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Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Review

2014-10-29
what's up everyone John render from TechnoBuffalo heretofore even for you of Samsung's Galaxy Note 4 it's got a fresh design it's got fresh hardware it's got a brand-new screen was all of that add up to a phone that you want to carry in your pocket let's go ahead and find out as I do with all my reviews I want to give a disclaimer I use this guy for eight days on ATT service here in Southern California I want to see any more detail on what I'm gonna talk about hit the link down below to go the written portion Todd at his own review unit and there's a lot more detail and pictures and galleries and all the things we're going to talk about so let me give a little bit of a backstory Before we jump into everything about the phone I was in Berlin for the very first Samsung Note announced it and the very first one came out four years ago I remember thinking to myself what the expletive is Samsung thinking putting a phone that big in the mainstream previously you know Dell had two larger phones they were kind of Fringe devices it turns out those Samsung had more foresight than anybody gave him credit for or perhaps they stumbled backwards into what was a hit category they've had for generations to try and get this right and a little bit a spoiler alert I think they hit this one out of the park let's go ahead and start with hardware so if you watch my reviews for the years you know I've been really hard on samsung in the past I think they've had kind of uninspired designs looked like they just designed one new device every three years and just make different size variations of it they made a tablet or a phone not here and not anymore so Samsung added beveled edges to the device that make it look for lack of a better word just sharp they look really fantastic they catch the light you pick it up they're cold in the morning they give it a premium feel I really surprised how much a little bit of metal makes it that make a difference to a device so picking up this versus an older Samsung device as Todd described was like a pairing a shoddy second-hand suit to a freshly present new one it's cleaner refined and something I think you could put trust in you also find that Samsung didn't skip on components here as well in fact almost all the hardware is among the best available on the market right now which I don't say that for any device usually it's a good screen an older processor Samsung real went all the way to the wall with this one so there's 805 processor under the hood complicated by three gigs of RAM 32gb of on-board storage XP extender with a micro SD card slot and a beastly 16 megapixel sensor with optical image stabilization wide-angle front-facing camera and just a ton more don't think this phone is really missing is wireless charging add that in here and Samsung would have hit a perfect score on the hardware front I like the way the buttons feel as well it's kind of a weird thing to say there's a satisfying click on the easily reachable volume buttons the home but has a really tactile feel to it Samsung also include an IR blaster on top of the vice right near the 3.5 millimeter headset jack it's also ditched that kind of silly to used USB 3.0 port on the bottom for a smaller and way more standard USB 2.0 Jack Samsung did admit that folks might miss the fancy faster speeds offered by USB 3.0 but since I made a decision to return to USB 2.0 following customer feedback and I applaud them for listening to consumers I like this choice Todd liked this choice is way easier to find USB 2.0 chargers with quick charge particularly as the new phones with that support are hitting the market the rump of this phone is that f4 mentioned camera with oh is optical image stabilization I just call it choice samsung also included a heart rate monitor and the sensor can now measure your blood oxygen level UV levels your stress and more they'll get to all that a little bit later the new S Pen rest in the lower right hand corner of the phone and the home button once again doubles as a fingerprint reader it is way more accurate on the note 4 than we saw on the galaxy s5 that was to me an to Todd although still not as accurate as touch ideas on the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 plus the back cover while being redesigned and thank goodness no longer has fake stitching on it can be removed and it feels really good on this device it's still a bit of flimsy plastic when you pull it off but I will trade that in da for having a removable battery and Samsung really makes that super easy to pop this thing off you can access the SIM card and microSD card slot so yeah it's a little bit flimsy to pull it off when it's on here it's it's almost flush to the back of the battery so you don't feel any sort of give it feels really premium I know this might be kind of nitpicking here but I do wish the Zion also included ip67 rating for water and dust resistance and I know Todd knows that we can't sort of have it all but the folks appreciate that aspect of the galaxy s5 might kind of be a bit let down turn the note 4 and it doesn't have such a rating so if you've got a lot of kids go to the beach you know you might want to be careful or just get a waterproof cage or put in a plastic bag of course the Kelly talked Karzai talking about this and display all right I feel like of a better word it's insane I've been happy with the display on the screens like the iPhone 6 plus which look really sharp and stunning on a 1080p resolution but you can totally see a difference looking at the note 4 is quad HD screen it is gorgeous Emma let allows Samsung's blacks to look really truer than on any other smartphone I've seen that's ricki ridiculous viewing for movies photos and the colors look like they're just popping off the screen here so as soon as I got this thing out of the box I wanted to look for quad HD footage to watch on this but Samsung didn't include any but fortunately the camera can record 4k footage so you can check out anything a recording I wouldn't download a few open-source samples and it looks really beauty even 1080p videos also look good text of course while reading a book or on a white screen looks really sharp and crisp of course not going to say it picks those unless you're Superman I'd have crazy fancy vision and the screen also holds up outdoors which is even more surprising I could see it in direct sunlight which is not something I say very often I know I've sort of been a broken record with quad HD screen saying I don't see the difference from a good 1080p screen and that's been the case until this guy so you can tell I'm kind of over the complementary here Samsung really offers the whole package here gorgeous design a beautiful screen and the specs to match it it's too bad though the software isn't as clean-cut so the note 4 runs Android 4.4.4 kitkat out of the box which up until a couple days glasses filming was the most recent version of Android it's great modern but still it's got TouchWiz on it which just isn't it's been improved as we saw at the galaxy s5 but it still feels overly colorful and crazy bloated think of it as like get through your second Thanksgiving meal all you want to do is lay on the couch thankfully though you can size script that issue entirely in a third-party launcher which is the first thing I usually do to cover up TouchWiz TouchWiz to me and Todd still feels kind of sluggish despite the Snapdragon by processor and three gigs of ram they're just still small jitters here and there that aren't buttery smooth I think other skins like sent six wanted to be way more efficient I'm not gonna harp on touch with too much here though I know some folks like it many options available which is one of the beauties of Android if you don't like it you can kind of make it go away it is one of the nice things that Android offers Samsung outfitted the Galaxy Note 4 with s hell 3.5 we're still trying to figure out how you swallow this is all the health features it's great reminding me that I've been sitting in my desk for way too long which I probably need to bring mind enough and I do that without moving just kind of move them up fingers but I did use it for tracking the calories that we were eating still though for us and I don't know why you can check my blood oxygen levels but does work very well if you want to try it if want to check your heart rate from your phone you can do that here too we get that Samsung try and create a health gadget and adding more functionality is always appreciated but it's just not going to be a maker brick to touch on the smart phone think of it more as a value-added then a reason to go out and get the phone at least for me thankfully though the software that does that though is clean a nice to look at heart rate monitor is also accurate enough and reading on my Moto 360 in galaxy note 4 is the exact same so it's pretty accurate if you sensors also from useful for folks who are worried about sun damage that sort of ppreciate edition as well and but other options like stress monitored I don't know tell me I'm stress which I know that so we've talked a lot about TouchWiz and my dislikes fork but Samsung's S note software's pretty awesome and the s-pen is better than ever it can use the S Pen to select groups of items like picture is super easily it's also even more accurate allowing you to sketch drawings if you can draw inside of the S note application density they linked also under canvas changes you press harder on the screen with the S note and it seems way way more sensitive than before other kind of software stuff multi windows also been improved to not only can you rent web side-by-side it can also pop some of them out like hangouts in the browser and the camera and more I'll run them in super small mini windows right on your home screen it's got two more useful than we thought there's a ton of more software coops I could talk about here though some of the highlights that I ended up using the most I could probably make like an 80 minute video just on through the software features Samsung's got on board here and that is one of the nice things about touch with if you like those small features that Samsung adds you're going to love this device find yourself served not using all of them though you might look at putting a third-party launcher on so next let's talk about this camera with that camera hump right there we said since I'm didn't skip on specs that statement certainly holds true for the back camera here it's a 16 megapixel camera which is absolutely ridiculously good Samsung opted for optical image stabilization support which you're seeing other flagship Android smartphones and of course the iPhone 6 plus OAS allows you to take better shots and low-light and also helps keep the phone as your video recording just keep it a little more smooth it's not perfect for moving objects those are those are still able to blur a little bit but you know people take a cleaner images if you're just sort of moving a little bit or you got shaky arms we've got a video sample right down below if you want to take a look at that so it looks like we shot it outside but then you already came out really really nice as well on the picture front this shots we took on a note 4 also came out really nice I'm surprisingly they look very good especially in low light one of the examples of all those that the link down below go to Todd's article you can see a whole gallery of all damned pictures one of things I'm always worried about with the quad HD phone is battery life one of the main reasons would like to test phones for just a few days here is that often there seems to be improvements with battery life over time and that was definitely the case with thing with moto 360 and it certainly holds true with the galaxy note 4 first couple days we used it battery life went Bob pretty fast it's probably because I was using it more than I would it's got a 3220 million power battery and after a couple days it start using like a normal phone it got really really good my usage is pretty heavy I think probably more heavier than most I'll take it off the charger around 6:30 to 7:15 depending on the time of day got two emails being pulled down all the time it's mostly cooked to Wi-Fi either home or at the office Bridge all right it's been way more time than I should to Neph hours of phone calls video viewing games all kinds of a sort of regular phone you used to do it's time I plugged in at night around 10:30 11 I had about sixty percent battery life here so you can easily get through two days of course we've got our moveable backs it can with buy another battery and pop it in just go along in merry way we've talked a lot about all the components the software the heart of the camera has it all come together so I'm a middle D bit fickle when it comes to phone I jumped from OS to OS and from phone to phone without really batting an eye this one though I can see myself using for a very long time it's got top-tier specs really good for a while a just ridiculously gorgeous screen and cannibal credible camera on a package that's smaller than the iPhone six-plus despite having a bigger screen size this phone gets a really solid nine and a definite recommend fortunately though Mountain View has done this guy I can go ahead and saw a good nail launcher and a fresh eye compact I make this guy my own what do you guys think do you agree disagree I want to hear your thoughts this Galaxy Note 4 phone you've been waiting for you wanna maybe see what else is gonna crown the next few months one of your thoughts I not even the comments right down below of course check us out at Tecton buffalo complex with greatest tech news so next time I'm a John Ranger see ya next video thank you guys for watching if you want to see more videos from people who just love technology it's a big subscribe button right here we put up videos almost every single day if you want 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