For a long while now, I’ve been rocking a 2012 Note 10.1 as my main study and college device. While I’ve always loved its productivity and speed, the only disappointments have been the screen, which really should have been a higher resolution, and the Android Version. It got 4.1 Jellybean pretty swiftly, but that is where it stayed. The Tab series from the same year, on the other hand, were upgraded to 4.2 Jellybean. I felt rather let down, considering this was the first S-Pen touting device, and was a true 2012 flagship with its 2GB of ram and 1.6GHz Exynos CPU.

This time last week, however, my Note received 4.4.2 Kitkat through the Samsung Kies program. It may be almost a year late, but it has been gratefully accepted. It has greatly improved my experience with the Note, and has secured its place at my side for at least another year. Read on for my thoughts.

Design

A lot changed in the overall design of the Note’s software in this update, and it’s all for the better. Gone is the outdated Tablet UI, in favor of separate Nav and Status bars. After using the Note with the old Tablet UI for over eighteen months, this took some getting used to, but after a week I am much happier with it. The Quick-Settings tiles have received a makeover, and are now white and green rather than the dark blue and green from before. Still unsure as to what colour scheme I prefer, but at least it’s better overall than it was before.

The S Note application has remained unchanged, which is a shame because the revised version in the Note 10.1 (2014), Note Pro 12.2 and S5 are much better looking. Despite the lack of a redesign, it is a lot smoother now and the S-Pen accuracy is much improved allowing for greater precision.

Multi-Window also received a makeover, which has greatly improved the experience. More apps are compatible, and the app list is accessed by either a swipe from the right of the screen, or by holding the back button. There is one problem, however. The swipe gesture to open the app list is activated every single time I attempt to use the notification slide-out in Google Plus. It would have been better if it used a small button placed on the side of the screen, like my S4, or if you could place it on the left of the screen. But you can’t, so I find myself turning multi-window off in Quick-Settings, and turning it on when I do want it.

The gallery app has been updated, and now sports a jet-black design with white icons. Just like the S4’s 4.4 gallery, the lag has been completely removed, and I no longer feel the need to replace it with something like QuickPic.

The lockscreen now has widget support, something I was very happy to see, and it has some beautiful animations. If you unlock with your finger, you get the same ripple effect you always had. If, however, you use the S-Pen, ink splashes into the water, adding to the illusion of you using an actual pen.

The keyboard has had a much-needed overhaul, with accuracy much improved, and emoji being thrown in.

One letdown in design is the TouchWiz launcher. The Note is the only Samsung device with software keys to receive KitKat, and it shows. While the statusbar is translucent on the home screen, the Navigation bar is not. That’s sloppy work even for Samsung. Thankfully, that is the only app affected, and the Google Now Launcher works beautifully.

Performance

The performance on the Note has always been extremely good. It has always handled running multiple apps with ease, but now that it’s on KitKat, which thanks to Project Svelte only requires 512mb of ram for the system, it’s even better. It opens apps quickly, loads webpages like a beast, and can handle even the latest games. Back on Jellybean, I noticed a considerable delay between pressing the power button and the screen actually waking up. Finally, that has been fixed and the wake-up is much more responsive.

I haven’t been able to do a proper battery test on it yet, but so far it seems to be exactly the same as before, which isn’t a bad thing. It’s always managed over six hours screen time at college and left me with around forty percent left when I get home, so I really can’t complain about that.

I’ve also noticed that my internal memory has gone up by around 500MB after the update, the opposite of what usually happens after an update.

It also has the ability to move apps to the MicroSD card, something that was missing from the ICS and Jellybean builds it was running previously. Having said that, memory has never been a concern for the Note. Of its 16GB, 11.5 is available to the user, and when you consider it carries TouchWiz, that isn’t too shabby.

Overall Impression

Overall, I am extremely happy with KitKat update. The original Note 10.1 is still an amazing device, and KitKat really makes the most of its hardware. I also have to give Samsung credit. The update may well be very late, but it has to be noted (pun intended) that other than the Nexus 10 and original Nexus 7, the Note 10.1 is the only 2012 tablet to the best of my knowledge receive KitKat officially. Sure, plenty of others got to see the update thanks to custom ROMs, but officially, it seems to be alone in this update with others from that year left stranded on various versions of Jelly Bean. Just the Note and the Nexus tablets.

They get a lot of flack for their updates but it’s generally deserved and I agree they need to improve. However, in this case, props to you, Samsung! Amazing work.