectively. There’s also Wolfram Alpha integration, meaning users can jot the occasional formula in and it can spit out an answer in response and PDFs can be imported for annotation.
There’s no guarantee the update will be open to all AT&T users off the bat, but check back regularly as the roll out is likely to take at least a week.
Leave a Reply