Hands on: 7 silly things about the Galaxy Note 3

Samsung's new Galaxy Note 3 has some good things going for it -- no question there. But the phone also has its share of silly and sometimes frustrating elements. Since I looked at seven cool things about the Note 3 yesterday, I thought I'd balance it out today with a look at seven aspects of the device that leave me scratching my head. Welcome to the jungle, baby -- here we go: 1. The button setup You had to know this was coming, right? I've harped on it plenty before, but Samsung's odd and dated hybrid button setup just doesn't make for an ideal user experience -- and the issue is particularly problematic on a device like the Note 3. The first part is Samsung's ongoing decision to include the long-ago-deprecated Android 2.x-level Menu button on its devices. Google phased the Menu button out of Android for a reason: Its presence causes options to remain buried and out of sight -- and consequently out of mind for users. In phones that follow current Android 4.x design guidelines, all functions appear on-screen. When there are extra options available -- like in the Play Store, for instance, the options to view your apps or wishlist or to access your Play Store settings -- you see an icon on your screen indicating such options are there. On the Note 3, that contextual on-screen icon is never displayed. In fact, there's no visual cue at all letting you know when extra options are available; you'd have to randomly tap the phone's Menu key at the right time in order to stumble onto them. Having elements of the interface hidden and hard to find, my friends, is not a great user experience