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The GALAXY Note II, with its fantastic 5.5-inch HD Super AMOLED display and acres of screen estate, really does make social networking by phone a pleasing experience. The combination of the precision of the S Pen and the expansive screen make something which can too often be fiddly and irritating on other phones an easy and pleasurable task.
Social networking made simple
With the Note II, especially with the S Pen's handwriting-to-text feature making updating statuses even faster, you really do have all the features you need to have fun with social networking on the move.
Here's a collection of the best apps that will give you the best way to see and update your social networks on your phone either singly, or across many.
The Facebook app on the Note II lets you do everything its web-based counterpart does, whether it's posting on a friend's wall, uploading a picture, browsing through albums, playing Facebook games or talking over the Facebook instant messaging app.
You can also set up phone notifications so your Note II notifies you when people post on your wall or about you, so you need never lose track of your timeline again.
There are a few good Twitter clients out there for the Note II, but if you want a free ad-free Twitter experience with all the basic functionality you need to tweet (words or pictures), browse other people's tweets, search and follow trending topics, then the official Twitter Android app is for you.
Twicca
One of the best unofficial Twitter apps, Twicca provides a huge array of options available to you just by clicking on a Tweet. With a built-in URL shortener and the option to geo-tag your Tweets, this offers all the basic functionality of the official app, but with a few more bells and whistles. Twicca also lets you colour code your tweets, to make one tweet (or Tweeter) easy to find later.
If you want more functionality from Twitter and are willing to pay for it then some quality paid-for Twitter apps to consider include Tweetings and Echofon Pro.
Google+
The perfect app for browsing your circles and adding your own posts, the Google+ app is clean, easy to use and functional.
Additional great features include the ability to use the Note II to video chat with up to 9 friends simultaneously or automatically sync all the photos on your phone to a private Google+ album, which you can share later. What’s more, the ‘What’s hot’ and ‘Nearby’ feeds let you stay in contact with the latest trends as well as what’s going on in your area.
Pinterest, as an image-led social network, is of course one of the most visually pleasing, and here you can really take advantage of the Note II's high quality HD Super AMOLED screen.
Pinterest is full of inspirational ideas from everything from fashion and hair and beauty to tasty recipes, crafting ideas and household tips. With this app you can pin directly from your phone, curate and organise your collections and pass many an hour away browsing other people's boards for ideas and fun.
The LinkedIn social network isn’t just for finding a new job, it’s great for connecting with people in the same spheres of employment, offering news, training courses and how-to guides all applicable to your particular job skills.
With the Android app on your Note II you can update your profile, find jobs, read industry news and stay in contact with your connections, all while on the move.
Foursquare
Location-based social network Foursquare has an official Android app that will let you check in to a location, see where your Foursquare friends are and provide you with deals and freebies available from locations close to you.
25 million people can't be wrong, and you’ll never lose contact with any of them on the Foursquare app!
As Instagram’s tagline says, it’s ‘A beautiful way to share your world’, and we can think of no finer way of displaying your photographic world than on the 1,280 x 720 Note II screen.
With the Instagram app you can start taking and enhancing your favourite pictures and sharing them with the world, not to mention following your news feeds and seeing what your followers are doing. And if you ever want a great collection of pictures to show off your phone’s display, clicking ‘Popular’ will get you a pleasing collection of arty, witty or just plain beautiful images.
Paintrala
Feeling creative and want to get the best use out of your S Pen? Paintrala is for you. Specifically designed with the S Pen’s functionality in mind, Paintrala has been described as the artistic person’s Instagram.
Letting you share your artworks and doodles with a community of interested artists. Paintrala lets you follow artists and galleries to see the best drawings out there, and encourages you to create art, meet like-minded artists and view and share their work.
Ubersocial
Primarily a Twitter app, but with some Facebook and GChat posting functionality built in too, Ubersocial lets you really fine-control your social media, even letting you filter your tweets by adding them to an inner circle of friends so you never miss a Tweet from a friend, to muting hashtags or certain users so they don’t appear in your timeline.
Also, with the ability to keep more than one account on the go at once, those in charge of a work social media account may find this useful. Another similar app also worth checking out for controlling Facebook and Twitter is Hootsuite.
Seismic Ping
Seismic Ping goes one step further than Ubersocial and Hootsuite, it doesn’t just let you post links, photos and status updates to Twitter and Facebook, but to Tumblr and LinkedIn too.
And if you control more than one Twitter or Facebook account, Seesmic Ping offers a very simple way to post to all of them from one app.
Lockscreen social networking on the Note II
Finally, one more great thing that the Note II will allow you to do to make your social networks even more accessible is that you can change your lockscreen to show your social network feeds.
This means you don’t even need to unlock your phone to catch up on Facebook. To do this simply change what shows in your lockscreen news ticker under settings/ lockscreen/ lockscreen settings. You can also customise the lockscreen apps so they point at your favourite social networking sites for easy access.
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