The Samsung Galaxy Note 4 is upon us. Yes, we delayed for quite a while for this review, but now it’s here. All new Galaxy Note 4 in its brave “pen is mightier than the sword” glory. Surely many of us have toyed around with the Galaxy Note 4 at Samsung stores by this point, but there are many things that you didn’t know about the Galaxy Note 4.
Let’s dive into a detailed look on the Note 4.
They ditched their wooden texture printing for a more cleaner and plain look, which definitely just feel less messy. Clean, and straight to the point. Classy looking too. One side note here – the entire unopened box is actually very small
Opening the box is where you’ll be presented with a huge phone that touches all edges of the box. No wonder it’s so small! Then onwards to lifting the phone away with those cutouts at the sides for its power button and volume rocker.
Remove the flap, and there are all the user manuals and documentation, the other accessories, and some other things that are Note-specific.
By Note-specific things I mean the S Pen tip changer and some spare tips, a pair of earphones with thinner cables that comes along with a few other silicon tip sizes for your preference, a large 3,220mAh battery, a USB 2.0 microUSB cable, and lastly but definitely not the least – Note 4’s special charger for its quick charging.
[nextpage title=”Build quality and ports”]
This year around, Samsung has finally changed their philosophy in design materials just a tad bit by having all of their current latest devices – that is by having a metal frame all around the sides.
Perhaps this is something that Samsung did that has overwhelming positive response since a long time ago. To be honest, even I liked it. The chamfered edges all around the frame is nice. The separated and chamfered metal pieces for both the power and volume rocker feels very tactile, albeit they do swing left and right a little.
Right at the top is where we’ll find the 3.5mm audio jack , a microphone, a built-in IR blaster, and two bands at the sides.
Right at the bottom is the place we’ll find the usual place where the S Pen will rest, two microphones and the micro USB jack that makes a smiley face, and two more bands at the sides of the smiley face.
At the back is where we’ll also find the huge camera, a fingerprint and SpO2 sensor, alongside with a LED flash.
Removing the back cover is where we reveal quite a handful of connectivities, like pins for other Samsung accessories for the Note 4, a microSD slot which you can expand up to a humongous 128GB, and a micro SIM slot. Right beside the S Pen slot is where the rear-facing speakers are.
And no, we can never forget about the S Pen when we’re talking about the Galaxy Note series. The all new Note 4’s S Pen comes with minimal changes from the Note 3, as it’s still basically the same plastic pen with a horrible button on it. It just feels like you have a metallic notebook, but a plastic pen to write with.
[nextpage title=”Camera”]
If you have not heard, pictures taken by the Note 4 is the best one out there – even better than the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Main focus of the Note 4 is because Samsung is using a larger-than-16MP sensor and tuned it down, so you’ll get that scenic 16:9 aspect ratio photos with fast shutter capabilities.
However before I give into the camera samples, Samsung has once again did something confusing by putting out two different versions of the Galaxy Note 4 – the Exynos double-quad-core version and the Snapdragon 805 single-quad-core version (we’ll discuss performance later). With those variants said, Exynos version gets an in-house Samsung Exynos camera sensor, but the Snapdragon 805 versions got a Sony sensor. One particular forumer on XDA pointed it out.
Fragmentation, yes?
Anyway, the camera on the Note 4 is just stunning. We can see that it performs amazingly in low light and also colour reproduction.
First off I have to say that IOI City Mall isn’t that well lit to begin with since the light source is quite far away from the ground as it has raised the ceiling. Image above was taken at a crossover of two very busy parts of the mall’s food place, yet I can manage to get a quick, excellent shot within 5 seconds. That is pretty amazing.
I need to emphasize on the Note 4’s optical image stabilization, or OIS for short. It works very well and stabilizes the entire video I was taking, and even eliminated all the annoying tiny weeny vibrations that my hand has. The result? Super clean images and video. Check out our video sample below.
However there is a price to pay for such amazing optics. The Note 4 sacrificed its camera as the thickest point, and also has a flaw where the camera can be scratched easily. Even if you want to put a case, make sure that case is thicker at the bottom side so that the camera lens doesn’t come in contact with any surfaces while laid low.
What I have to say about the camera is this – it’s a damn great camera, the best one out there for smartphones currently. It comes with a lot more other useful features which are not gimmicks for the camera, for example is the rear camera selfie mode. Oh my god, I can’t emphasize how much I love this feature. OIS really is a godsend when it comes to picture capturing, as it can stabilize everything without the loss of details. Actually, the OIS even improves sharpness by reducing motion blur.
Head on over to our Flickr account and check out those pictures.
However one particular feature which I didn’t find well-executed was the panaromic selfie, due to its image stiching problems. You start off at the center, tilt the phone steadily to one side, then go back all the way to the far side. Then, the image stitched will have some sort of slight geometrical distortions, making people look a little weird.
[nextpage title=”Performance”]
Let us talk a little about the specs before heading onto the performance. The Galaxy Note 4 we have here is the N910C version, which is the Asian model and comes with the Exynos 5433 that has an octa-core. Well, not really 8-cores.
It’s a quad+quad=octa.
Samsung made the all of its octa-cores in this fashion since its inception, and for the Exynos 5433, it has a quad-core 1.3GHz Cortex-A53 and another quad-core 1.9GHz Cortex-A57.
Moving processors out of the way is where the humongous 2K screen comes into play. With 2560×1440 pixels, performance will surely be affected by the number of pixels that little core has to push. Sure, 2K has 1.7778 times more pixels than a 1080p screen panel, but just how much difference can you see?
For me personally, I see a negligible difference between 1080p or 1440p (2K resolution). The only benefit that I see for cramping that many pixels into such a small panel is improved brightness. Definitely. Crispness, not so much.
Then comes benchmark scores. Have a look at how the Note 4 performs on Vellamo tests.
It topped charts on whatever Vellamo can throw at it. But then as Vellamo only tests the raw processor power of multi-core and one of the cores in the multi-core processor, I knew it’s not complete. Bring in Epic Citadel.
Epic Citadel showed the weakness of the Note 4. To drive that much pixels, the processor will have to be upgraded, and this is what exactly Samsung did. Upgrading to a next-gen processor to power that much pixels showed a that Samsung actually can maintain its performance, as its performance on Epic Citadel is on part with other 1080p smartphones running on Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 like the PadFone S or the OnePlus One.
I’m not disappointed at all as Samsung managed to maintain the performance. Being an early adopter of 2K displays though Samsung really did quite a good job here.
When powerful performance brings its worst enemy into the battlefield…
[nextpage title=”Battery”]
The humongous 3,220mAh battery with a built-in NFC chip inside of it is what Samsung has to offer for the Note 4. That’s a lot of “for” and “four” in a sentence.
All I have to say about the battery is that it’s a little disappointing. That 2K display will need more juice to power it up, but thanks to a Super AMOLED screen the black pixels are technically turned off. The double quad-core Exynos 5433 also saved up some juice with the new and improved fabrication techniques, and it all balances out in an on-par level of battery with the OnePlus One.
The battery can be drained from a 100% to dry within a day. However to do that, it’s proven to be very difficult.
Also if your phone is dried up on battery – seriously 0% and you can’t even power it on – charge it up to 50% at around half an hour. Yes, we’ve proven that it works, and I’m all for quick charging technology. Imagine if you just want to drop by your house to get a quick shower, but your phone is dead. So what you want to do is get home, plug your phone and then do your stuff. Before you leave, you have enough juice to survive till the wee hours in the morning.
[nextpage title=”What about the S Pen?”]
This is S Pen version 4. Technology on the S Pen has improved tremendously, but however the pen quality itself is quite questionable here.
The best S Pen version I’ve held and used was the Galaxy Note 2. A triangular shaped pen with a very tactile button. The Galaxy Note 4’s S Pen however is flat, rectangularly shaped pen with a very mushy button, just like the Note 3. Bummer.
However the pen really does perform very, very well in every the software itself. It works even on the most niche tasks I thrown on it.
Words can’t describe how much joy I had with the S Pen, especially while browsing through social media, especially Facebook. I copy pasted tonnes of Chinese texts from my friend’s updates with the help of the S Pen. You can’t do any of these on any other phones.
Another note (pun intended) is the drawing part. It’s a bliss to have such a natural drawing feel on the S Pen. It doesn’t feel like it’s on paper, but pressure sensitivity, the brush strokes and tip sizes are very pleasant and accurate to create a beautiful image.
Mindblowingly simple and minor little tasks that enhances the user experience greatly. That’s something that the S Pen can do. Yet you can do big things like sketching a complete prototype or a figure out from scratch, on the Note itself.
[nextpage title=”Wrap up”]
Yes, the Note 4 has its flaws – it has multiple trade offs, but they are generally unnoticed unless you look for them analytically. The camera is very excellent, and same goes to S Pen. You do get a couple of gimmicks here and there, and also some bloatwares.
Getting a Note 4 means that you’ll have to deal with TouchWiz, which we will take a deeper look at it in the near future.
Then comes the price. RM2,499 is a strong and hefty price that requires a lot of sound justification to convince people into buying this alpha flagship smartphone. To that I will ask – do you really need a stylus like the S Pen? If you do, great! Just get it. There is nothing that comes second to the S Pen.
The Note 4 is a definite buy recommendation from me, but get it through carriers – else it will really burn a hole in your wallet.
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