Gadgetory

the original Galaxy Note was the first real phablet that I fell in love with I was actually at the original launch event in Germany and people were scoffing at the idea of a 5.3 inch monster of a phone I was personally enthralled at the time at a 3.5 inch rectangle just chilling in my pocket I began wondering what I could do with all that screen real estate so four years have passed since original debuted IFA in Germany and now its fifth iteration it's as controversial as the first one I'm John Wright injured from TechnoBuffalo and this is our review of the samsung galaxy note 5 as I do with all my reviews let me give a few disclaimers I tested the device for 11 days 7 days with international unit on AT&T and four with an AT&T Brendan unit obviously on their network Todd the written portion used his phone at the same time with the last 4 days worth of verizon model instead so I'll know any more detail on a theme to talk about including full camera samples and galleries hit the link down below and check out the full written portion as I dive in and try to answer the question would I buy this I tried to rehash the same things from the Galaxy s6 edge+ review so I'll be focusing on the experience if you want benchmarks we'll link to that review down below as well from a purely aesthetic standpoint it's hard not to love the glass middle design total carry over from the galaxy s6 introduced earlier this year however you'll no longer get expandable storage through a microSD card slot which means you're limited to 32 or 64 gigs of storage fans the Galaxy Note has long expected to have this and we've seen plenty of comments suggesting that many fans for the Galaxy Note 4 and still offers a micro SD card slot and another feature a movable battery fake leather back be damned there's also been a lot of concern about the design of Samsung S Pen which have inserted backwards can completely Bork your phone insert the wrong way once you've got a chance of running the sensor it's sort of too far and you may have actually got stuck in there permanently at first we thought this could pull you blend a proportion then I was messing around and put the s-pen and backwards on purpose just a little bit and I couldn't pull it out that I broke the sensor so don't be a John look before you put your pet in those concerns aside every other aspect of this phone is absolutely first-class the phone runs on octa-core exynos 7420 trip the same as in a galaxy s6 the Samsung padded phone with an extra gig of ram giving me now four gigs total and I'm slowly getting used to saying that four gigs in a phone which still just sounds like a lot in my experience though using the phone for daily gaming email phone more I never once thought Sutter as it expect sometimes you see phone start to slow down after a few months something tells me that note 5 is enough power to totally avoid that for months and months to come assuming it works the S Pen is way better than previous generations it's way more premium looking and feeling and no longer looks like a skinny plastic stick and functionality it works really well on display for taking notes saying documents or cropping photos Todd goes into way more detail on this I also really like the ability to draw a note the screen off it's helpful but mostly just flipped holstered and then users during my testing and finally the thing your eyes are gonna be staring at dead gorgeous display you're gonna find a quad HTML panel that's bright and crisp in all conditions you're gonna use it outdoors it boils down to this the galaxy note 5 and the galaxy s6 edge+ have the best screens on any phone that have ever come out to market Todd hasn't been a big fan of TouchWiz but I'm ok with it here it's way lighter than before and in all candor all I really saw of it is notification shade and the settings screen since I ran Google now launcher which forever it's worth gives you 5 icons down plus the doc Morel Bing if you're worried about TouchWiz from a note 4 or GS 5 experience exhale Samsung learned also in the software side is side seam 4.0 which allows you to manage your phone entirely from your PC late it's a Mac software's coming that means being able to answer text takes phone calls quickly transferring files and more it's not the prettiest software in the world - haven't always loved side sync on other devices such as Samsung Android tablets but it does work pretty well here next let's talk about camera the camera on the galaxy s6 totally blew us away in the note 5 which features the same sensor and same software improvements is one of my favorite features of the phone I found it a rare occurrence to snap a photo that I didn't like or appreciate and that's a huge compliment to the phone against competitors which sometimes required multiple shots get the photo that you really want to use low-light chop the restaurant for example came out excellent shots in daylight we're always more impressive tips I also had a really cool new feature let's use livestream directly from the camera app to YouTube it's sort of like what you might do with meerkat and periscope it works really well something I hope to see on other phones so before I wrap things up let's talk about that battery the Galaxy Note 5 supports Samsung's proprietary adaptive fast charger provides as much juice as possible as little time as possible Samsung promises a 50% charge in just 30 minutes which I found to be generally true and when I tried it it seemed like a parlor trick usually have a full charge about an hour hour and a half which is pretty incredible definitely keep in mind though you're gonna need the adaptive fast charging plug which is signified by the lightning ball on the side of it the standard is different than Qualcomm quick charge 2.0 which is supported by a variety of Qualcomm Snapdragon processors overall a battery life was about the same as a galaxy s6 edge+ you can get through a full day but be careful if you scroll through countless Twitter feeds Instagram feeds you got your screen brightness set up to 80% you're good at difficulty set it to auto and maybe limit how much you're on it be able to get through a full day you are get the changer usage so if you plan on using this phone without charging it at all throughout the day thankfully though if you do charge it and use the aforementioned fast charging feature to top it off it's going to charge very quickly or if throw it on a chi or PM a wireless charger the galaxy a5 for me covers nearly every feature that I'm looking for in a smartphone the display is absolutely gorgeous the camera is really incredible and you'll get great photos in almost every situation low light high light wherever you are and at least good enough to share with your friends which is really what matters most least for me from a smartphone the phone charges incredibly quickly it seems like a party trick it's got decent battery life not great design I think is incredible pretty close to perfect so I get that I also might be in the minority I respect the opinion of folks who want more from their phone who look at the Galaxy Note 4 and want that back they want removable microSD card slot you want solvable batteries and I get it but at some point it seems Samsung decided that cloud storage is gonna have to be good enough an industrial design Trump's those features and I get that too and for me I'm about to kind of burst and never carried extra SD card direction batteries so I've learned to adapt so about that would I buy a question I asked at the beginning and the answer should be pretty obvious at this point it's a resounding yes I absolutely would and you should too I just wish that it came in gold in the US the note 5 get to 9 on the TechnoBuffalo scale out of 10 and what do you guys think do you agree disagree up to you your thoughts on it in the comments down below is the note 5 the phone for you is a galaxy s6 edge+ the one that you want to carry again love to your thoughts if you want to see the full review link will be down below put us your view of the galaxy s6 edge+ could you also be down below thank you for watching till next time John rendering TechnoBuffalo and be next to each other in the comments