In the midst of our baby preparations, my transition from consultant to permanent employee, and my ongoing gunpla projects - I was reacquainted with one of my previous otaku fixations: Android devices. After a visit with my mom I found myself in possession of a Samsung Galaxy Note, handed down (or up?) to me from my youngest sibling - who recently decided to discontinue paying for the device in favour of a PS Vita. I told him he was nuts for switching to something that does less, but he is more of a hardcore gamer and our priorities are simply not the same. In any case, here I am, with a 2nd-hand android phone and after a few minutes of fooling around with it, I was hooked...again. I'm not sure if I've already mentioned this, but I actually sold my last android device (a Samsung Galaxy Tab) almost a year ago, so that I could split the cost of an airbrush set with my brother-in-law. Out with the old and in with the new, as the saying goes - and it has always been that way for me and my hobbies. Occasionally though, relapses happen.
The galaxy note is in no way a top of the line device - with many newer models sporting quad-core processors available today...but coming from the 1st gen Galaxy Tab, I found my new phone to be quite impressive. With a 1.4gig dual-core processor and 1GB of ram, I now had more than twice the specs of my old device. I do miss the 7-inch screen of the Tab, but the Note's screen is nothing to scoff at either. The 800x1280 pixels crammed onto a 5.3 inch SAMOLED panel look absolutely fantastic. My graphic novels look great and the high DPI make reading speech balloons easy..despite the smaller physical screen I find myself zooming in a lot less than when I did with the Tab. The blog will also benefit from the 8MP camera, now that I can put up half decent shots of my builds online. I've found the S-Pen to be a great tool for drafting up ideas on builds:
It is said that you never truly own something until you break it, and so I did. Less than 2 weeks into owning the phone, I bricked it while attempting to flash some funky new kernel. The stock software is great and all, but I want my phone to be custom, just like my gunpla. I've lost track of how many times i bricked my Tab and then brought it back to life - I've overclocked it to near melting point, and undervolted it till it was gasping for energy - so reviving the Note was no big deal. Sure enough I got it breathing again. After a couple more brick-revive cycles, it is now running properly on custom software, smooth and stable. I've installed all my favourite apps and I've customized my homescreens as I saw fit. I learned my way around android from the great people over at xda-developers.com - and they have my thanks. 
To test the camera, I did a photo shoot with my previous builds. Here are some of the shots. You can find the rest in their respective albums in the Shelf section.
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