Is your phone rooted and with CWM installed?

When you go into recovery by those three button combo, what are the options you see? I can't tell you what I see on mine, since I've flashed CWM on mine, there's an option called "Wipe data/factory reset" there. That should clear your mess up.

Before you try that, do this. Take out the battery. Wait for about 30 seconds. Then place the battery back in, and reboot. See if the boot freeze is still there.

There's another option, but it's pretty risky, the Download mode. Any mistake or your battery running out during downloading of stock ROM into your Note will result in bricked unit. I don't want to be responsible for any damage to your Note, so I either suggest you look it up, or send it back to Samsung service center, since you're still stock.

Did you do as per the one mentioned in bold? Volume UP, not volume DOWN.

Not this screen.



If it's that screen then you're in Download mode.

How about pressing those three buttons first, then get someone to plug the battery in, hold those three buttons until the "Samsung Galaxy Note" screen comes on?

Or he could brush up his ADB command line skills and look up how to recover by ADB. I dare not go there.

No hardware issues, but there are teething software ones. Only recently I've tamed the wake locks, sleep of death, and random reboots problems on my Note. Hardware-wise, it's perfect.

Depending on how many widgets and icon shortcuts you left cluttering your Android desktops/homescreens, ADW EX is plenty adequate for your needs. I tax it heavily to make it look like a 3D UI, but compensated it with minimal widgets, and minimalistically looking icons.

Touchwiz is OK, but it looks dull and boring to me. But hey, if you want it to work your way without making it look custom, them by all means.

I have no experience with Go Launcher, but I suggest giving ADW a go, there's the free ADW launcher version, and ADW EX just got the 10 cent sale selected for the Google's 10 billion apps celebration. Tweak it, and see how far you can go. I did, and I'm not going back to the dull and boring Touchwiz.

You get what you pay for I guess. Which is why I've been advocating good quality ones from SGP, but not many seems to want to. The lure of "cheap, cheap" is too strong, that they don't realize that the extra they pay for a good quality SP will benefit them in the long run.

SGP Ultra Clear for clarity, Oleophobic for slight diminish of clarity but anti-fingerprint.

From forum member derrickmoo.

I beg to differ. I don't like the feel of the Oleophobic SP under touch, compared to the Ultra Clear. And logic dictates, if there is an additional oleo phobic layer, light will diffract around it further, and light diffusion reduces clarity.

To each his own. I like the Ultra Clear better.