Today was a day quite a number of tech geeks have been waiting for. Samsung’s finally unveiled its latest iteration of the Galaxy Note. We’ve all been expecting the 4th version of the popular phablet, but that wasn’t the only thing had up its sleeve when it finally made the announcement at Berlin.
No, Sammy had one more thing in store for Note fans and that was the new Galaxy Note Edge. And boy was this a surprise, because not only did Samsung unveil two new Galaxy Notes, one of them (the Note Edge) comes with an audaciously curved screen. So what does the two new Notes offer. aside from the excitement and new screen of course? Let’s go through them one bye one.
Samsung Galaxy Note 4
This phablet is of course the star of the show. After many months of speculation and rumours, we finally see the new Sammy phablet come to light. So what does it offer us? While not revolutionary, the Note 4 does improves upon last year’s Note 3 with added refinements on its design and build. So here’s what you get with the Galaxy Note 4; a 5.7-inch quad HD Super AMOLED display (2560 x 1440 pixels), superfast 2.7Ghz quad-core Snapdragon 805 processor, 3GB RAM, 16-megapixel rear facing camera with Smart OSI and 32GB storage. The front camera is now 3.7-megapixel with f/1.9 and a 120-degree wide angle because we love group selfies ( yes, yes we know they’re called wefies but we’re not going to use that ridiculous term). Of course you’d need a decent battery to handle all that and the Galaxy Note doesn’t skimp on that with a 3200 mAh battery. As expected, the Note 4 will be running on Android 4.4.4 KitKat with Samsung’s TouchWIZ interface.
And how about its sensors? The Galaxy Note 4 chock filled with a bunch of sensors. The usual suspects, the gesture, accelerometer, geo-magnetic, gyroscope, IR-LED Proximity, barometer, hall sensor and finger scanner are all in there but there’s also some new ones. This includes the heart rate monitor we saw in the Samsung Galaxy S5 and a brand new UV Sensor, the first to be incorporated into a smartphone in the world.
We cannot of course, forget the main reason for the Note’s popularity and that’s the S Pen. Samsung has improved the S Pen’s abilities and features, saying that it now offers a more authentic pen experience. This includes a more natural brush effect that’s akin to writing with a fountain or calligraphy pen. New features include the ability to quickly pin notes to your homescreen and multiple note-taking methods to fit to your requirements.
What we wanted to see from the Note 4 was also an improved physical look and Samsung might have just heard us. It now sports a sleeker design and they’ve even thrown in a premium metal frame onto it. There’s still the faux leather back, but this time it supposedly isn’t as “cheap” looking since and its also as soft as what its suppose to imitate, leather. There are three colour choices for the Note 4 as well and they’re “Charcoal Black”, “Frost White”, “Blossom Pink” and “Bronze Gold”.
Samsung Galaxy Note Edge
So that was the Note 4 but now for the surprise entrant by Sammy, its new Note Edge. So what makes this new Note different from its Note 4 sibling. As we mentioned before, the Note Edge comes with a curve screen but it’s not ridiculously curved inwards like we saw on the Galaxy round. Instead, like the name implies, it’s curved to right-hand side of the phone, or edge of it, offering an extra area that has actually some practical use like to display notifications, app controls and widgets. This would especially be useful when the phone’s cover is in play, offering an fast and easy way to access phone information without having to flip the cover open. The screen itself is a 5.6-inch, 2560 x 1440 QUAD HD Super AMOLED display and likely utilises the same panel that was used in the Galaxy Round.
Curve screen aside though, the Edge isn’t just all weirdly new with an innovative screen. It shares almost the same impressive specs as its Note 4 sibling. It has the same innards, being powered by a quad-core 2.7GHz Snapdragon 805 processor with 3GB RAM and you get 32GB of storage which is of course expandable up to 128GB via microSD. It also has the same the 16-megapixel rear facing camera and 3.7-megapixel front camera that’s perfect for group selfies. Like the Note 4 it also comes with the same bunch of sensor and of course there’s the Android 4.4.4 KitKat with TouchWIZ and the S Pen. What’s different though is the battery capacity, where the Note Edge has a removable 3000mAh battery, just slightly lower than its Note 4 sibling.
It also has some slight variation in design, obviously due to its curved screen. It is slightly thicker, measuring at 8.3mm thick but the Note Edge still takes its design cues from the Note 4 with its metal body and faux soft leather back.
So there you have it, Samsung’s new Galaxy Notes. Of course the big question now is when and how much? Samsung is still being a bit tight lipped on pricing but we can expect the Note 4 to hit global markets in October. The Note Edge on the other hand has yet to be given a timeline for availability so stay tuned as we update their availability locally in the coming months.
