it's funny how only a few years ago, mobile phone companies challenged each other to make the smallest phone (that scene in Zoolander is hilarious and sums it up perfectly)...but now it seems to be a full reversal as we go back to the days of the massive XDA phones from O2
Funny indeed, but makes completely sense, though. Now the phones aren't just phones anymore, they are little portable computers, with built in video/photo-cameras and mp3-players.
So for such a multimedia-gadget, size is only limited by how much can fit comfortably in the trouser pocket, anything else is imho secondary.
Ok, I haven't written much regarding music-playback on my Note 2 yet, so:
Using the standard-samsung-player I only get mediocre if not bad soundquality, using the Google-play-music-player it's imho considerably better but still not really good. The best result so far I got with poweramp (which costs about 3€). What makes it great are the many setting-possibles through tone- and equaliser-setting.
Using the standardsettings, poweramp sounds even worse than the Google-music-player, but once I took the time to really fiddle with the equaliser and other settings, and find my very own custom-settings (none of the presaved equaliser-settings are good), I could really bring the soundquality to a whole new level, that puts the Google-player to shame.
I use it either with the inbuilt-speakers, or with the recently bought Koss Porta pro headphones. Sure these are not really hifi, but they are nice enough for this purpose. Real hifi-headphones would need a preamp.. and cost way more.
The other thing I'm fond of on my smartphone is the free calc-app "handy calc". It does nearly everything a graphic calculator can do, it can solve equations, draw graphs... and it's intutive to use. The only things it can't yet is doing differential- and integration-calculations.
Awesome app!
And for gaming I bought the android-app of my favourite game back in the days: "Carmageddon"! It looks better than ever on android and has great controls, and it plays just nice on the 5,5"-screen of my Note II, like a handheld game console. It only seems a bit easier than I remember it from when I played it on mac.