[NTLK] Back to Normal!

[Matthias Melcher]

On 14.01.2014, at 04:38, Chris Browder <kcfoxie at gmail.com> wrote:

> In the half hour I spent with this device, it took a much younger employee to explain how you press this button on the stylus and tap the screen while holding your left leg up so your thigh is parallel to the floor to activate the pen menu, at which point you can make a special note that can be translated into a contact or an address to be mapped!

LOL, yeah, using my Note II daily, the "extra" button on the pen is just that: extra. An extra that is close to impossible to reach, unintuitive and idiotic! Luckily there is a much easier and really elegant way to get the pen menu: start the device, THEN take the pen out: voila.

> I told him this is nice but I’d like to use the handwriting to do things like enter comments on facebook, compose emails, and enter text in other social apps that I use. He asked if the apps I used had been customized for the Note III, and I asked why isn’t this a system-wide function? *crickets* 

It is. The keyboard can be changed to HWR at any point. Better even: it automatically changes to HWR when you remove the pen.

> He then began to tell me about my iPhone’s “crippling weaknesses."

Ach, those young folk. :-P

> In the end it turns out Handwriting Recognition -is- a system wide function on the Note III, an icon briefly appears when you tap into a text input box. If you stab it fast enough you get a whole half the screen to write on. It was clunky, and felt like an afterthought.  

Well, it IS an afterthought as Android does not have this feature. Samsung is trying hard to add features left and right, but they are always glued on, never integrated. The large tablet Note is worse because Android does not support multiple apps in small windows. When I have my touch tone app open (thanks to my non-tone-dialing phone) I can not check my calendar at the same time. Samsung tries to fix that, but it is clunky.

The icon, btw, appears as soon as you hover over a text input field (and as long as you hover over that field) so no rush. 

> Couldn’t tell you how many times I tried scrubbing out a word. I’ve been spoiled.

Couldn't agree more! I have done that  SO   MANY   TIMES. It's painful.

> Anyone else care to share their thoughts?

Yes. Einstein runs very well on the Note III. We are trying to get Einstein to save and load its state , so we can eliminate reboot times. Just the time to do that is missing (I did check a few fixes in a couple of days ago, but it is still not reliable). 

 - Matthias