Galaxy Note 4 review: Samsung finally listens to its fans, and it pays off - wallaceborceir

The Galaxy Note 4 is quite an possibly one of the best smartphones Samsung has ever concocted.

It's outfitted in a seriously cutting-edge gold outfitting and FALSE-leather backing, features a Quad HD display for a high-resolution viewing receive, and comes bundled with the ever-so-useful S-Pen style. It's likewise a bonafide alternate to carrying around a small-sized phone and mid-sized tablet with you when all you want is a better screen for reading and observance movies.

But the best thing about the Galaxy Note 4 is that it feels like Samsung took every elflike comment stuffed into its cobweb-covered trace box and actually listened to what its users deficiency.

A brand spankin' new body

If you've study my previous reviews, you have it away that I haven't always been too fond of large phones because they've been thorny to wield. Just something snapped in me when I picked sprouted the 6.04 inch by 3.09 inch by 0.33 inch Galaxy Note 4. I'm not sure if IT's because I've been carrying some a pill and a smartphone with me along my commute for months now, or because I've finally complete how much work I can get done along a larger CRT screen. Beaver State, maybe IT's plainly the fact that I can type faster with cardinal thumbs on a wider display versus a smaller, narrower one. Either way, I found that the Note 4's size, in addition to its multitasking features, successful me forget all about my tab.

note4 holding — The Galaxy Note 4, in all of its hand-held aura.

Whereas the Eminence 3 was merely a minor advance over its predecessor, this year's Note 4 feels like an entirely early intersection. The earphone's faux-leather backing in reality feels leathery, while the metal trim—that beautiful metal trim that I fell in roll in the hay with when I first laid eyes on the Galaxy Alpha—gives the Note 4 that modern GQ-equivalent business aesthetic that Samsung has attempted to reach with the Note series since generation incomparable. The metal chassis does add a brief bit more heft to the device, but at to the lowest degree straightaway it feels ilk a hard-line, premium piece of hardware. I sincerely hope this design refresh sets the precedent for all of Samsung's forthcoming devices.

n4 camera — The Notice 4's faux-leather backside doesn't look so …artificial.

The Note 4 continues on with Samsung's storied tradition of placing a physical Home button between Android's cardinal other navigational buttons. IT besides doubles as a fingerprint image scanner.

note4 buttons — The Note 4's navigatonal controls.

Android purists may find issue with the fact that the Mark 4 switches the multitasking and back-buttons—and that they're perplexed that way, since the buttons are embedded in the chassis. I'd rather that Samsung switch over to using stock Humanoid's happening-screen pilotage controls, even if they do take up a trifle of screen space. Also, double-pressing the Home button lul brings up S-Voice, which seems redundant when you have Google's dominant Google Now already lendable at your fingertips.

Is that a TV in your pocket?

The Galaxy Note 4 employs a 5.7-inch Musculus quadriceps femoris HD display—that's a 2560×1440 screen, giving information technology a density of 518 pixels per inc. This puts it in 2d place for exorbitant amount of pixels in a smartphone, right later LG's G3. The two displays are decidedly different, however, due in part to the fact that they both utilize different display technologies—Samsung uses Super AMOLED and LG uses IPS LCD—but also because Samsung's Bank bill 4 is just a tad bigger.

note4 comparolgg3 — The LG G3's Quadrangle HD IPS LCD reveal connected the left compared to Samsung's Galaxy Bank note 4 Quad HD Super AMOLED reveal connected the right. The left features passably warm colors, while Samsung's are more saturated.

Spell movies, games, and other extremely brightly-colored applications come out glittering and vivid on the Note 4's Super AMOLED show, there's still that pronounced color o'er-saturation that appears in convinced applications. When you're browsing stark white websites, e.g., there's a bit of a blue-hued tinct. IT's obvious when you spot the device aboard another type of display technology, only it's non then apparent that it'll ruin your entertainment experience. And with Super AMOLED, at to the lowest degree you'll get the blackest blacks.

Battery life is of the essence

Samsung offers two versions of the Galaxy Note 4: one and only with an octa-core Exynos 5433 central processing unit, and one with a quadriceps femoris-core 2.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 805. Some are opposite with 3GB of RAM, but the last mentioned is the version that is sold present in the United States, and the one that we used throughout testing.

n4 back — Backside, complete with heart-rate proctor and a tiny loudspeaker system hole.

The Note 4 is quite speedy—multitasking is that much better when you have so much ability throttling behind you. It too helps that interface doesn't palpate Eastern Samoa weighed down as it has in previous generations. As a Clarence Day-to-day driver, the phone will do just fine running in and out of applications, dealing with hoards of notifications, and acquiring you to body of work with the help oneself of retention intensive apps, like Google Maps. I'm more curious to experience how the Galax Note 4 volition execute with Samsung's Gear VR, since it's meant to be ill-used with the virtual reality headset accessory. Symmetrical if you don't plan on victimization that device, you can remain assured that the Note 4 features some of the most powerful components on the commercialise.

I watched the phone for a few days to gauge how very much living the Note 4 squeezes unfashionable of its 3200mAh assault and battery pack. It lasted two and a half days—from Saturday cockcro to Monday afternoon—before it hit 14 percentage and started screaming for a charge. Annoyingly, the Notation 4's camera app won't snap a photo with the flash on if it's below 16 percent bombardment, and then keep that in mind. I know when I'm at a medicine festival or a Night out, I try to squeeze every last dying bit out of my phone before it's totally out of juice.

Our refresh whole was an AT&T variant, and it struggled to conserve 4G speeds throughout Early York Metropolis, Las Vegas, and San Francisco—my HTC One (M8) along Verizon Wireless fared ameliorate in the same locations. Of course, your mileage may deviate where you live.

I'm still annoyed that Samsung chose to beef up every some other part of the phone, but won't opt for head-on-lining stereo speakers. I hope you suffer a nice pair of earbuds or a Bluetooth speaker to pair off with this thing, because anything you listen with the phone's pitiful rear speaker sounds tinny.

Wait—let ME take a selfie

note4 journoselfie — Various Android-covering journalists at a bar in Manhattan, loving the Note 4's Wide selfie mode.

This twelvemonth has definitely been the yr of the "selfies." No matter where you turn, there's another device manufacturer claiming to have the real best forepart-facing tv camera.

note4 selfies — Deman a big selfie? Select Wide selfie mode.

Samsung's on the same bandwagon: its front-cladding 3.7-megapixel camera sensor exists to help you withdraw the great selfies. Information technology also has a cracking feature called the Wide selfie, which essentially lets you take bird's-eye pic of you and your crew or the scenery surrounding you. For high resolution shots, you can also take selfies with the rear-facing photographic camera; aim IT at your confront, and the Note 4 bequeath beep when you're in focus. Information technology's the perfect set of features for the narcissist in you.

note4 backlitcomparo — The Note 4 (left) versus the Note 3 (right) low-light comparison.

note4 backlitflashcomparo — The Tone 4 (left) versus Note 3 low-light with flash comparison.

The Wandflower Note 4's 16-megapixel rear-cladding photographic camera is a vast improvement over its predecessor. In addition to a punter camera sensor, better low-light performance, and a break flash, it also features Advanced Digital Rapid growth.

note4 baybridge regular — Ahh, the beautiful San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. One of my favorites!

note4 baybridge closeup — Here IT is again, zoomed in with the Short letter 4's Advanced Digital Rapid growth. It's non excessively bad, eh?

The Note 4's Advanced Digital Zoom bequeath never be a replacement for true optical zoom, but it works much better than some of the other smartphones out there.

Write it exterior

n4 hand — Manipulation S-Note with the embedded S-Pen to doodle or take notes.

My biggest gripe with the endure three generations of S-Pens is that the stylus felt stiff and offered no tactile feedback whatsoever, only this year's Note S-Pen offers a twin dredge to what you might experience while writing a note along a piece of music of actual paper. Information technology makes it easier to write out notes and scribble, no matter how sloppy you are with a pen.

babanas 0 — The story I wrote in S-Note, to give you an example of how I doodle and write with the S-Pen.

Like last year's version, the S-Pen features a gnomish button you can click to conjure Air Statement, which has been pared down to four essential features: Action Memo, Shrewd Prize, Image Clip, and Screen Publish. S-Finder was nixed from the Free-flying Command menu, while Write Windowpane was converted to Smart Prize.

note4 spenaircommand — Did someone aver "Air Command"?

Wholly four of Air Command's mini-apps have been given a insignificant feature makeover. Action memorandum now enables you to pin a note of hand to your Home screen as a viscous note; it functions just similar a widget, and you keister pin multiple notes every bit you see fit.

note4 stickies — From matured grocery name to a tiny widget happening your Home screen.

Smarting select and Image clip form likewise: they to each one clip a chosen area, but the former leave preserve to an S-Note scrapbook page while the later will enable you to either save information technology A an image or share it across various apps.

As for Screen Write, it just blatantly does what IT describes: allow you to write on go past of a screenshot of your choosing. When you save IT, IT will embody filed away in the Gallery application.

Unmoving Touchwiz…

note4 ui — To the left, a busy pocket-size Home screen. To the right, a busy little Application drawer.

The Galaxy Bank bill 4 features the same TouchWiz Nature UX 3.0 interface that's standard on all of Samsung's latest mobile devices, including the Galaxy S5. It comes with a few helpful interface-specific perks that you don't get connected separate Android devices, like One-handed operation, which offers options for reducing the screen size or placing controls in easier-to-spigot spots thus you bathroom more easily use the phone handed, and increased touch sensitivity, which lets you use the device with gloves on.

note4 multiwindow — Pop-look at tries to emulate the mode you'd utilise a Windows or Mac user interface.

My in-person favorite is Pop-fly view, a part of MultiView, which receptive up apps in their own individual windows, allowing you to essentially multitask corresponding you would happening a PC or a Mac. It's a creative addition along Samsung's part to attract the business-minded crowd, WHO might find that moving Windows approximately feels a bit many natural than tapping in and out of apps to get things done.

If you absolutely have no use for just about of the features described, you can cop out of them completely, though you're mostly stuck with Samsung's TouchWiz Nature UX even if you behave spend some fourth dimension attempting to customizing the interface.

Both Samsung and AT&T bundled a bunch of applications with the Annotation 4 that I ne'er ended up using. Nearly of Samsung's apps live behind the Galaxy Apps image, though apps like Milk Music and Flipboard semen pre-loaded happening the device. Also, Samsung did away with My Magazine and instead offers the ability to enable Flipboard as the default app that lives the whole way to the left-hand of the Plate cover—makes sense, considering that the military service was conscionable a modified adaptation of Flipboard in first place.

A phab-ulous phablet

Yes, the Mark 4 is bigger than some of the other flagships out on the market—information technology's even bigger than the LG G3 and HTC One (M8), which are both rather large phones. But when you factor in its beautiful screen, powerful hardware, and the utility of the S-Indite, it becomes a worthy retainer.

But equally I said in the beginning: it's not only the fact that Samsung debuted another phone-tablet hybrid device, it's that it feels equal the company is actually start to listen to what its users want. The Google Apps are displayed front and center, Samsung's apps are mostly opt-in, the chassis feels more premium than ever, and even Touchwiz is becoming less gaudy with every iteration. Maybe it's because of Google's iron-fisted demands that we're starting to see this significant change, or mayhap it's just because Samsung will do anything to stay on top as long as it possibly can. Whatever the motivation, it's working. This is Samsung's topper phone ever, and one of the prizewinning phones of the year.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/435826/galaxy-note-4-review-samsung-finally-listens-to-its-fans-and-it-pays-off.html

Posted by: wallaceborceir.blogspot.com