Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Review: Still The King of Android Phablets

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Samsung unveiled the very first Galaxy Note, which ended up starting the phablet craze. However, it wasn't just about the "size" of the Note, it was the functionality with the S Pen, something many manufacturers fail to offer with their own phablets.

 

The world thought the stylus was gone forever, but Samsung brought it back from the dead. Of course, the S Pen is no traditional stylus, it's a lot more polished with wacom technology.

 

Rating:
3.5/5

Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Review: Still The King of Android Phablets

With each edition of the Galaxy Note, Samsung has not only increased the screen size, but also improved the S Pen along with its functionality and features. Is the Note 4 the must have phone of the year or just another phablet? Go through our review and find out..

Build Quality And Design

The Note 4 is an amazingly designed phone and hits lots of key design points. The phone is definitely a premium looking device and it feels the same way too. The stitching on the back panel has been removed, making the phone look much better. The metal band that runs around the phone adds to that premium feel.

Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Review: Still The King of Android Phablets

The phone is quite big though with a 5.7" screen and this makes it quite difficult to use in one hand. Overall the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 has a brilliant build quality to it which is to be expected for a phone which costs Rs. 60,000.

Hardware

The Samsung Galaxy Note Edge comes with possibly the best specs in the market.
It is powered by a Quad Core Krait CPU that is clocked at 2.7Ghz and a Snapdragon 805 chipset. We also get 3GB of RAM and 32GB of ROM. Now, does it get better than that?

Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Review: Still The King of Android Phablets

I'm afraid it doesn't stop there as the Note edge also features a brilliant 3220 Mah battery that supports fast charging. It promises 50% battery life in just half an hour of charging.

One of my favorite aspects of the phone is the Super AMOLED QHD display which dominates with a pixel density of 515. The screen looks brilliant and even though ut demands more battery life it is worth it. Video playback and gaming is absolutely superb.

Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Review: Still The King of Android Phablets

Bonus features are the Heartbeat sensor and S Pen which add more functionality to the phone.

Camera

The year 2014 had a lot of brilliant phone cameras but the Note 4 camera is one of the best. The primary camera is 16MP and has Optical Image Stabilization as well as autofocus. The camera takes amazingly sharp photos with nice colour temperatures. It can also record UHD videos or more commonly know as 4K.

Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Review: Still The King of Android Phablets

The secondary camera is 3.7MP and also takes nice photos. The front camera also has a feature called wide angle selfie which allows you to take panoramic type selfies. Have a look at sample shots.

The camera app is nice and gives you numerous options and shooting modes to achieve the perfect photo. One downfall of this camera would be the fact that the Samsung software tends to over sharpen the images a bit.

Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Review: Still The King of Android Phablets

Overall the camera on the Galaxy Note 4 is a winner.

Software

One of the or maybe the only downfall of this phone would be the UI. The Note 4 runs on Android KitKat v4.4.4 but Samsung has added there own custom UI known as TouchWiz on top of it which is certainly not the best UI.

Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Review: Still The King of Android Phablets

The experience feels overly colourful and bloated. They have tried to use every inch and spec of the phone, granted there are some features which make the phone easier to use. In an overall aspect the Note 4 looses out with TouchWiz. Stock Android on the Nexus 6 is a much more preferred UI.

TouchWiz also tends to use up lots of RAM.

Battery

Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Review: Still The King of Android Phablets

The Note 4 comes with a 3220 Mah battery which will last you more than a full working day. Added to this it supports fast charging which gives you lots of battery in a little time. It however does not support wireless charging but adapters can be bought to do the same.

This battery will not disappoint you and you will never see yourself charging the phone more than once every 24 hours.

Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Review: Still The King of Android Phablets

Video playback and gaming don't take up as much battery as you would expect. It is a very pleasurable experience.

Call Quality and Connectivity

The Note 4 Call quality is as good as you need it to be and there are no problems that you will face with this aspect. The speaker on the other hand is quite loud, louder than the average smartphone speaker but it is placed on the back of the phone and is prone to being muffled if placed down. So during conference calls or playing movies it's best to use a stand

Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Review: Still The King of Android Phablets

The Note 4 Supports 4G LTE networks and NFC as well. It does not support Radio though. It has Bluetooth v4.1 and Wifi 802.11.

Verdict

Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Review: Still The King of Android Phablets

The Note is an industry best packing all the best specs into one device. The only two major downfalls would be the price and the TouchWiz UI. Hopefully Samsung will work on the UI for the Lollipop update.

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