****The Official Note III Thread****

AndyCr15 said:
Yep, seemed pretty good to me. After the last update though, the home button stopped waking the device, which is a deal breaker for me.

I think it was just me with the issue, but no-one had any suggestions.
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Installed it the other day. Loving it. The home button is an option in X not control. Just enable it in there and it works fine
 
mrk said:
Looks like CM11 has merged into 4.4.3, updating nightly now.
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Yep, noticed that this morning as my dialer had turned blue at the bottom. Been using CM11 nightlies for a couple of weeks and bar from a couple of random reboots due to having my CPU set too low as a minimum, its been incredibly stable and quick :)

I do miss the use of the S-pen and the one handed operation (screen shrinking), but installing papyrus has softened that blow.

I'm also just glad to have an email apk that actually works with exchange properly. First time I've been able to use anything beyond the 4.2 version.
 
Yeah I like the Google email app for Exchange email as it's similar to the Gmail app and I find it slicker for managing emails In folders and so on. Samsung's app was good but it had its own UI and I'm too used to Gmail.
 
mrk said:
So far so good. I'm missing a few camera features of Samsung's camera app like low light mode and 60fps 1080P video but other than that I like CM11 more because it's more streamlined and there's more customisation without having to install things like Xposed. Also when updating the ROM there's no need for Aroma or worrying about additional apps bundled in needing to be removed again or freezing new additions as usually found with non AOSP based ROMs.

Battery life is better, the media scanner is less harsh on the whole system but because of that apps like Quickpic which uses the Android media scanner to poll folder changes take a bit longer to update and display new images when launched.

I like the camera in other ways as it's quicker to load, take a photo and review it. It's just one seamless process and I like the Google photo app for editing, it has the best features of many 3rd party apps from Snapseed to VSCO Cam and others and is pretty mcuh a fully featured image editing package.

I like the pulldown tray more than any other stock or custom ROM. it's cleaner and better to use. I like that autobrightness levels are fully adjustable, nothing new for a CM based ROM but it's nice to have this feature back.

I've noticed a few bugs here and there. Some apps like WhatsApp crash more often and sometimes randomly forget their notification tones and revert back to System Default.

I find sound quality to be slightly less compared to Samsung ROMs though and bluetooth streaming quality to my aptX amp and car stereos aren't as rich as they are with Samsung ROMs. I guess the bluetooth stack isn't accounting for aptX or something.

A quick google shows that Bluetooth LE and aptX are missing in AOSP but are a part of Stock Samsung firmwares which makes sense given what my ears are telling me. It's not bad but it's not as good as what my ears are used to. I do hope these things make their way to AOSP.
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Damn... I was absolutely sold on installing CM until you got to the BT / sound quality part!! Nice little review though
 
I've been umming and ahhing about going back to Samsung based custom ROMs but really I'm going to stickw ith CM. The update process is just way better and all OTA. It just works.

The bluetooth not using aptx is one downer I will have to live with but at least after tweaking the tone controls and stuff it's far better than out of the box. Not as good as apt-x but I think good enough for now.

I wonder what the Google edition of Samsung phones use, if they use apt-x since Samsung have licensed the codec then surely someone could rip it out and port it to custom AOSP ROMs?
 
Just got my Note III last week, before I start the read up of custom roms is there anything a need to be wary of when flashing...KNOX for instance?

How easy is it?
 
fairly easy, there are various guides but the thing to note is do you want to trip Knox or not. Samsung seem to not care either way while other people make use of phone insurance should their phone suffer a fall and get damaged or whatever when Knox is tripped.

Your choice!
 
mrk said:
fairly easy, there are various guides but the thing to note is do you want to trip Knox or not. Samsung seem to not care either way while other people make use of phone insurance should their phone suffer a fall and get damaged or whatever when Knox is tripped.

Your choice!
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Got phone insurance through my bank and my last experience of sending a phone to Samsung repair under warranty (Anovo) was an utter shambles so the last place I'll be sending it is Samsung.

So whether it trips or not I don't care, I just don't want to brick it or get a boot loop.
 
Columbo said:
Got phone insurance through my bank and my last experience of sending a phone to Samsung repair under warranty (Anovo) was an utter shambles so the last place I'll be sending it is Samsung.

So whether it trips or not I don't care, I just don't want to brick it or get a boot loop.
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I've just rooted mine, doing a backup then going to flash the latest CM11 nightly 4.4.3.

Will try out some custom kernels maybe tomorrow depending on how the one provided goes
 
CM11 latest nightly running fine.

I forgot how bloated the Samsung ROM's were but I will miss the Samsung email app and I'll have to untrain my brain to not swipe to call in contacts.
 
Columbo said:
CM11 latest nightly running fine.

I forgot how bloated the Samsung ROM's were but I will miss the Samsung email app and I'll have to untrain my brain to not swipe to call in contacts.
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I use Dialer One on CM11, it's better than the stock dialer and supports forward lookups and web searches for numbers. Best of all it supports screen rotation. Has many features too.
 
mrk said:
I use Dialer One on CM11, it's better than the stock dialer and supports forward lookups and web searches for numbers. Best of all it supports screen rotation. Has many features too.
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I've tried Dialer One and Contacts+, I actually think I prefer Contacts+ so I'm probably going to use that from now.

On another thing I'll miss is Samsung's camera app, the stock Google one is utter gash but as I don't use the camera much (except for work crap) it shouldn't bother me much.
 
M7 stable build came out today, we are lucky enough that the Note 3 is one of the 20 odd supported builds so far. Updating shortly. Lots of Samsung specific changes in the changelog as well as BT audio updates and other stuff. Looking forward to testing this out over the next week.
 
mrk said:
M7 stable build came out today, we are lucky enough that the Note 3 is one of the 20 odd supported builds so far. Updating shortly. Lots of Samsung specific changes in the changelog as well as BT audio updates and other stuff. Looking forward to testing this out over the next week.
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Is that the OTA update that's pinged up on my screen this morning?
 
Just ordered on to replace my iPhone 5S, haven't had a Samsung since the S3.

Would you guys recommend stock samsung or use custom roms? If so what are you guys using? I see a lot of mentions about CM11 but I have no idea what that is lol
 
I'd recommend using CM11 (cyanogenmod) and get some of the features from stock (like screen on/off cases) using a custom kernel. There are several features I can't go without using CM11
And battery is better for me.
I have had to find alternatives to what I miss from Samsung like Snote and the keyboard but I happy now on CM11.

Tried lots of other ROM s from various players but for shear stability you can't beat Samsung ROM or Cyanogenmod ROM

Downloads in case you choose the way of CM11.
http://download.cyanogenmod.org/?device=hlte
http://d-h.st/users/temasek/?fld_id=33687#files
 
thenameDS said:
Awesome thanks, I will try the stock and then CM11 on Tuesday when I receive the phone.

Do you have a link to step by step instructions?
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just googled 'root note 3' and the first one that came up seems easy enough.

http://www.droidreport.com/how-root-samsung-galaxy-note-3-running-android-442-kitkat-xxuenb3-6273

just remember afterwards youll need a customer recovery manager to put andy other ROMs on.
http://theunlockr.com/2013/10/13/how-to-flash-a-custom-recovery-on-the-samsung-galaxy-note-3/

there are other versions but cwm is straight forward and easy to use.
 
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