When I turned on my Samsung Galaxy Note II LTE this morning I received a notification of an over the air software update on Starhub’s network. I thought that was a bit strange since I only received the phone a few days ago. Anyway, after the download was complete a message appeared offering me the chance to upgrade now or later. I chose “later” so that I could grab a screen shot of the current version information before upgrading.

About Information for Original Firmware

You can see the update icon at the top left corner of the Samsung Galaxy Note II LTE’s screen. This has a small clock as part of the icon, as I selected the option to remind me about the update in 30 minutes.

Once I had uploaded the above screen shot to Dropbox I then proceeded to update the phone, which was a very simple and fast process. The update process even includes a cute animation of a little green Android robot having his internals messed with. After the update I took another screen shot showing the new firmware details.

About Information for New Firmware

From the two screen shots you can see that the Baseband version, Kernel version and Build number changed. Here are the details:

The stated reason for the update, according to the message that appeared during the update process, was “stability improvements.” Which is all well and good, but it would still be nice to find a change log or some information on the specific problems addressed.

This update has been out for a while in other countries and apparently allowed some people to use the Multi-view feature. I honestly didn’t use Multi-view until I was writing this post, so I can’t verify that the Samsung Galaxy Note II LTE phones in Singapore can do Multi-view from the default firmware or need this update. In any case there seems to be no harm in updating!

I have barely had the phone for 5 days, so I can’t really make an informed judgement on whether this firmware is better than the last. There seems to be no problems with the update process and my Samsung Galaxy Note II is still working well. Therefore, I’d recommend everyone else to apply the update if they haven’t already.

Update: Oct 25 – Added some more tests. One for the CBD and one for Tanah Merah.

After receiving my Samsung Galaxy Note II LTE at Starhub’s poorly planned and executed pre-launch event with ridiculous queues and processing times I wondered what the LTE performance would be like on Starhub’s network. As it happened I was in Chinatown on Sunday for most of the day, so I did two tests with the Speedtest.net application. Both of the tests were at the People’s Park Centre at the intersection of Upper Cross Street and Eu Tong Sen Street.

The first test was reasonably impressive, but not amazing, with 22439 kbps down and 21126 kpbs up. Ping time was 33 ms.

Starhub LTE Network – Speed Test 1

The second test was even faster on the down speed, with 33808 kbps, but the up speed dropped significantly to 6757 kbps.

Starhub LTE Network – Speed Test 2

One thing that I found frustrating is that when I received a call the phone dropped back to the 3G network and I had no way of getting it back to the LTE network later on. There is no “LTE Only” option in the settings. I haven’t read the phone manual to work out if there is a preference for LTE over 3G by default, but it certainly didn’t want to get back on the LTE network in a hurry!

I have to go into town tomorrow, so I will do some more tests to get a better picture of the Samsung Galaxy Note II LTE’s performance on Starhub’s LTE network.

Update: Oct 25

I went into the Microsoft Office for a Drupal User Group meeting last night. Since I was in the CBD I thought I should get an LTE signal, but on the underground walk from Raffles Place MRT to One Marina Boulevard (NTUC and Microsoft building) I was stuck mostly on 2G and didn’t get an LTE signal at all. Even in the Microsoft office I didn’t get an LTE signal when I was at the window facing the river. It wasn’t until I left the meeting and went outside the building at ground level that I finally got an LTE signal and did this test:

Starhub LTE Network – Speed Test in CBD

On the MRT back to Tanah Merah station I could not load a single web page, with my phone jumping between G, 3G, H, H+ and even E, but the page just failed to load. When I was waiting at the bus stop at Tanah Merah I picked up an LTE signal, presumably part of the Expo area coverage, so it was only a couple of bars strong, but I ran a test anyway:

Stahub LTE Network – Speed Test at Tanah Merah MRT Bust Stop

That is quite a stunning difference in download versus upload speed at Tanah Merah when compared with all the other tests so far.