"A great update for Samsung, if not a huge change. The QuadHD screen more than makes up for iterative design changes."
For
Superb screen
S Pen has been vastly improved
Premium-look design
Against
Not a massive change from the Note 3
TouchWiz still not amazing
Back still leaves much to be desired
Screen quality
The
screen now boasts Quad HD Super AMOLED (2,560 x 1,440 resolution)
technology that stretches to 500 pixels per inch. Couple this with what
Samsung is calling an adaptive display - one that changes depending on
the light of the place you are viewing the screen - and on paper you
have the optimum viewing no matter what situation you are in.
To test the quality of the screen I watched a video that
was shot in UHD on the device and it was stunning. Colours were vivid
and detail popped out with the clarity you would expect from a 500ppi
screen. Even zooming in there were no jagged edges and playback was
smooth - no judder from the demo I viewed. But the screen
isn't the first thing that hits you when you get the Samsung Galaxy
Note 4 in your hands, it's the build quality.
Design
Samsung
has definitely listened about its latest line-up feeling plastic-y in
the hand and has decided to give the Note 4 more of a premium finish,
with a metal rim surrounding the handset, shielding the rest of the
chassis like a velvet rope protecting celebs from real people in a club.
I love the way the Galaxy Note 4 feels in the hand and
being a regular user of the Note 3, it definitely felt different enough
and it's light too, just a touch over the weight of the Note 3 at 176g. It's obvious but the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 does come equipped with some of the features that we saw on the S5. The
most notable is the heartrate monitor on the back (which also has a
neat camera functionality I will explain shortly) and the back has been
improved somewhat too, but is still a little too faux leather for my
liking.
There
is a lot of similarity between the Note 3 and its successor. Size
difference between the two chassis is definitely negligible - the Note 4
comes it at 153.5 x 78.6 x 8.5mm, compared to the Note 3's 151.2 x 79.2
x 8.3mm size. It's clear Samsung hasn't re-invented the
Note range but refined it with clever software updates and slight
tweaks here and there.
S Pen
One of the most
impressive is to do with the S Pen. It surprised me that the stylus
(sorry Samsung, I know you hate that word) made a comeback with the Note
range but four devices in and the S Pen finally makes a lot more sense.
For a start there are two new pen options: fountain and
caligraphy. Of these, fountain is the most interesting as it shows off
how far the S Pen has come in terms of usability. Until now, using the S
Pen has felt a lot like gliding a piece of plastic over a glass screen.
The "feel" of writing on paper just hasn't been there. With the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 this has changed.
The
fountain pen works best when you sweep the S Pen across the screen as
you would ink on paper and because of extra sensitivity (which has
doubled) it is now a joy to write on the Note 4's screen. Signatures
look like signatures and your handwriting actually really looks like
your true handwriting. I'm left handed and the S Pen was
still a joy to use. Considering I have never been able to use a
fountain pen in real life, because of smudging, it was great fun.And
the innovations don't end there. Now you can use the S Pen much like
you would use a mouse. Click the button on the side of the S Pen and you
are in Smart Select mode, where you can highlight whole passages of
text from a website, or even clip out sections of a site and put it into
your own clippings archive. Instead of being an added
extra, the S Pen finally feels like a necessary part of the Note 4,
rather than a "this is fun but I have no use for it" accessory.
Snap
mode has also been improved on the Note 4. While you used to just be
able to snap two separate services to the top and the bottom of the
screen, you can now "resize" an app much like you would a widget. So,
if you are using the camera and want to send an image via text but stay
in camera mode, a quick diagonal down swipe from the top right of the
screen will shrink the camera function and show the rest of the phone
screen for you. It's a nice feature that could replace using the left
multi-tab hot key for many.You can also make use of the new 'floating UI' which offers Facebook Chat Heads style pop ups on the screen for certain apps.
Camera
One other big improvement is with the camera.
When it comes to megapixels it's gone from 13MP to 16MP but the
innovations don't lie in the meaningless megapixel chase but also in the
front camera's f stop (megapixel wise this is 3.7MP), which now clocks
in at f1.9. In old money that means that the camera now lets in 60% more light and makes for better quality images. This also comes with the added bonus of optical image stabilisation.
You
can also use the camera in unison with the S Pen. A new feature called
Snap Note allows you to take a picture of a piece of paper (or
whiteboard) and change what's in the picture. Although I
didn't try this out myself, the demo I was shown consisted of a piece
of paper with a number of images and text on it. A
picture was taken of this, put through Snap Note and then the colour and
size of the images could be changed, text could be deleted and the size
of objects could be increased. It's a niche new feature but one that
could come in useful in a creative environment.
The
way you can take pictures has changed too. With the whole world going
selfie mad, it was inevitable that Samsung (and plenty more
manufacturers) would want to cash in on this. It has done it twofold
with the Samsung Galaxy Note 4. First there is a selfie
panorama mode. Much like the panorama mode seen on the Note 3, where a
picture is stitched from images taken from a pan of a scene, the same
thing happens in this mode - except it is in portrait and uses the
front-facing camera. Samsung is quoting 120 degrees spatial awareness and after having a go with it I am not going to argue about such a figure.
Samsung
has also recognised that if you want to take a selfie, then it is a
little difficult to get your thumb around to the front of the device to
take the picture. So it has utilised its heartrate monitor functionality
as a back trigger button. One tap on this and your
selfie is preserved. It's not a feature I will be using much but given
the sudden popularity of taking pictures of your own face in different
places it will be a feature that is used a lot.
Performance and battery
Samsung's
improved the Note 4's mic performance too. Voice recording is something
that won't be used for all but the Note is a device built for business
and this feature will be welcomed. There are now three mics on the handset (two at the bottom and one on the top), these are used well when recording voices. In
a crowded room you can zoom into one voice and cut the rest out. This
journalist is already salivating at the prospect of interviewing someone
and playing back the interview without hearing his own voice. It's a
clever feature but one that may be overlooked by many.
As
for the speed of the device, it was fast. I managed to zip between apps
and internet with no lag at all and it didn't break a sweat when
loading up a movie. But that's exactly what you'd expect with a 2.7GHz
quad-core Snapdragon 805 processor and 3GB of RAM under the hood.The
Samsung Galaxy Note 4 is a premium-looking device that will be familiar
to anyone who has used a Note. Don't expect huge changes here - you
still get a ribbed plastic back, although it's more in keeping with the
S5's style. That
was the phone that propelled Samsung into the AAA league of smartphone
manufacturers and the Note 4 on first hands on feels like it will be a
worthy addition to the Note range.When it comes to the
all-important battery, Samsung has given the Note 4 the same battery as
the Note 3 (3200mAh) but it has improved charging times. You can now
charge 50% of the battery in just 30 minutes and it has the same
ultra-power saving technology that was built into the S5.
Early verdict
It
is big and it is clever: the Galaxy Note 4 looks to be Samsung's best
Note yet, toning down the gimmick and adding real innovation to what is
becoming one of the best phone ranges around. The
biggest relief is that the software changes are innovations rather than
annoying bloatware. Samsung does have a habit of adding gimmickry to its
handsets but the big changes here are actually beneficial to how you
use the Note. source:- Hands on: Samsung Galaxy Note 4 review
