Fab-let !

Almost a year back when Sammy outed the Galaxy Note,it brought back the much doomed stylus(or S-Pen as they call it),which were somehow lost in the world of capacitive touchscreens.Interestingly though,the Note still had a capacitive screen.

Note was killer in terms of its specs,a dual-core processor,full HD video recording,a gig of RAM,blah,and lastly,a ginormous 5.3" display,with a measly 1280x800 resolution.
Now,large screen phones aren't a new thing in the Droid world,so Samsung had to get their act together with their ace in hole,the S-Pen.Though not as advanced,it provided the novelty factor of doodling around,creating notes,and a handy screenshot feature.Rightly dubbed the Phablet(a cross between,a phone and a tablet),the device crunched strong numbers for Samsung,globally.

Personally,it seemed too big a device for a phone and too small to be a tablet.But hey,numbers speak otherwise !The S-Pen was a killer feature,which differentiated the device from other phones available in the market,but a 5.3" screen seemed a little too small to completely utilize its true potential.

Cut,MWC 2012,Samsung showcased the Note 10.1.Finally,a full-fledged tablet with the S-Pen.
Okay,so a 10.1" screen was a start,but the hardware wasn't quite upto mark.(Considering it was just a preview device)
And so,after months and months of speculation,Samsung released a video,demonstrating the new Note 10.1.It seemed quite snappy than the preview device and boasted of new features.One which will be marketed by Samsung a lot will be the "Multiscreen" feature,wherein you can actually tile 2 windows and share things from one window to the other,via the S-Pen.Although,its restricted to 5-6 apps at the moment,it will be interesting to see where Samsung take this feature.The video made by Samsung looks really promising.Personally,I love the PS Touch app,coupled with the S-Pen.(Lets see what Apple comes up with this time around,to sue Sammy :P)

Specwise,Note 10.1 is right there at the top,with a quad core processor,2 gigs of RAM,the usual memory configurations,microSD,etc.Although an out of the box ICS seems a little outdated,in the JB world now.Lets hope Sammy fix that soon.

And with the Note 2(rumoured to be a 5.5" display and the best benchmarks scores as of now),already slated for release by the end of the month,it will be interesting to see how the two Note siblings hold up against each other.

Samsung's preview video for Note :

Thank you dev teams!

In this age of ever evolving technology,it makes absolutely no sense to buy a piece of defunct technology.Even the OEMs regard their latest one as obsolete within weeks of its launch and being work on the next one.Hell,the company manufacturers a new device/chip whilst you are buying the "latest" one.

And so,to a normal person,it makes you look like a fool when you tell them that you bought the 1st iteration of the series,when the world is expecting its 3rd.
But,little do people know about the Godly people know as 'Dev Teams',who pump new life into our so called "old" device.
While the world was on stock 2.3.4,I was running ROMs based of 2.3.7 for a couple of months.The difference was clearly visible,as without the bloatware,my device was much smoother than that of my friends,running the same hardware.

But the real deal was getting onto ICS,while the most of the world,with same hardware,was still running high and dry on GB ROMS,totally cut-off from support from OEMs.Heck,even most new released devices(read Xperia) were still running GB ROMs.
Although these ROMs are labelled as nightly builds,I can vouch for them being more stable and usable than most of the GB ROMs available out there(including the stock ones).And there is still a stable one in the pipeline.
Making a 2 year old hardware run the latest piece of software,is an achievement in itself,let alone making it more stable and usable than the stock softwares.And to my amazement,the battery life keeps on getting better!
And with their unrelenting support and love for the device,I'll be soon off to JB!

Thank you all the devs who make my "2 year old device" put the "latest devices" to shame.Keep up the good work.Oh yeah,and I love your work,and when we meet,I shall definitely buy you all beer :D

- Obsessive Compulsive Flasher(CM9 nightlies,almost every week .. CM10 in a couple of weeks)