Samsung Note 8

[LuckyLew]

Ok I am the poster child for "dumb guy with a smart phone" / phablet

Help me out please .....

So my Thai GF decided I needed an upgrade from my Nokia100 and bought me a Note 8 and I am as clueless as they come and have no real idea what to do with it. All I used to do with my nokia was send texts and phone people and that was good enough for me.

A big issue is I have little time to download apps and check them out as my days are spent 24/7 with my baby girl ...

So I would like some suggestions on what apps might be good to try out

1- I have a 7 month old daughter, so can people suggest some good apps that might be of interest to her ... like kids music ... cartoons ... what apps do your kids like?

2- What can I do with it ... app wise, movie apps? TV apps? sports apps? travel apps? Any good car racing game apps? Not into violent games. Any good crossword apps? Is there any app to download music?

3- for people who have a Note or something similar .. what do you use it for? Maybe I can learn something new

4- For the phone it has blue tooth ... what is a good price to pay for a ear piece? is it better to get the earphones with the hanging talking piece to plug in to the Note? what is a good brand to buy?

Any other suggestions are welcome

Thanks in advance

LL

[casualbiker]

I don't know about kids apps. But I have the Nokia bh214 Bluetooth headset. The dangly sort. I much prefer them. You can also set it up for audio streaming to your car radio etc (using a male to male lead)

http://www.lazada.co.th/nokia-bluetooth-headset-bh-111-cyan-blue-66315.html

Edited January 11, 2014 by casualbiker

[Bunter]

Good choice of smart phone. Lots of apps Ex for foreign exchange details, maps with me, cloudmagic email program, tripit to manage travel, my fitness Pal, vsco camera for better photos of the family, smart profile to return to normal settings after your child has fiddled, Dashlane to manage your profile across all devices, Skype of course, VoIP account, Contafer to manage your money once again across all devices, alarm plus millennium, wifi file transfer, flight radar, Bloomberg tablet, Tapatalk, instant heart rate, newspapers from your favourite countries, clean master, apps for any sport event you are interested in, health and medical Apps, city guides for where ever you go, runtastic a few different apps, google sky, Shipmate, keep, and the list goes on.

Hope that helps you get started on the path to enjoying the tablet.

Cheers Trevor

[LuckyLew]

Thanks you two, appreciate it.

One thing I have noticed is that the battery goes low very fast.

Iooked at one photo on FB and lost 20% of battery life.

Is it normal for batteries to go low so fast?

Had same issue with google earth app ... in 5 minutes lost 5%

Is thee anything I can do to make one charge last longer?

If I am out and about ... is there a "battery pack" I can attach to the phone to add extra duration?

If yes .... What are these things called

Thanks again

[Pib]

That's an extremely high battery drain rate...almost unbelievable especially the FB 20% drain just to look at one photo...you sure you didn't fail to mention that you then looked at that one FB picture for an hour. One thing that can save you lots of battery is to be sure the Wifi, Bluetooth, and GPS are turned off when not using them.

[LuckyLew]

I could not believe it either ... no did not oogle it for an hou

but I want to check battery drain and played one game of candycrush ... lost 9%

Took your tips .. turned of wifi gps sound .... played again and only lost 5%

Thanks

[guzzi850m2]

According to PC magazine the battery life on the Note 8 is not good.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2417584,00.asp

Yes battery packs are a big hit now, I saw a lot in Tuk.Com Pattaya in all sizes and shapes.

A bit disappointing really, it should not be necessary to carry battery packs around in the year 2014.

Lets hope a big brake though comes soon for mobile devises battery A/h

[LuckyLew]

Good article... thanks

When it says "play back a video ... does that mean if I save it to the Note8 then play it ... battery should be 5.5 hours?

Reason I ask is I just played a baby einstein video directly from youtube and in 30 minutes I lost 60% of battery

[Pib]

Good article... thanks

When it says "play back a video ... does that mean if I save it to the Note8 then play it ... battery should be 5.5 hours?

Reason I ask is I just played a baby einstein video directly from youtube and in 30 minutes I lost 60% of battery

In the case of playing it from youtube you had the 3G/Wifi transceiver circuits also eating on your battery while playing the video. But if you had played a 30 minute video from your phone's storage (i.e., video already downloaded) then the Wifi/3G connection could have been turned off/was not fully active which would have saved battery power.