14 DAY TRIAL // Samsung’s Unpacked event has just started in New York, and as expected, the company’s president JK Shin has pulled the veil off the fifth iteration of the Galaxy Note.
After the highly anticipated reveal, Vice President and Head of Mobile Products Justin Dension was invited to talk more in depth about the new product. But first he did a little praise for the Galaxy Note family, which proved to be extremely loved by consumers, with each generation being more and more popular.
The Galaxy Note 5 borrows from the design DNA of the Galaxy S6, which means it has a metal frame placed between two piece of extremely tough glass, even tougher than Samsung’s previous flagship.
Galaxy Note 5 - hardware specifications
The device arrives with a 5.7-inch QHD Super AMOLED display with 518ppi, a 14nm octa-core Exynos 7420 SoC working in concert with 4GB of RAM (it’s the first coming out of the company to boast that) plus 32GB of internal storage (and up). The phone also features a 16MP rear camera and a 5MP frontal snapper.
Even so, like we’ve feared, the Samsung Galaxy Note 5 had to sacrifice a few things in order to look so sleek. It does not come with a microSD card for expandable storage, nor does it have a user-removable battery.
The exact dimensions of the phone are 153.2 x 76.1 x 7.6 mm and it weighs just 171 g / 6.03 oz. Just like the Galaxy S6, the Galaxy Note 5 comes with the large physical home button that houses a touch-based fingerprint scanner, on the right side we find the capacitive multitasking key while on the left the back key.
The other physical buttons reside on the side, including the power/lock key on the right hand side, plus the volume rocker on the left. Both are made of metal, in consensus with the whole frame.
Galaxy Note 5 - software specifications
But what makes the phone truly special is the S Pen, which comes this year with a host of fresh functionalities (naturally). One of the coolest new feats is the ability to take notes right from the lockscreen. How many times have you wanted to quickly write down a phone number or a subway station? Well, with the Note 5, you won’t even have to turn your phone on to do that, as you’ll be able to write directly from the lockscreen.
Users will also be glad to find out that stylus input has been improved and there’s less of an input lag. Plus, you can now do all sorts of things with the S Pen, like taking screenshots, writing annotation or quickly launching apps.
Air Command has also been improved and now the icon hovers and allows one-tap instant access to all S Pen tools from any screen.
But wait, we’re not done with the software department, as TouchWiz is getting a quick makeover as well. Samsung has been re-drawing it with a new icon style and the overall interface has been optimized in order to run even more smoothly than on the Galaxy S6.
As for photography, the Note 5 arrives with a 16MP main camera with optical image stabilization (OIS), while up in front we find a 5MP selfie shooter. The camera mode offers pretty much what the Galaxy S6 does, plus the Auto and Pro modes.
As we’ve been telling you a few days ago, the Galaxy Note 5 bundles a 3,000 mAh battery, which is sadly smaller than the power house inside the Galaxy Note 4 (3,220 mAh). The smaller battery might have helped Samsung made the phablet slimmer, but even so, it’s pretty disappointing that the company hasn’t managed to squeeze in a battery that’s at least on par with the one from last year’s flagship.
The phablet supports wireless charging out of the box and Samsung’s rapid charging technology is on board too.
Samsung will start taking pre-orders for the new phablet today at 3pm ET, while customers will be able to pick up the device in the US starting August 21. It will be available via all major carriers in the country (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile).
Pricing details are yet to be announced.
