Samsung Galaxy Note 4 might just have received its final software upgrade with respect to Android 6.0 Marshmallow. This 2014 phablet started receiving the update a few months ago and so far it has been a success.
If you haven’t received the OTA update on your Galaxy Note 4, make sure you manually check for its availability via your device’s About phone settings. For those who have already received the Marshmallow update on their Samsung Galaxy Note 4 devices, there is more that this OS brings to the fold than just fixes to bugs and errors.
Samsung Galaxy Note 4 is a more than capable device and now that it has been updated with the latest OS, it has become even better thanks to new features, improvements as well as tweaks that have been performed here and there. If you bought this device at the time Android KitKat was the go-to OS, there is really much you are missing from the new Marshmallow.
Of course, Android 6.0 Marshmallow has a wide range of goodies it comes with, among them things like Doze mode for better battery management, Google Now on Tap as well as effective management of apps permissions, the updated Galaxy Note 4 received one very nifty feature. However, this feature has nothing to do with Google but everything to do with Samsung, to be more specific, the company’s changes to the TouchWiz UI.
A skin that has been often criticized for its massive bloatware that results in an unintuitive user experience, the Marshmallow-based TouchWiz has been trimmed down, and with this streamlining, it has come in with a Note 5-based feature – Screen-Off Memo.
Samsung focused a lot on this feature in its Galaxy Note 5 ads and with it enabled on Samsung Galaxy Note 4, it means that users of this 2014 flagship can now draft notes on their screen even when it’s turned off. The feature comes preinstalled on the Note 5 and activated by default, but this is not the case for the Note 4 following the update. One must manually enable it in order to use it.
How to enable Screen-Off Memo on Samsung Galaxy Note 4
To enable screen-off memo on your Samsung Galaxy Note 4, first head to the S-Pen Menu via the Settings menu and scroll down to the “Screen off Memo” option. If it isn’t already checked, go ahead and check the box beside it. This will allow you take notes on your Note 4’s screen even when the display is off.
There is even more to this update as it allows users to do more than just writing notes on a turned-off screen. It is also possible to edit, delete or even save what you’ve created on the Note 4 with the screen still turned off. Of course, this is not a groundbreaking feature for Note 4 users, but it should give you an ample time whenever you want to take down notes quickly without having to go through the hassles of turning on the display. This also helps save your phone’s battery life.
This still does not exist as an option in S-Pen on the Note 4 just updated to AT&T update on 5-16-2016.
The May 16th update was not Marshmallow updated, just a security patch. So this feature isn’t available to AT&T users yet.