This year I was lucky to get a chance to attend Samsung UNPACKED Episode II in person which is an event that occurs every year in Berlin, Germany and I was one of the first people to check out the Note 4 in person way ahead of market release, during my stay in Germany I got two chances to get some 1-on-1 time with the Note 4 for about an hour or two which is great but not enough to form a complete opinion of the device. Now I've been using the device for a little bit over two weeks and I think I have a clear idea of what we're dealing with here so let's cut to the chase and jump right to it!
Design and size
At 153.5 mm tall, 78.6 mm wide and 8.5 mm think the Note 4 kept a close footprint from it's predecessor the Note 3, but when it comes to built material it's a whole different story. The Note 4 comes with a shiny metal frame all around the device with chamfered edges which combined with the fake leather on the back gives you quite a premium feel in the hand, in the back panel right under the camera you'll find a feature that came from the Galaxy S5 which is a heart rate sensor.
the front panel of the device comes covered with a newly reintroduced type of glass called 2.5 D which is tougher form what we find on the usual suspects the Gorilla Glass 3, plus it looks pretty damn good with a slight curve to the edges, also hidden in the home key button is a figure print scanner. the Note 4 comes in at 176 grams which makes it a heavy league device but the matter of the fact is, The Note 4 is the most beautiful looking device Samsung has ever made.
Display
speaking of massive things, the Note 4 packs a display in the same size as the Note 3, a 57" super AMOLED screen but with a pumped up resolution of 2560 x 1440 which translates into a Quad HD display, these 3,000,000+ pixels give us a whopping pixel density of 515 pixels per inch, it's a screen so big and gorgeous you'll lose yourself staring at it, pixels are humanly unrecognizable which is what we should expect from any display with over 400 PPI and being a super AMOLED display takes it to a new level.
I'm no stranger to QHD displays I've been using the LG G3 for quite a while before I jumped to the Note 4 which packs a 5.5" QHD IPS+ LCD display but what makes super AMOLED displays so unique is that the fact that it generates a much larger range of colors close to Adobe sRGP colors and that makes whatever colors on the screen more saturated and more vivid, some don't like that others do. point two is that LCD displays need another layer of back light on the bottom of the pixel matrix to make colors led up, AMOLED screens don't need that, AMOLED screens have what's called "organic lighting" which is generated by the pixel itself to make colors appear on the screen, anyhow I don't wanna talk about this way too much you can always do some research or ask me on Twitter or Facebook if you want to know more about this.
Camera
The Note 4 has what I can comfortably call the best camera on a Samsung smartphone to date, it's an improved version of what you can find on the Galaxy S5 except the lens has been enlarged to get in up to 60% more light to the sensor which results in very satisfactory low light images, and a first time appearance feature if you disregarded the Zoom devices which is the optical image stabilization (OIS) which helps a lot in making your images look better and more stable without shakiness but where OIS truly shines is the video recording, I had a blast recording some pretty cool 4K clips with this device and the quality is so good that you can use the device as a handy-cam replacement if you're planning to start vlogging anytime soon.
Images and videos produced by that 16 MP camera on the back are truly amazing. And before I forget the Note 4 also has a new and improved front facing camera which has been upgraded to a 3.6 MP selfies shooter with a wide lens that gives you some brilliant selfies you wouldn't dream of getting without using an external lens attachment, there's also some selfie-centric features that allow you take a panorama image with the front cam, Samsung call it "Wide selfie mode" and also another mode that allows you to snap a selfie with the rear camera when it detects a face in the image, but the back camera has less focal length so keep that in mind.
Camera Samples:
Video Sample:
Performance
The Note 4 is powerhouse with the best specs you can find on the market, it packs a snapdragon 805 quad core processor or an Exynos 7 octa core processor depending on the market you're at, the Snapdragon comes with Adreno 420 GPU and the Exynos comes with Mali-T760 GPU both versions packing 3GB of RAM, so as we would expect the Note 4 packs the latest and greatest of all. Day to day use is seamless on the note 4, the specs can easily satisfy the most demanding users, Gaming on the Note 4 is very fluid especially with that Quad HD display, the device benchmarks at a little bit over 50,000 points making it one of the highest scores I ever got on Antutu benchmark.
Software
The Note 4 comes with the latest version of Android 4.4.4 with Samsung's TouchWiz on top but Android 5.0 was announced little after it's release and the update will be arriving to the Note 4 ahead of all other Samsung devices, The OS was build around two main components, The S-Pen and that gigantic display, to take advantage of the big canvas on the screen, Samsung has added a long list of features that makes multitasking easier and smoother, the Note 4 allows for the usual split screen apps in addition to something we saw in devices like the G2 which is floating apps, except on the Note 4 there is no limits on it, on the G2 you were only allowed for up to 3 apps to work together but only the app you selected is the active one, on the Note 4 all floating apps are active, you can run a game in the background and have your camera ready for action just by clicking on it's icon which opens a small window on top of your game and both will be working simultaneously, this goes for every single pop up or "bubble" app you open.
The S-pen had it's share of updates as well, air command has four options when you slide the S-Pen out of the device or when you hover the S-Pen over the display and click the bottom on the S-Pen, these options are Action Memo, Smart Select, Image Clip and Screen Write; Action memo allows you to take notes on the go, you can even pin them to your home screen which is made possible by the humongous resolution, the device can recognize your hand writing to take action immediately if you wrote a number you can call it, send an email, convert to a text message or keep it as a note with a single click, Smart select allows you to extract text from anything on the screen whither a website or an image, Image clip allows you to collect images from anything on the screen to build a bank of ideas or to share it on social media and finally screen write is fun feature that allows you to take a screenshot and write/draw on it directly with a single click.
The S-Pen can be also used as a mouse to select text or to make a group select by holding the button on it and marking the area you want to select, it's an extremely hand add-on that you will get hooked on once you get used to using it and it's definitely no ordinary stylus.
Battery
The Note 4 is powered by a massive 3,220 mAh lithium-ion battery which under moderate use held up to a full day easily, under heavier usage the battery can last for up to 14 hours but have no worries, Samsung has added two new features to the Note 4 's battery which serve the more power hungry users.
The first is called fast charging which is done by making the charger that comes with the device operates at 9 volts instead of the usual 5 volts, this allowed for a 50% charge from 0% in less than 30 minutes, Samsung said 30 minutes but when I tested it out it took 25 minutes to reach 50% from 1%.
The second is a feature the Note 4 inherited from the Galaxy S5 which is the ultra power saving mode which is a mode you can turn on to save battery to an extreme level, it turns off the screen colors most of the cores and all the background data in addition to limiting number of apps you can run to a basic number of apps including calls, messages, internet, Whatsapp, Facebook, twitter, line and a couple of other apps.
The first is called fast charging which is done by making the charger that comes with the device operates at 9 volts instead of the usual 5 volts, this allowed for a 50% charge from 0% in less than 30 minutes, Samsung said 30 minutes but when I tested it out it took 25 minutes to reach 50% from 1%.
The second is a feature the Note 4 inherited from the Galaxy S5 which is the ultra power saving mode which is a mode you can turn on to save battery to an extreme level, it turns off the screen colors most of the cores and all the background data in addition to limiting number of apps you can run to a basic number of apps including calls, messages, internet, Whatsapp, Facebook, twitter, line and a couple of other apps.
Summery
The Note 4 packs all the latest and greatest from Samsung as you'd expect since it's the latest flagship from the company, it's gorgeous design and material makes for a great feel and that QHD display is one of the best out there, the camera is a perfect 10 out of 10 and the specs are topnotch, Battery life is catching up to the rest of the hardware and the operating system makes for an awesome user experience.
Drawbacks are so small that it won't really matter, the speaker placement on the back of the device is the only annoying thing I can think of, and it would've been great if the device was waterproof but I guess you got to leave somethings for the next flagships.
Video Review [Arabic]
Video Unboxing [Arabic]
