Samsung wasn’t the first handset vendor to launch a smartphone
with an oversized display, but there’s no question that Samsung
single-handedly popularized the new “phablet” category. The
company laughed in the face of neighsayers — myself included —
and proved that consumers were indeed looking for phones with
supersized screens. In fact, devices that would have been
considered phablets back when Samsung helped pioneer the
category are now the norm, and top rival Apple has been forced to
finally increase the display size on its iPhone lineup .
Now, the king of phablets is back with the fourth version of its
groundbreaking Galaxy Note lineup, the Galaxy Note 4 .
Samsung on Wednesday finally unveiled the smartphone Android
fans have been dying to see for the past few months. The good
news is it’s everything the rumors suggested it would be — a beastly
smartphone with cutting-edge specs and Samsung’s first ever quad
HD display.
In fact, there really aren’t any surprises at all.
The new Galaxy Note 4 features what are hands down the most
impressive specs we’ve ever seen on paper. The phone includes a
64-bit quad-core Snapdragon 805 processor, 3GB of RAM, a
fingerprint scanner, a heart rate monitor, a 16-megapixel rear-facing
camera with OIS and 8x digital zoom, a wide-angle front-facing
camera, up to 64GB of internal storage, microSDXC support and
Android KitKat. The phone also includes a rapid-charge feature that
charges it from 0% to 50% in just 30 minutes.
These monstrous internals translate into a user experience that is
fantastic. Operation is a smooth as you would expect from a quad-
core beast like this, and I couldn’t trip it up at all during my brief
time with it.
And then there’s the display.
I won’t mince words: The quad HD display on Samsung’s new
Galaxy Note 4 is the most gorgeous smartphone screen I have ever
seen.
Samsung’s 5.7-inch Super AMOLED display features 1,440 x 2,560-
pixel resolution, also known as “quad HD” or “2K resolution.” It
sports a Retina-busting pixel density of 518 pixels per inch and
colors on the screen are simply brilliant. No other smartphone
display in the world is as vivid as the one on Samsung’s new Galaxy
Note 4.
Beneath the display, the overall TouchWiz experience remains
largely unchanged on the Note 4. There are some solid
enhancements, especially surrounding S Pen functionality, but for
the most part the phone offers what we’ve seen on Note-series
devices before it.
Finally, in terms of fit and finish, the new metal frame surrounding
the Note 4 is a nice touch that Samsung proudly touts, but the back
of the phone is the same plasticky pleather we’ve seen before on
recent Samsung devices. This isn’t a bad thing for many users, but
the phone definitely doesn’t feel as premium as an iPhone or the
HTC One (M8), of course.
The bad news for Samsung fans hoping for a huge upgrade over the
Note 3 is that the new Galaxy Note 4 is to the Note line what the
Galaxy S5 was to the Galaxy S line. It’s not a huge, innovative step
forward. Instead, it’s mostly an iterative upgrade that focuses on
refining a user experience that was largely already in place.
2014 will seemingly be the first year Apple enters the phablet
segment and the company will clearly have its work cut out for it.
Samsung’s Galaxy Note 4 is a great device with monstrous specs, a
fantastic feature set and the most gorgeous display that has ever
existed on a smartphone. TouchWiz gets a bit complicated and
iOS’s simplicity may give the iPhone phablet an edge in that area,
but the overall experience afforded by the Note 4 will be tough to
beat.
Samsung’s Galaxy Note 4 will launch soon on each of the four
major nationwide U.S. wireless carriers, with pricing and exact
release timing to be announced in the coming weeks.
Via BGR
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