Samsung's first Galaxy Note came out a year and a half ago in October 2011, so early adopters missed out on new phablet firmware and features associated with the later Galaxy Note 2 and 10.1. Samsung is fixing that Tuesday by rolling out Jelly Bean 4.1.2 on the international Galaxy Note. You can get the update over the air or via the company's Kies syncing software.
The Korean company is making this update available in phases, so it may or may not be available now, depending on the carrier.
The Jelly Bean update will bring a new customizable notifications bar and gesture-enabled keyboard, CNet reports. Project Butter (which ensures consistency and smooth performance) and Google Now will finally be available to the Galaxy Note's users, and along with them several features from both the Note 2 and Galaxy S3.
From the Note 2, basic windowed multi-tasking capability for a few apps is now available and from the Galaxy S3, it gets a few widgets. A full list of features and updates is available on Samsung's site.
An anonymous official from Samsung told the Korea Times that because TV sales are "sluggish" in the States, the company has decided to push the sales of its Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy S4 over its other products (a claim that Samsung has officially denied), both of which we expect to see revealed at the MWC in Barcelona later this month. The Galaxy Note 3 is rumored to have a 6.3-inch OLED display, nearly an inch on top of the Note 2.
The Galaxy Note was massively popular worldwide: Samsung claims to have already sold 10 million units by August 2012. It sports a dual-core 1.4GHz Exynos processor, 32Gb of internal storage and an 8-megapixel camera. It ran Android 2.3 Gingerbread on release, and had no major upgrades with the release of Ice Cream. Jelly Bean, however, should greatly improve on the UI, reports AndroidGeeks.
