First impressions are in on Samsung's newly unveiled Galaxy Note 4. The verdict? It's a great phone, but with only evolutionary changes introduced, it's not exactly shaking up the entire technology industry.
With only a few days to go before its rival Apple introduces the highly anticipated iPhone 6 on September 9, it is crucial that Samsung get back on its feet after the dismal consumer response it received when it launched its flagship Galaxy S5 last year, which critics panned as being cheap with its all-plastic design and gimmicky features.
It seems Samsung has learned its design lessons, with the new Note 4 coming with more elegant-looking aluminum sides. It still has the signature "leather-like" back panel but Samsung's designers removed the stitches around the phone's edges. The new phone maintains the same dimensions of its predecessor, keeping the same 5.7-inch screen and is slightly thicker and heavier than the Note 3.
"It is an acknowledgement that Samsung took a wrong turn with the move into plastic cases and that its designs didn't move fast enough to keep pace with many competitors," says mobile industry analyst Ben Woods at CCS Insight in an interview with Reuters. "The importance of metal cases is that it directly translates into bigger, edge-to-edge screens."
Under the hood, the Note 4 runs on an octa-core Exynos 5433 chipset and a 2.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon 805 with 600MHz Adreno 420 GPU, making it the most powerful Samsung smartphone to date. Like the Note 3, this new phone will run on 3GB of RAM and will be available in 32GB and 64GB versions, expandable with a 64GB microSD card.
Samsung also gave a boost to the Super AMOLED display in its Note 3, going from HD to Quad-HD or 2560 x 1440p in the Note 4. The bump in resolution can also be attributed to the fact that Samsung also unveiled its Gear VR virtual reality headset, a smartphone accessory that has a slot made for the Note 4, and possibly other Samsung smartphones in the future, for watching immersive 3D content. Gear VR was made in partnership with virtual reality pioneer Oculus VR, which provided software for Samsung's headset hardware.
Note 4 also has a better camera than its predecessor, getting a six-megapixel bump from 13 to 16 megapixels for the rear camera and a smart optical image stabilizer to minimize blur in pictures. Also included are increased sensitivity to Samsung's S-Pen and a new Snap Note feature that allows users to take a snap of their real notes, which can then be converted into digital notes. The new Note 4 also has its own fingerprint scanner, multiple microphones, better noise cancellation, a heart rate monitor, and the world's first UV sensor to be included in a smartphone.
"I think this is mostly an incremental change," says analyst Thomas Husson at Forrester Research. "What is missing is a total experience on top of the device to really differentiate in the interchangeable Android device ecosystem."
