NJTechReviews was on hand at the Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2015 Event and we got to spend some quality time with the devices. And this our hands-on with the Galaxy Note 5, this is truly the one that customers have been waiting for. Just from my brief time with the device, this appears to be the one that Samsung got right. They have calculated there decisions to a fine point, and they hit the sweet spot for Note fans.
The Note 5 for starters is really fast, it compares to the lightning fast speeds of Verizon 4G LTE, it has a huge 4GB of RAM and a 64-Bit Exynos processor. This processor is built by a 2.5GHz quad core and a 1.2GHz quad core processor, making this a very fast and solid device. When you start it up, the screen appears instantly and you it is very fast to open and close applications, it even performs well when you need to jot down a quick note with Air Command when viewing a video. You will find this same great performance in the S6 Edge+, in fact there are a lot of similarities between the devices, and only two core differences.
One of those differences is that the display on the Galaxy Note 5 is not an edged one, but is a flat one. However, it is still a 5.7-inch Super AMOLED one with a resolution of 2560 X 1440 which makes it Quad HD. Colors looked really bright and vibrant, while there was contracts with darker controls, overall it seemed like a pretty nice viewing experience. One area that might cause an issue, would be the 3,000mAh battery. We, like many others, were hoping for a bit of a larger battery. Samsung is saying it should give you a full day, but they also offer Fast Charge capabilities out of the box which should help to combat this.
Similarly to our experience with the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, the camera is solid on the Galaxy Note 5. It has a 16 megapixel camera on the back that now features video stabilization. Samsung also announced live broadcast which will let you live stream right from your phone to YouTube, this might just give Periscope and Meerkat a run for their money.
The Galaxy Note 5 is running Android 5.1 Lollipop with a Samsung user interface out of the box. And they have updated some of the core Note software experiences. For starters, if the phone is locked and the screen is off, you could pop the SPen out and just start writing on the display to take a note. This is called Note Anywhere and it is really intuitive and I cannot wait to use this again. Air Command has a slight redesign, with some new colors, plus you can new screen capture multiple views of a webpage and have all it one shot. There also didn’t seem to be too much pre-loaded content on the device, we have to wait and see what carriers will put on it.
Lastly, the Galaxy Note 5 will come in either 32GB or 64GB of storage and unfortunately there is no micro SD card slot on the device. The Note 5 also is a very premium device, I even called it smoking hot, with an all metal design and several colors to choose from. I cannot wait to get my hands on the Galaxy Note 5, so stay tuned for our full review. In the meantime check out two hands-on videos below!
Nicole Case contributed to this report.
Pingback: NJTechReviews 2015 Back to School Gift Guide()