360p is still in the neck-breaking view, 480p and 720p edited to view properly. My modded Samsung Galaxy Note, with ADW EX, MultiPicture Live Wallpaper + 3D UI, WP7 Contacts + Dialer, Simi Clock/Circle Battery/Colorize FB & Twitter widgets, and Alt Drawer app drawer, to simulate WP7's own app drawer.

Not featured in the video is the CRT animation from Nexus S when turning off the screen. The music player is called "3".

I'm still finding a way to get a transparent email widget and a transparent Google Search bar. There is a widget called "ICS Search Bar for Go widget", but it doesn't work with ADW EX, only Go Launcher. Still nothing on the email.

This post has been edited by stringfellow: Nov 21 2011, 12:40 AM

Found the last two transparent widgets I need.

Edited the /system/apps folder with a modified transparent Google Search Bar APK (it now looks like an ICS Google Search Bar widget!), and for the transparent calendar, installed Jorte, and picking the Black color style with 12.5% transparency. Modification complete!

Googled "HD Wallpapers" and picked what I saw best.

My home page changes background wallpaper at an internal of 1 hour, unless I double tap, where it will rotate between the 13 wallpapers I've chosen. I only needed 5 screens.

Those interested in movie management app on the Android, can opt for Plex for Android. Movies are in fact streamed from your server (Mac or Windows) to your Android device, and plays on your Android device, wherever you are. Yes, even when you're walking outside of your home WiFi coverage, or overseas on a hotel WiFi. The app logs onto your myPlex account, and transcode/streams the movies on-the-fly to be viewed on your device. This alleviates the need to have huge storage space on your Android device and you have access to all your movies you left back home.

Plex for Android also works as a WiFi remote for your Plex Media Server/Player on your Mac/Windows so that when your movies are playing on the big screen HDTV at home, the app smartly detects that it is connected to a server and turns itself into a remote where you can control and browse content on your movie server. Infinitely better than any WDLive/AppleTV/<insert China-made media player> out there.

Your server version has to be Plex "Laika", a.k.a the .9.5.1 release to enjoy the "watch streamed movies anywhere" feature.

Notice that when you're installing games, the APK file is less than 10MB in size but the additional download are not stored in that 1.97GB storage space, it is installed in the 11.xGB space instead. You have o understand how Android allocates what files where, so this is not an issue.

*480p is corrected for the right viewing angle.*

More Plex for Android in action, this time in the TV Show section. Plex automatically culls TV show and movie metadata so that once it has done its content sweep, you will get all that juicy cover art, show details, etc. TV shows are more manageable to consume/watch streamed while outside since the file size is smaller.

Another good reason why Plex is a good option is that, it streams, therefore it bypasses that 4GB file size restriction on Android. That "Deathly Hallows Part 2" movie is in 1080p, at 11.74GB and it plays without a hitch on the Galaxy Note.

Also on that YouTube clip is a demo of "3" Music Player. I'm a stickler for nice awesome music presentation music player, or any apps that are well presented for that matter (hence why I stick to apps like Plex and "3"). "3" also culls album metadata automatically, and can even offer album cover choices. Also a very nice presentation in cube-like 3D and a wall of album art covers.

This post has been edited by stringfellow: Nov 21 2011, 03:15 PM

DICE Player. Plays everything you throw at it, with hardware acceleration.

For some reason, I've lost the CRT lock animation, after restarting the Note. It went back to its normal lock animation, boring to say the least. Replacing framework-res.apk doesn't do nothing now.

Looking out for any methods to get back the CRT lock screen effect.

Agreed. It's refreshing to see a phone that has the power endurance like my old iPad 2, so much that I don't have to worry about running out of power while I'm outside.

In my case, I use mine as a consumer device, consuming audio and video more than anything else. Naturally when think that way, you're gonna be wondering how come I am not worrying about the battery life, especially when it comes to watching movie or listening to songs, or playing games. I always carry with me the Just Mobile Gum Plus external battery if I'm travelling light, or the Hyperjuice if I'm carrying my MacBook Air with me. Both eliminates any worry of running out of power while outside. Gum Plus is small enough to skip into the jeans pocket and carries 4 charges while the Hyperjuice itself is an extended slim profile battery for the MacBook Air, so you can imagine how much power it has.

Even if you want a usage profile under the Note's own battery, I still have about 30% battery when I reach home. Twitter, Facebook, surfing, playing music with screen off, light gaming, an episode of TV show, YouTube, with internet connection provided by YES4G when able, and Celcom3G otherwise.

Like any other Plex client, Plex on Android requires the device to have the broadest format support it can have before it can playback the streamed movies. In your case, it sounds like your Note does not have some of the video codecs required to play the movie itself.

Here's my Plex Advanced Settings:-

- Secondary Media Player = Play OpenGL Player. Leaving it on Plex Player will force it to play only on the built-in "Videos" app that comes with your Note. OpenGL Player makes sure it plays a wider variety of file format. I believe this only comes as an option when you have additional third party video players installed. Mine is the excellent DICE Player.

- Direct Play = Offer Choice of Direct Play. Depending on how fast your connection is, leaving it enabled will result in long caching/buffering for a movie to play especially if the movie is of higher definition.

- Enable Direct Streaming ticked

- AV Sync Offset = -2ms. This is only to compensate for high bitrate MKV files with 6 channel sound downmixed to stereo.

- Less Color/More Speed = *depends* Initially I had to tick it to get a movie running, as the frame rates starts stuttering. After I set "Secondary MEdia Player" as "Plex OpenGL Player", I've unpicked this and it plays smoothly without stutter, and the colors are more vibrant. In short, if your movies stutters or choppy, tick this on.

- leave "Enable Good Day Mate" and "Bonjour/ZeroConf" ticked as well.

Also, if you are using Plex to play "anywhere" instead of just at home within your WiFi network, sign up for myPlex and log in into myPlex on both your Android and server PC/MAc running at home. Depending on how fast your connection is (3G/4G), your movies will need to buffer and or the picture quality will be degraded as your connection worsen. In my case, I'm using Yes4G at 10-13Mbps so it only buffers slightly but maintain picture quality.Bear in mind this will eat your data allocation like mad, and is not advisable unless you have unlimited data. Also, you can set the bitrate you're comfortable with on the "Remote Plex" and "Plex over 3G/4G" settings to whatever connection your line is able to stream at. Leaving it at "Auto Select" is fine, but as you move from areas of good connection to worse, so does the movie streaming quality will degrade/upgrade accordingly.

I think in your case, you might wanna try installing DICE Player, which is a paid option. Moboplayer is free, you may want to try that and see if that helps. I prefer DICE as it is the only player that supports hardware acceleration.

I've updated my SU app twice since rooted IIANM, nothing goes wrong there. Still works as it should.

I've no conclusive evidence, but I have since uninstalled Juice Defender after I've moved on to ADW EX, and I don't have random reboots anymore. I've used Watchdog to check which apps misbehaving and more often than not, it's Juice Defender. TW Launcher(built-in TouchWiz) is certainly more problematic than ADW EX, I had that disabled as well as I moved to ADW EX.

Am certainly not gonna downclock, that'll negate the advantage of buying a specced-up phablet in the first place.

Well, you could use a dark wallpaper, or solid black, turn down the brightness, turn off WiFi/3G when not using, don't play games, etc. But personally, I feel that when you do so, in the name of "longer battery life", you're not fulfilling the reason why you're getting the best-specced phone in the market so far. The only way to justify having the Note, is actually USING the Note as it should be, not hiding behind ugly wallpapers, low brightness or skimping on data allocations. You might as well use a Blackberry if that's the case.

The real battery life test is when that test includes what you routinely do in the first place and keep doing the same thing on the new device without compromising. Once the figures are in, then you temper your expectation and see how you could "give or take" on what you can/cannot do on the device. If there is too much compromises, then the device is not meant for you to you on your daily routine.

My personal advice? Do the same thing you do previously on your previous device, and see how much battery life you get. If it fell short, see what you can cut down without totally compromising your routine. Otherwise, IMO, get another battery or extended ones, or external battery power, period. OR sell the device, its battery life is too short for your usage.

I'm using stock ROM but rooted, and the simple act of using an alternative launcher like ADW EX improved battery, stability and smoothness. On TouchWiz, once in a while I'd get the Note rebooting itself, and found normal apps that aren't the usual suspects when it comes to misbehaving to crash Watchdog, resulting in the reboot. Even JuiceDefender as well. Removed JuiceDefender, AP Mobile, Watchdog, and until now, zero reboots. Maybe I'm just lucky?

Am not interested in custom ROMs, that'll introduce a whole different world of headaches and problems later customizing my Note to how I want it to look.

Unless CWM/Titanium backs up this, I guess it is the same as any other book reading portal apps: your books will be gone and need to be redownloaded on the app itself. I have not done/require to do a restore to find out.

Bluetooth, email the file to yourself. Then move it to the respective folder using Root Explorer.

Under the tutelage of Master Coldfustion and his tutorial on making the 3D UI on the Note, I've settled on this final look on my Note:-



12 minutes long.

I don't use Roboto font, so this was answered for his sake. Love the Handel Gothic Font better.

They are not cross compatible. Kobo reader doesn't allow side loading of other ebooks to be read in it. Your only option is Kindle. Use calibre to convert the ebook to .mobi and side load it into Kindle app.