Samsung galaxy note 4 camera review. Memory, memory cards, chipset, performance

All three generations of Samsung Galaxy Note that we have seen before have never ceased to amaze. The fourth generation, which came to me a week ago, has become the coolest among all that came before, and this is obvious from the first second of our acquaintance. And the first thing you feel is a very high-quality metal case, and here it is needed for several reasons. Firstly, the smartphone is large, it is larger than the average flagship, which means it needs a more rigid body. None of the laptops could previously boast of the most rigid design. The assembly, of course, was ideal, as for a plastic structure, but it cannot be compared with metal. And secondly, this is a top-end high-level product and we really want it to feel expensive in the hand. Note 4 is the first laptop that evokes such a strong feeling of a solid gadget.

Design and ergonomics

Therefore, I will start the story with design. Two years ago, the Note 2 was a very good device except for its design. Many people did not like the glossy body, which exactly repeated the features of the Galaxy S 3. The Galaxy Note 3 became much more independent in terms of design, the gloss disappeared and the only element that could not be liked was the imitation of stitching with thread on the back cover under the skin. A very unusual solution for a standard design. Many people liked the “skin”, opinions differed about the stitching (although I liked it), and metal has been demanded since the first version of the Galaxy S.

And so, I can call the new design of Note 4 ideal. In terms of plan, it does not have any obvious flaws or little details that could obviously be controversial (like a line). There is a perfectly assembled, strict case with a high-quality metal frame that rigidly holds the entire structure, a nice back cover that looks like leather, but without stitching, and thick Corning Gorilla Glass 3. Taking the device in your hands, it’s hard not to fall in love.

At the same time, everyone, there is no catch here, such as the lack of an infrared port or a slot for a memory card - everything is in place. And to the standard arrangement of elements, a fingerprint scanner and a heart rate sensor were added - everything is the same as in the S5. But I don’t use these two features; the scanner is not particularly convenient for this size, because you have to swipe it with your finger.

The MicroUSB connector has been downgraded to version 2.0. Visually this is correct, but given the fast charging function, I see no reason to keep a large connector.

The dimensions of the device have changed slightly; if the width has decreased, albeit by less than 1 mm, then all other parameters, including weight, have increased. Note 4 is 2.2 mm taller than its predecessor, 0.2 mm thicker and 8 grams heavier. But considering the case materials, this is completely normal.

In general, the tactile sensations from the device are extremely positive. The point that worries many is the gaps that people started talking about after the start of sales. The problem is far-fetched, nothing is inserted anywhere, much less loose.

Display

One of the main features of a smartphone is the screen. It is especially interesting, because some foreign publications dared to call it the best on the market. I don’t know about the best one, but one of them for sure. The fact is that there is still a difference between IPS and Super AMOLED, so who likes what better. In Galaxy Note 4, the display diagonal has not changed – 5.7″, and this is good, otherwise it would hardly be more or less convenient to use. Still, now it is on the verge even for lovers of large displays, fortunately the body is compact. But the resolution has increased to QuadHD (2560×1440 pixels). The pixel density is an amazing 515 per inch. It is impossible to consider a separate one. It’s absolutely impossible, I tried. And this means that in this case, increasing the resolution was beneficial. Now you can read books and enjoy magazine-ready fonts.

Brightness, both minimum and maximum, is comfortable for reading in the dark and in bright light, respectively. The only observation is that at maximum deflection angles the display looks green, most likely this is due to the thickness of the glass. And it is obviously thick, because it does not press through at all, even with pressure in the central part.

Cameras

As before, the Note 4's camera is one of the best on the market. The matrix has grown a little in physical size and is now manufactured by Samsung. However, now there are 16 million pixels, not 13, so the size of each individual pixel has decreased slightly. The aperture remained the same – 2.2. The video is recorded in 720p up to 120 fps, in FullHD up to 60 fps, 2k and 4k 30 fps.

Optical stabilization has appeared, although it works in modes up to 1080p inclusive, 2k and 4k are recorded without stabilization. The front camera has been significantly updated – fans of selfies will love it. It has a 3.9 MP sensor, 1.9 aperture and a wide viewing angle to ensure everyone is in the frame.

Example photo, front camera

Examples of photos, main (ratio 4:3)

1080p video examples

4k video example

Example video 720p, 120fps

S Pen

The stylus, or electronic pen S-Pen, is exactly what distinguished and distinguishes the Galaxy Note from all other large smartphones. The point is that on a large screen it is convenient to do various handwritten actions, including writing, precise editing of photos, text, drawing and much more. The S-Pen isn't a mere soft-tip stylus, it's a little work of art from Vacom that, in its current version, supports up to 2,048 pressure levels. In general, we have a good graphics tablet, especially when paired with SketchBook, which can be installed for free on the Galaxy. But the stylus is needed not only for drawing, I, for example, am not good at this at all, but I used the S-Pen in Note 3 and use it in Note 4. It is convenient for adding new ones and managing existing tasks in the organizer, it is convenient for previewing hover events on its cell, they are convenient for adding sketches, cutting out fragments from the browser, and much more. In the new Note 4, you can use the stylus to select any text, just like you would with a mouse, by simply pressing a button and swiping over the desired text. I will not dwell on this point for one reason, a year ago I...

Specifications

In all previous times, I always wanted a Note version with a Qualcomm processor, because the Exynos versions were inferior to them. Again, a year ago I wrote, . But today everything has changed: Exynos supports all LTE standards as the 805th Snapdragon, its Mali-T760 graphics are not inferior in performance, and the processor wins, video can be recorded in 4k, and most importantly - Exynos 5 Octa 5433 installed in Note 4 , wins in terms of technical process: 20 nm versus 28. This means that it is more energy efficient and heats up less. By the way, the heating even in heavy games is really small.

• Dimensions: 153.5 x 78.6 x 8.5 mm.
• Weight: 176 g.
• Operating system: Android 4.4.4 KitKat.
• Processor: Octa-core, Exynos 5 Octa 5433, 4 x Cortex-A57, 1.9 GHz + 4 x Cortex-A53, 1.3 GHz
• Graphics: Mali-T760.
• Display: Super AMOLED, 5.68″, 2560 × 1440 pixels, 515 ppi
• Memory: 32 GB flash, expandable via micro SD memory cards.
• RAM: 3 GB.
• Camera: main - 16 MP, video recording in 1080p, front - 3.9 MP.
• Wireless technologies: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1, IR port
• Interface connectors: 3.5 mm headphone jack, Micro USB 2.0.
• Battery: Li-Pol battery 3220 mAh.

The only thing I had reasonable questions about was autonomy. The battery capacity has increased quite slightly - by only 20 mAh, to 3220 mAh. As the display resolution increases, it would be logical to assume that energy would be consumed faster. But, fortunately, the energy-efficient processor saves the day in this case. At least the smartphone lives no less than the previous generation. In the case of the LG G3, this was not the case, where the battery life was significantly reduced.

BY

It’s high time to throw out prejudices about TouchWiz. I am well aware that this add-on was not the leader in terms of speed for a long time, users especially remembered TouchWiz in the form of the Galaxy S 1 and 2, but everything became much better a year ago. Updates arrive quite quickly, new devices are sold with the latest versions of Android, in this case 4.4.4. Now I don’t even know what I could complain about. And I'm not talking about banal things like design and speed. The first is a matter of taste, but here the interface is more similar to a naked android. Secondly, it should be everywhere and TouchWiz works great, I haven’t caught a single bug. It’s especially nice compared to today’s iOS8, which works much worse. I'm talking about convenience and functionality. In TouchWiz, for the first time, I found such things as the ability to connect to an AirPlay device without third-party software; Samsung was the first to pay attention to the musicality of its devices; But I’m generally silent about the possibilities of working with the stylus - they are huge, when you take it out, everything becomes tailored to it.

I liked the Note 4 right away and immediately asked myself: what will I really miss if I switch to it completely? The first thing that came to mind was playing music on my Klipsch AirPlay speaker. I decided to find a third-party player on Google Play and found it, but quite by accident I found in the Note 4 itself the “Quick Connect” function, called from the curtain. The speaker is instantly located in it and you can output sound to it!

The second thing is that Android devices have always been inferior to iOS. We are talking about musical possibilities. Samsung added the ability to control sound delay and even correctly explained what is what. I installed the Samsung analogue of GarageBand, Soundcamp, and saw the light - there was no delay at all! In addition, it is possible to connect third-party tools to the smartphone via MicroUSB or 3.5 mm connector. And among the gifts for Galaxy Note users there is quite advanced software for musicians. Well, finally, the ice has broken!

Specifications

• Android 4.4.4, TouchWiz shell
• microSIM
• SuperAMOLED screen, 5.7 inches, 1440x2560 pixels, QHD, 515 ppi, 16 million colors
• Corning Gorilla Glass 3
• S Pen for handwriting notes, drawing and more
• 3 GB RAM, 32 GB internal memory, memory cards up to 128 GB
• Exynos 5 Octa 5433, 8-core processor, up to 1.9 GHz per Cortex A57 core, up to 1.3 GHz per Cortex A53 core, Mali-T760 graphics accelerator – LTE Cat.4 – N910C
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 805, 4 cores Krait 450 up to 2.7 GHz, Adreno 420, LTE Cat.6 – N910S
• Acceleration sensor, gyroscope, proximity sensor, compass, barometer, UV sensor, heart rate sensor, blood oxygen saturation sensor
• GPS/A-GPS/Glonass
• ISOCELL camera 16 megapixels, optical stabilization, video recording up to 2160p 30 frames per second
• Ant+, Bluetooth 4.1 EDR, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n/ac, dual bands; microUSB (USB 2.0), USB Host, MHL, USB On-the-go; NFC, infrared;
• 3G 850/900/1900/2100; 4G 800/850/900/1800/2100/2600
• Battery 3220 mAh Li-Ion
• Size 153.5x78.6x8.5 mm, weight 176 grams

Scope of delivery

• Telephone
• Battery Li-Ion 3220 mAh
• Wired stereo headset
• Charger with USB cable
• Instructions

Positioning

The Note line began as an experiment within Samsung, the result of which unexpectedly found itself in demand on the market. Already by the second generation, the Note line acquired the features of a flagship, emerged as a separate direction and began to attract sales to itself. Samsung has two flagships throughout the year, one is the Galaxy S, which appears in early spring, and the autumn one is the Note line device. In 2013, it became clear that most of the innovations would be used in the Note line; these devices became not only a testing ground for the latest technologies, but also a key product for the company. Interest from the Galaxy S gradually shifted towards the Galaxy Note; suffice it to say that sales of the Galaxy S4 in the first 50 days reached 10 million devices worldwide, but the Galaxy Note 3 sold the same number in 60 days. Conventionally, we can say that in Samsung’s offer these two product categories existed in parallel and gradually the focus shifted to the older model. There are many reasons for this - the lack of real and strong competitors, the high cost of the product, which in itself creates a niche (there are always those who want a phone for the maximum price), excellent technical characteristics. The Note 3 model turned out to be very successful, and, just like the Note 2, competitors could not replicate it. Look at the Note line and how it has evolved.

For example, LG closely monitored the development of both the Galaxy S and Note lines. In 2013, the company was forced to decide how it could compete with these two flagships, and created a kind of intermediate product - the LG G3. In terms of size and screen diagonal, this model is exactly in the middle between the Galaxy S5 and Note 4, although functionally it gravitates towards the Galaxy S5.

The Note line created a niche in the market and became successful, this is also proven by how Apple tried to bite off its piece by creating the Apple iPhone 6 Plus, a hybrid of its phone and tablet, which, like Chinese devices, does not rely on new technology or quality of work, but solely on the increase in screen diagonal. That is, just like the Chinese, Apple is selling just another device with a large diagonal, but not a concept that changes the idea of ​​the device and its capabilities.

Samsung, when creating the Note line, has always been guided by the dream of consumers to get the highest possible characteristics that will be relevant for several more years. For example, Note 3 does not lose its relevance today, a year after its release. In fact, this device remains one of the best on the market, it does not look outdated, and in terms of camera quality it is second only to the latest generation Galaxy S5, as well as Note 4. For fans of brute force and the power of phones in synthetic tests, such devices are simply a godsend. For ordinary consumers, this is also a good choice, since when you buy such a device, you don’t have to think about changing it for at least a couple of years, or even all three. The main thing is that after a couple of years you will have a device in your hands that is fully functional and works well. Perhaps this is what determines the real flagships of the market - not by how they are positioned at the time of release, but by whether they can be used several years later, and without the user missing something. And in this aspect, two companies are leading the market - Apple and Samsung, as evidenced by their sales. But the approach of these manufacturers is very different: if Apple relies not on technical characteristics, but on the strength of the brand, marketing, and design, then Samsung has always focused on the hardware of the device, its capabilities and the latest developments. These are completely different approaches, and in this aspect, Note 4 does not look like a device for everyone, it is only for those who want to get the maximum possible technology for their money and, as a result, the quality of pictures, speech transmission, speed and other points.

Among the users of the Note line, three groups of consumers can be distinguished - on the one hand, these are geeks, those who focus on the most productive, interesting solutions. The second group is business users, those who need productive solutions with additional capabilities, for example, working with a stylus or handwritten notes. And also partly this is a “fashionable” audience, those who buy the most expensive solutions, trying to disguise themselves as a business audience. Let me also remind you that, as before, Note is the only product on the market that is suitable for those who are used to taking notes by hand and love to write; there are simply no alternatives to this product in this aspect.

Design, dimensions, control elements

Samsung positions the Note line as the most expensive devices. In 2013, they added a backrest with leather embossing, which caused many smiles - supposedly a premium product can only be made from real leather, but this is, well, fake leather. The lack of logic in such comments, as well as common sense, is understandable. Plastic is one of the best materials that exists on the market, but the main thing is that it is unpretentious to use. Samsung's discovery has been copied by many Chinese companies that keep their noses to the wind, and in 2014 we see dozens of models with plastic embossed under the skin - this allows them to maintain their appearance for quite a long time. But at the same time, many forgot that leather covers for Note 3 were available from the first months of sales - that is, you could modify your device as you wish. Do you want leather? You buy the cover and get this material. In my opinion, this is the most adequate approach - when you yourself choose the material that you need. As a regular user of the Note line, I would rather get a durable, wear-resistant case, and the fact that this is what comes with it by default is a big plus.

It's also important to note that Note covers are not just some external accessory, they are part of the case, you install the cover instead of the back cover. We'll return to this issue at the end of this review, as it's important in terms of the fashionable accessories coming to the Note 4.

Let's start with the exterior of the model - outwardly it resembles Note 3, there are few differences as such, from afar they can be confused. In many ways, design heritage is not bad at all, especially since it is accompanied by radical changes in case materials. Just like the Galaxy Alpha, the Note 4 uses a metal frame around the entire body. Look at the Alpha, this is what it looks like on this miniature device.

The Note 4 looks about the same, if you close your eyes to the completely different size of the device. The metal edges are beveled and play in the light. But at the same time, the side edge itself is painted to match the color of the case - in a pink device it is pink, in a white device it is white, and so on. From a technological point of view, this is a certain challenge - how to achieve such a quality of metal paint coating that it does not peel off with constant use. I specifically tried to scratch the coating with keys and other metal objects, but no traces remained. I admit that using a knife or nail will achieve the result in the form of scratches, but this is definitely intentional damage to the device.

I like the Note 3, but I don't like the fact that the sides are peeling off after a year of use, and one of the edges is wrinkled after repeated falls.

It should be noted that Note 3, like previous devices, very easily withstood falls from human height onto different surfaces. With Note 4 I tried to drop it onto the parquet from 1.5 meters, there was no noticeable damage. I didn’t drop it on the asphalt because I didn’t want to spoil the brand new device. So, one of my complaints has apparently been removed - in Note 4, the durability of the frame is taken to another level, it will not change or fray, since the edge is made of metal.

Initially, the device comes to the market in 4 colors: white, black, pink and gold. All colors look interesting, unlike the previous season, there is no need to wait additionally for these colors, they appear instantly.

The back cover is also embossed to look like leather, but the pattern has changed, it has become a little larger, and there is no stitching along the edges. It doesn’t rub off, the white color is wearable, it looks good. The lid, unlike the previous device, must be carefully snapped into place at the bottom; due to the slight bending of the body, it does not always snap into place instantly. But there is no problem with this, you just need to be careful.

The speaker in the device was moved to the back wall, the design is completely similar to the Galaxy S5 - Note 3 had a speaker on the bottom end. The changed location made the speaker even louder, in Note 3 you couldn’t complain about it, now the same melodies sound even louder, I tried to show this in our video.

There are microphones at the ends - there are now three of them in the device. Two on the bottom end, and one on the top. Three microphones do an excellent job not only with noise reduction in a street or noisy room, but they have added some functions that are not typical for phones and have not been encountered by me until now. The voice recorder has been improved - now it has an “Interview” mode, when it records sound from two microphones - it is important to turn the phone with the end facing the interlocutor and preferably place it on the table. There is also a “Conference” mode, when sound is recorded from different sources. One of the new features, but unlike many, it is not at all useless and convenient in work and life.

I would like to note that it is from the point of view of speech quality that Note 4 has done a great job. And this is not only support for HD Voice codecs, which, in turn, depend on operator support. Samsung tried to create the best-sounding phone during calls, for this they worked on both the speaker and microphones. Due to the illegibility and unimportance of this parameter for the vast majority of people, they simply will not notice it. But I spend about 1.5-2 hours a day on the phone, and for me the sound quality is important, here it is the highest possible. I can only compare it with Nokia phones, which in the latest flagships have regained their former quality.

The 16-megapixel camera module protrudes on the back panel and does not have any bezel. It protrudes slightly, and this is already familiar from Note 3, it does not cause any problems. Considering that the camera is in the middle, this even has its own advantage: the body rises and the speaker sounds louder when the device is lying on the table.

The sensor under the camera has changed compared to the Galaxy S5, now it can not only measure heart rate, but also measure blood oxygen levels, stress, and ultraviolet radiation. Many parameters will become unnecessary for most, but a lot is not a little, after all, they don’t ask for additional money for them.

At the top end there is an IR port for controlling household appliances. Your phone can act as a remote control for any device. And sometimes this saves and helps. I had several situations when hotel remote controls didn’t have batteries, and the phone saved me; with one click it turned into a full-fledged remote control. At home and when using TV services (cable or satellite channels), it also provides all the programs, schedules and search for them. Very convenient. The service itself is from Peel.

On the left side there is a paired volume key, on the right side there is an on/off button. The keys are easy to use and are also metal. At the top end there is a 3.5 mm headphone jack, while at the bottom there is a USB connector (microUSB standard 2.0). Perhaps the only step back was just such a connector - in the Galaxy S5, Note 3 there is a USB 3.0 connector. I've heard many versions of why they did it this way, but the most likely one is that Samsung hoped they could use a USB 4.0 connector here. It looks the same as the connectors in the latest Apple devices and is very simple. But such devices will appear only in the summer of 2015, it is possible that this is why there has been a return to USB 2.0. This cannot be considered a serious drawback; few people will regret USB 3.0; it was important for a very small part of the audience.

At the bottom you can also see a slot for the S-Pen stylus. As before, the handle is attached securely and does not fall out; we will talk about it separately, since it has changed.

Let's talk about the front surface of the device - to the left of the speaker there is an indicator of missed events, it blinks blue, it can be turned off in the menu. There is a proximity sensor on the right, and even more to the right is the front camera, which received higher resolution and also a new function for taking a panoramic photo of your loved one. We'll talk about this separately; for some, perhaps this will be an interesting addition to the functionality of the phone.

The mechanical central key remains unchanged, flanked by two touch keys.

Let's open the back cover. Inside we will see a slot for microSD memory cards; they are hot-swappable. Just below is a slot for microSIM cards, but to replace it you need to remove the battery.

Unlike the Galaxy S5, the Note 4 does not have any protection against water and dust; let me remind you that the S5 supports the IP67 standard. This is simply not provided for here, so you shouldn’t throw your phone into the water. Finally, the last thing worth mentioning in this part of the review is the dimensions of the device – 153.5x78.6x8.5 mm, weight – 176 grams. It is comparable to Note 3 (151.2x79.2x8.3 mm, weight - 168 grams), fits well in the hand and does not cause any problems. It is often said that these are extremely large devices, and this is true. The phone is rather large, but quite comfortable for a man’s hand. Look at the pictures in comparison with other devices.

Compared to Huawei Mate 7

Compared to Samsung Galaxy S5

Compared to Samsung Note 3

Compared to Lenovo Vibe Z2

Compared to Sony Xperia Z3

For comparison, the Apple 6 Plus, which has a smaller battery, a smaller screen diagonal (5.5 inches), weighs 172 grams, and has a size almost 8 millimeters higher - 158.1x77.8x7.1 mm. These are just different measurements - Apple couldn't achieve the small size using a smaller screen. At the same time, in the Note line, the dimensions do not stem from the components, but from the initially invented form factor, which has been maintained for the 4th year in a row. Please note that all Note line models are close to these dimensions, and they are unlikely to change, the question is how comfortable they are to hold in the hand, and the compromise that the company found was ideal for this form factor.

Display

It’s worth remembering that Samsung is one of the few manufacturers that creates its own components, including screens. Therefore, for many years the company has been the leader in this market, and competitors simply do not have access to the latest developments, this was one of the reasons why Apple tried to abandon Samsung components, but in the end was forced to return to the company and purchase them again.

The race regarding the quality of screens has long reached a fundamentally different level - it is not only the quality of the picture, screen resolution, but also how much energy the display consumes; this parameter comes to the fore. Several generations ago, Samsung tried to start reducing energy consumption in screens and made noticeable progress in this - all other things being equal, the company's devices work as much or more than competitors. They have better energy efficiency, and the display plays a huge role in this. At the same time, for the average person, the difference in screens is often difficult to imagine; they live within the framework of marketing stories and do not understand the real difference between technologies and displays, and when faced with them in real life and having the opportunity to compare them, they cannot come to their senses for a long time - the difference hits home. eyes. At some point I even realized that I needed to compare the latest generation of screens in tablets and show this difference with very specific examples.

Let's look at the technical characteristics of the screen in Note 4. The diagonal remained unchanged - 5.7 inches, but the resolution increased to QHD - 1440x2560 pixels, 515 ppi, SuperAMOLED. In my opinion, any screen with a resolution of more than 400 dpi can already be considered excellent; it is extremely difficult to see the difference. Other parameters are used - picture quality, color rendition, ease of use.

Let me start with the fact that Note 4 is one of the few devices with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 (an example of another device is the Nexus 5). Typically, phones are equipped with a second version of glass; it is noticeably cheaper, but is 50 percent less durable and 40 percent less scratch-resistant. At the moment, nothing better than this piece of glass simply exists.

But the choice of Corning Gorilla Glass 3 is not at all accidental - the thickness of the glass also plays a role here, since the Note 4, like previous devices, has a special layer that processes stylus presses. This is a technological difference from other devices, that is, the Wacom digitizer is only available in the Note line, and Wacom itself was partially bought by Samsung. Competitors will either have to invent something similar from scratch, or be content with ordinary screens, as they do today. Drawing on this device is much easier than on any other model with a stylus. At the Note 4 presentation, they specifically emphasized that they tried to ensure that the pen was as similar as possible to a pen or pencil, the screen processed the degree of pressure and you could draw as you would on a piece of paper. Or write the way you are used to. Looking ahead, I will say that despite the same nib design, we managed to achieve greater similarity with pens, which is a plus for this model.

Let's get back to the screen and its characteristics. At the presentation it was mentioned that the increased resolution allows for better display of fonts. The eye can't see it, but the fonts are neater. Will this affect the perception of the picture? I think so. The screen on Note 4 causes less eye fatigue, tested in practice.

The next point is the accuracy of color reproduction. In my opinion, measurements and their interpretation, which is even more important than getting the result, should be done by professionals, those who do it day after day and earn their living from it. Display Mate did some research on the Note 4's display - you can find it here.

The short conclusion is that this is the most complex screen of all existing ones, and it has the most accurate color reproduction, the most flexible settings, it has no analogues. It also beats the screens in the Galaxy S5 (which was number one up to this point), as well as the screen in the Galaxy Tab S. Read the report from this company, it is very detailed and details why it is the best screen in a smartphone, second place is the Galaxy S5 .

In practice, the screen seemed very close to the Galaxy S5, but the fonts and images are clearer - due to the different screen resolution. I would also like to note that the picture remains readable in different conditions, including in the sun. One of the advantages of the screen is the ability to customize it to your preferences, you can choose to work like on other phones (faded colors, RGB), you can choose Adobe RGB, as well as an adaptive screen.

The screen supports operation with any gloves, you only need to activate this function in the menu.

Check out the screen comparison with the Galaxy Note 3 (pictured above), although the pictures don't convey the real difference.

And this is how fonts differ in the same program.

In my opinion, the amount of work that Samsung has done in the field of SuperAMOLED screens has created a gap over its closest competitors for years. It is SuperAMOLED that allows you to create a special energy saving mode that other players do not have. And in general, with such screen brightness, the reserve of which is huge, with such picture quality, this screen does not consume so much, it allows you to install the fastest processor and graphics processor without compromising the overall operating time of the device.

The bottom line is that the screen in Note 4 can be called a work of engineering art - it is the best screen in terms of all parameters, it has no direct competitors.

Battery

The capacity of the Li-Ion battery has remained almost unchanged compared to Note 3: 3220 mAh compared to 3200 mAh. According to the manufacturer, the operating time in the main modes has not changed, these are approximately the same values: standby mode - up to 850 hours of operation, talk time - up to 16 hours, video playback - up to 10 hours, music - about 50 hours.

Due to the fact that a new chipset made using 20 nm technology is used here (same as in Alpha), there is an increase in operating time, but it is offset by a higher screen resolution and a powerful graphics processor. At the presentation they said that with the same battery capacity they were able to achieve an increase in operating time by 7.5 percent.

To some extent, this is an insidious figure, since it affects synthetic measurements, and not the actual behavior of the phone in life. Our measurements of operating time when playing video (maximum backlight brightness, HD video in a loop) show that the time is about 9 hours, that is, it was reduced by an hour (Exynos version), but on the Qualcomm version it is the same 10 hours. All other things being equal, this can be attributed to the chipset drivers and their operation on this hardware. I think that in reality the Exynos version will not show an increase in operating time compared to the previous model, and this applies to the Qualcomm version of the device.

Under normal load, the device easily works for two days, as was the case for the previous model. This is one of the longest-lived smartphones on the market, and no one has been able to come close to it in this parameter. Regardless of what modes you work in, what you do on your smartphone, you can know one thing for sure - it will live longer than similar devices with the same screen diagonal. Under very heavy load, as in my case, my Note 3 survives until the evening - this is about 3-4 hours of screen operation, constantly online, transferring a large amount of data. Note 4 showed exactly the same results, there were no differences.

One interesting thing is that the shape of the battery in Note 4 has changed; it differs in appearance from Note 3.

The device uses Adaptive Fast Charging & Qualcomm Quick Charge 2.0 technology, this is the first model with it. In the settings (item “Energy saving”) you can check the possibility of fast charging. In this case, with the original included charger, you can charge the phone halfway in half an hour, a full charge is possible in an hour and a half, while in an hour the device will be charged up to 90 percent.

It is curious that fast charging technology was developed exclusively for Snapdragon processors, but Samsung received the right to use it for Exynos. The chargers themselves are also different; without proper charging, you won’t be able to achieve this time; regular charging will do it in 3 hours (2A). In my opinion, fast charging is one of the visible advantages of this device; recharging a phone in 2 hours to 90 percent of its capacity is worth a lot. Fast charging will not work in a car, which is a pity.

Finally, I want to point out that the Note 4 has a lot of room to increase the battery life of the device on a single charge. From basic screen brightness adjustment – ​​the maximum values ​​are redundant for most – to disabling S Pen detection if the stylus is not needed, and many other settings. This includes limiting processor power, which does not affect performance, but gives about 5-6 “extra” hours of work. I think that in the near future I will get around to writing detailed material on how you can save energy on Android smartphones without compromising the comfort of their use, especially since the issue is causing controversy and lively discussions. On my Galaxy Note 3/Galaxy S5, I achieve runtimes just through settings that many people find impossible.

Finally, I want to note that, just like the S5, the Note 4 added two power saving modes. There is a regular power saving mode in which you can limit the background operation of applications and enable gray colors for the screen (for AMOLED this is a feature - gray color consumes almost no energy). Moreover, in gray tones you can work almost anywhere, even watch videos - but it will be gray, which is not very pleasant and convenient.

This saving mode is good when your battery is running low, but you need all the phone's functions. Then, on a 10 percent charge, you can easily live for about three hours, without denying yourself almost anything. Three hours is an active use of the device; it just can last much longer in your pocket.

The maximum power limit mode cuts down almost everything; at 45 percent of the battery charge, the phone can work in standby mode for at least 6 days! But, of course, it all depends on how you use it. The gray scale is also turned on, but all communications are cut off, the list of running applications is limited only to those that you have allowed, all background processes are turned off. This is a very deeply redesigned procedure, since many system functions are disabled, you will not be able to take a screenshot in this mode, many built-in options will be unavailable (but you don’t need them).

I liked this mode because when the battery runs out, by activating this mode with one touch, you can calmly live until the evening - SMS and voice will be available to you.

It would be useful to remind you that competitors simply do not have anything like this. Officially, these features were not included in Note 3; the company felt that this would make the new model different from the previous one. Unofficially, this functionality from S5 was added to third-party firmware, but the quality of these firmware raises questions, they are not always stable.

Memory, memory cards, chipset, performance

Let's start with something simple: the device has 3 GB of RAM, which is currently the maximum size for Android. For comparison, the 6th generation of Apple devices has only 1 GB of memory. In theory, the operation of the OS can be organized in various ways; in particular, the amount of RAM is important in order to keep open browser pages in memory so that they can be quickly recalled. But they can also be stored in a cache in regular memory. The user is usually not interested in this; he cares about how quickly and efficiently he can open a page in the device’s memory. From this point of view, Note 4, as well as Note 3, are among the best on the market.

The built-in memory is 32 GB, you have about 24 GB of space available for your programs and data. You can install a memory card with a capacity of up to 128 GB, there is almost no difference in access speed, so applications stored on the card will work just as quickly.

Now let's look at the hardware differences between the two versions of Note 4. The N910S model is built on Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 – 4 Krait 450 cores up to 2.7 GHz, Adreno 420, LTE Cat.6. And the N910C version, which is the main one for Russia, is built on Exynos 5 Octa 5433, 8-core processor, up to 1.9 GHz on the Cortex A57 core, up to 1.3 GHz on the Cortex A53 core, Mali-T760 graphics accelerator - LTE Cat.4.

For the first time, Samsung used 20 nm technology for a chipset in the Galaxy Alpha, which is responsible for the delay in the release of this model. The company's factories are switching to a new technological process. The Note 4 also uses it.

The RAM remained dual-channel, but the bandwidth increased to 17 Gbit/s (1066 MHz).

The new Cortex A53/A57 cores should provide not only performance, but also less heating under heavy load. Comparing Note 3 and Note 4 in “heavy” toys, I can say that in practice this is clearly noticeable. In the new model, the heating is almost not felt, and I was never able to get the camera to turn off when recording video in ultra-high resolution after games. Although video recording is limited to 5 minutes, this comes from the days of the Note 3 and overheating.

In all synthetic tests, Note 4 performs well; it is the fastest smartphone available today. See the virtual parrots for yourself.

It's a pity, but there are no publicly available and universal tests on the market that could show the performance of the graphics subsystem. The same Epic Citadel test shows maximum performance for both the Note 3 and Note 4. While this is just a good result for the Galaxy S5, the smaller amount of RAM takes its toll.

In theory, the 16-core Mali T-760 GPU outperforms the Adreno 420. In practice, the Note 4 confirms the result, but the difference is not too big.

In general, the Exynos solution is more productive. In practice, this is noticeable in the camera operating mode - for example, when shooting at night, the shutter is released instantly, while on Note 3 you had to wait for the image to be processed, this is directly related to the speed of the chipset. Historically, users prefer the Qualcomm solution, but in the case of Note 4 there is not much difference between them; Qualcomm slightly wins in operating time, but loses in performance. The difference is not catastrophic and is almost unnoticeable when actually using the devices.

USB, Bluetooth, communication capabilities

Let's start with the fact that Note 4 was the first device to support Bluetooth 4.1. And the first accessory to support this technology was the Gear S watch.

In addition to the fact that BT 4.1 has incorporated all the protocols implemented in previous versions, it has added several fundamental features. Firstly, this is an extended range, which can reach several tens of meters, depending on the device settings and how the manufacturer configured this option. Secondly, the IP protocol is used for addressing, that is, devices now have their own unique addresses, and communication with many such devices is supported. In practice, thanks to this, a connection with the Gear S watch is realized; you can receive a call from your phone on the watch, but you can also answer a call received on the SIM card in the watch or receive it on your smartphone. That is, the connection operates in two directions, and the watch and smartphone act alternately in relation to each other as a headset. This was not possible in previous versions of the standard.

From technical points, the interaction between Bluetooth and LTE has been improved; now the operation of these technologies is synchronized within one device, and mutual interference is not created (LTE is not relevant for our frequencies). Plus, Bluetooth devices can now access the cloud and transmit their results directly, bypassing the companion device, as was previously necessary. But within the Note 4 this is not so relevant; after all, it is not an accessory, but the main device.

USB connection. It uses USB 2.0, that is, the data transfer speed is not 45 Mb/s, as in the Galaxy Note 3/S5, but about 20 Mb/s. These are not theoretical, but real results on devices. They may vary depending on the operating system and the computer you connect your phone to. Both up and down. But I think you understand the difference.

The microUSB connector also supports the MHL standard, which means that using a special cable (available at electronics stores), you can connect the phone to the TV (to the HDMI output). In fact, the standard describes the ability to connect via microUSB to HDMI. This solution looks preferable to a separate miniHDMI connector on the case.

The maximum data transfer rate in LTE is 150 Mbit/s.

WiFi. The 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac standard is supported, the operation wizard is similar to that for Bluetooth. You can remember selected networks and automatically connect to them. It is possible to set up a connection to the router in one touch; to do this, you need to press a key on the router, and also activate a similar button in the device menu (WPA SecureEasySetup). Among the additional options, it is worth noting the setup wizard; it appears when the signal is weak or disappearing. You can also set up Wi-Fi on a schedule.

802.11n also supports HT40 mode, which doubles Wi-Fi throughput (requires support from another device).

Wi-Fi Direct. A protocol that is intended to replace Bluetooth or begin to compete with its third version (which also uses Wi-Fi version n to transfer large files). In the Wi-Fi settings menu, select the Wi-Fi Direct section, the phone begins to search for devices around. We select the desired device, activate the connection on it, and voila. Now in the file manager you can view files on another device, as well as transfer them. Another option is to simply find devices connected to your router and transfer the necessary files to them; this can be done from the gallery or other sections of the phone. The main thing is that the device supports Wi-Fi Direct.

NFC. The device has NFC technology, it can be used with various additional applications.

S Beam. A technology that allows you to transfer a file of several gigabytes in size to another phone in a few minutes. In fact, we see in S Beam a combination of two technologies - NFC and Wi-Fi Direct. The first technology is used to bring up and authorize phones, but the second is used to transfer the files themselves. The creatively redesigned way to use Wi-Fi Direct is much simpler than using a connection on two devices, selecting files and so on.

IR port. Necessary for using the phone as a remote control for various household appliances. Automatically configures for almost any model of equipment.

Camera

The situation is repeating last year, when Note 3 received a camera module from the Galaxy S4, but due to software improvements it began to shoot a little better. In Note 4, the camera module came from the Galaxy S5; it is a 16-megapixel matrix with ISOCELL technology from Samsung. In fact, we are seeing a change in components, a abandonment of Sony cameras in top products, since Samsung was able to perfect its own technology.

As a user of both S5 and Note 3, I can say that I like the HDR mode in the S5, which is turned on by default, it works instantly and gives good quality pictures. You can argue for a long time which camera takes better pictures than others, but it can be said for sure that Samsung smartphones almost always outperform their competitors in terms of a combination of characteristics. Moreover, Apple devices have long and firmly established themselves as very average in terms of cameras; Android devices have gone far ahead in this aspect.

In terms of technical characteristics, the camera has not changed, except that optical stabilization has been added.

The geometry of the matrix is ​​16:9, the pixel size has not changed - 1.12 microns, while F / 2.2, which is very good, but quite standard for the market. The focal length in terms of 35 mm is 31 mm. USO settings in manual mode are from 100 to 800, in automatic mode – from 50 to 1600.

The camera interface has been simplified, so you can install a couple of your own shortcuts on the main screen, a line with basic settings is called up from the menu, and only by pressing again the entire list opens in the form of icons.

I decided to compare the quality of the images with the Galaxy S5, since the camera modules are the same and should provide comparable quality. Look at the pictures for yourself, they are approximately the same, the quality is slightly better for Note 4. It was not possible to see any striking differences here.

Galaxy Note 4	Galaxy S5

Taking pictures in the dark is a completely different matter; the camera began to shoot noticeably better. Moreover, unlike the S5, it takes pictures instantly, there is no waiting for the picture.

Galaxy Note 4	Galaxy S5

But comparing pictures in complete darkness with the Lumia 930 and Sony Xperia Z3, I must note that these two devices do a much better job. In their pictures you can read the text on a piece of paper, while on the Note 4 it remains smudged.

Samsung Galaxy Note 4

Samsung Galaxy S5

Should you focus on shooting in the dark? I think that the vast majority of people always shoot in conditions where light is still present. And in this aspect, the Note 4 camera can produce guaranteed good pictures. Moreover, regardless of whether you conjure over them or not. This is a result that is noticeably higher than that of Apple smartphones and higher than the average for Android flagships on the market. In my opinion, the camera shoots noticeably better than analogues from other companies.

The “Mode” button, which is familiar from previous devices, hides inside exactly the same settings as before (it is not available during quick start). These are effects such as Retouch, Motion Shot, Panorama, Dual Camera, Sports, Circular Panorama, Sounds and Photos.

One of the main changes is that additional effects will now be downloadable from the Samsung store - everything that was previously available on previous phones is available for free, but many of the new effects will be sold. A nice feature is that the company is opening the SDK, and other companies will be able to create effects for the camera. I don’t know whether this direction will be successful, but I’m sure that we will see some interesting settings.

The maximum shooting resolution is UHD (3840x2160; 16:9), and the default is FullHD (1920x1080; 16:9), it’s worth using it (there is also an intermediate one - WQHD - 2560x1440 pixels, depending on the screen size). There's also just HD and VGA, but I don't think you'll need them. UHD resolution remains a thing in itself; you won't be able to watch it anywhere except a number of players and a phone.

For FullHD resolution and below, you can also use different shooting speeds. For example, “smooth motion,” in which jerks of objects in the frame are smoothed out, is recorded on a microphone.

Slow motion can be 1/2, 1/4, 1/8 speed. Recording from a microphone is not possible. Fast movement is the opposite, acceleration by 2, 4 and 8 times.

Finally, I would like to focus on the front camera. I’m not a fan of such a phenomenon as selfie, but many people love to take pictures of their loved ones against the backdrop of the surrounding beauty. Especially for them, the front camera was made with a resolution of 3.7 megapixels. You can take pictures not only by pressing the screen, but by placing your finger on the sensor at the back, where the pulse is measured. Here are a few selfies as an example (the skin is tinted by default, this is the Beauty mode).

S Pen stylus, or new pen capabilities

One of the key differences of the Note line is the built-in stylus, which allows you to draw on the screen and do it extremely well. I have no artistic talent, so it makes me sick when I see how people can draw on such devices. In the Pen.UP program you can look at other people's creativity, evaluate it and post your drawings.

The operating logic of the S Pen has hardly changed in relation to the Note 3, although the pen itself has changed, serifs have appeared on it, making it more comfortable to hold in your hand. However, the weight and size remained the same. As additional accessories, you can purchase MontBlanc pens, which you can use to “write” on the Note 4 screen.

The sensitivity of the pen has been doubled, that is, not only touch is supported, but the screen also processes the force of pressing it. My impression is very positive, the S Pen works as it should, however, I only write my notes and do not draw.

You pull out the S Pen and a context menu immediately appears. The first item is an active note, in it you can not only enter text by hand, but also create a reminder to call, send mail or SMS to a specific number, it is recognized and transfers you to the appropriate application. A kind of fantasy, but personally I don’t need it, I just take notes in S Note. The last application is in the menu, but you can also go to it from an active note with one touch, there are all sorts of templates, voice recognition of text and the like.

Other items in the context menu are the inscription on the screenshot, the phone takes a screenshot, and then you can write something on it. The choice of pens and pencils, colors can be saved for the future.

Recently, sales of the new generation of the Samsung Galaxy Note line were launched. The fourth iteration of the phablet has become more attractive and powerful, and also received new interesting features. Read more and see our review.

Video review of Samsung Galaxy Note 4

Specifications:

Equipment

If I'm not mistaken, then with the release of the Samsung Galaxy Alpha, the Korean company changed the design of the box and got rid of the wooden texture. Now it is a box of a calmer beige shade. Inside is the hero of the review himself, branded headphones, a microUSB cable, a power adapter, replaceable tips for the stylus and some waste paper.

Design

The appearance of the phablet a year later has not undergone significant changes, but it has definitely become better. The biggest difference between the Note 3 and 4 lies in the side frame, which is now truly metal instead of the metal-look plastic of last year. This creates a very interesting combination between the hand-cooling side frame and the pleasant leather-like back cover.

Year after year, Samsung has been experimenting with the texture of the pattern on the glass of the front panel, this time the front of the smartphone is decorated with neat stripes. The glass itself is slightly rounded at the edges and goes straight into the metal frame, as in the iPhone 6 - this solution produces a very pleasant aesthetic impression. On the top there is an earpiece, a Samsung logo, proximity and light sensors, as well as a front camera, which has significantly increased in diameter compared to the previous year.

At the bottom there is the unchanged and already rare physical “Home” button for Android devices, which has a built-in fingerprint scanner, flanked by touch buttons “Back” and calling up the multitasking menu. Last year, the last function was performed by long pressing the “Home” button, it was easy to reach, but now opening the multitasking panel using the phablet with one hand is almost impossible.

On the left side of the device there is a paired volume key, and on the right there is a lock button. Both keys are metal and have a clear action. At the top end there is a standard 3.5 mm headphone output, an additional microphone and an IR sensor for controlling TV and other household appliances. At the bottom there are two more conversational microphones, between them there is a microUSB connector version 2.0. Hidden in the right corner is the S Pen - the calling card of the Note line.

The back cover of the phablet got rid of last year's fake stitching around the perimeter. The texture under the skin has also changed a little. The camera eye has become even larger, and below it, in addition to the flash, there is now a sensor that can measure UV radiation, heart rate, as well as stress levels and blood oxygen saturation. In general, Note 4 hides a small medical laboratory as part of the proprietary health monitoring program S Health. Next to this sensor is the company logo, in the lower left corner there is a slot for speakers with a special rise that will prevent the sound from being muffled when the smartphone is lying on the table.

Under the removable cover there is a large elongated battery with built-in NFC, as well as slots for a microSIM card and a microSD card up to 128 GB.

The assembly of the smartphone itself is at the highest level, nothing creaks or plays, except for the S Pen, which “walks” within reason in its connector.

Screen

The diagonal of the Note 4 Super AMOLED display remains the same as last year - 5.7". However, the resolution has increased from FullHD to QHD (2560x1440), and the number of pixels per inch is now 515. All this beauty is covered with protective glass Corning Gorilla Glass 3 with a wonderful oleophobic coating.

Many users consider such a resolution to be unnecessary on a smartphone, and to some extent they are right, but the Note 4 does have a practical benefit from the QHD display - multitasking. Since the phablet supports multi-window mode, this resolution is simply necessary to clearly display small text and other elements, so blaming Samsung for simply increasing the numbers in this case is not entirely appropriate.

The picture is very pleasant, infinitely clear and rich. It's worth noting that Samsung traditionally offers you to choose other picture modes if you like more subdued colors. The brightness reserve of the device is very large, there will be no problems with this either. When tilted too far, the colors of the display begin to shimmer, so viewing angles are not ideal.

Sound

The speaker on the back provides high-quality sound. It lags behind the HTC One, but also has its advantages. The speaker is very loud, so loud that I would not turn it up to maximum, it causes discomfort and the sound detail is lost. By turning down the volume a little, you can get comfortable, clear and high-quality sound.

I would also like to note the location of the speaker itself - no matter how I tried to change my grip, I could not find a comfortable position in which the speaker would be covered with my finger.

Performance

Note 4, like other flagships of the Korean company, traditionally appeared on the market in two versions - with processors from Samsung and Qualcomm. The first version, which will be sold in the CIS countries and is being reviewed by us, combines a combination of an eight-core Exynos 5433 processor and a Mali-T760 graphics video accelerator. The second version is equipped with a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 processor and Adreno 420 graphics. RAM in both versions is 3 GB.

Year after year, I was very skeptical about the version with the stone from Samsung, so last year, when buying Note 3, I chose the package with the Snapdragon 800 processor from Qualcomm and did not have a single problem in terms of performance. Note 4 with Exynos works very quickly in everyday tasks, all applications open instantly, the camera starts up in less than two seconds, but the Samsung "Gov" processor would not be Samsung "Gov" if it worked without problems, the phablet occasionally, but still allows itself to lag , this can happen when opening/closing applications, scrolling or flipping through menus. I repeat, this rarely happens, but when buying a smartphone for $800, the buyer should not even think that his device might slow down, but as you can see, it can.

In heavy games, I was surprised that the graphics settings were not at maximum, and in Dead Trigger they were even at the minimum level. However, outraged, I didn’t even try to play on low settings and immediately set the graphics to high. And the default graphics setting turned out to be not an error; Note 4 at maximum settings did sometimes lose frames, which is very unfortunate. Real Racing 3 and Asphalt 8, in turn, run without problems.

There is a slight lack of optimization of the operation of applications in the "window-in-window" mode; sometimes there are stutters when scrolling or changing animations. Overall, the Exynos-powered Note 4 is fast in everyday use, but you need to be prepared for the small performance flaws I described above.

Autonomy

This year, manufacturers are doing a good job of increasing the characteristics of their devices, especially with regard to display resolutions, but battery capacity is increasing very little, so this year vendors are focusing on fast charging of devices. Note 4 is a prime example of this trend. The screen resolution has increased from FullHD to 2K, but the battery capacity did not increase from 3200 mAh to 3220 mAh. But charging from 0% to 50% percent now occurs in just 30 minutes. In any case, you should not focus on the number of mAh, because the autonomy of the device is at an excellent level. With normal use, the battery will last for 1.5 - 2 days. Coming home late in the evening, I put my smartphone on charge, but it still had 30-40% charge left. During everyday use without resource-intensive tasks, the screen operating time is about 6 hours, the result is very decent.

Software

Note 4 just recently went on sale with the current version of Android 4.4.4, but time flies quickly and the new version of Android 5.0 Lollipop has already officially been released. Samsung has not announced an exact time frame for updating its phablet, but, as a rule, it should not take much time. On top of Android 4.4.4 is installed a fresh version of the proprietary TouchWiz shell, which becomes more and more beautiful from year to year. Compared to the predominantly dark and even slightly gloomy design of the Note 3, the interface design of the Note 4 looks very beautiful, everything has become much lighter, more transparent and simpler. Interface elements got rid of archaic volume and became pleasing to the eye.

All applications work stably; not a single crash occurred during the entire testing period. There are some peculiarities in the way programs work on the Note 4’s 2K display; Dots, for example, had very small fonts, and some app elements looked a little soapy, but this is not critical and we can absolutely assure you that the problem is of a much smaller scale than the one exists now with apps on iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.

Multitasking

Samsung has been improving the multitasking capabilities of the Note 4 line of smartphones year after year. This year, there have been no fundamental changes in this regard; rather, the principle of interaction has changed. If you remember, in Note 3, using the S Pen, you could draw a window of any size on the screen, and open an application in it, but in Note 4 they decided to abandon this method, which upset me somewhat, now instead you need to swipe from the corner of the screen in order to reduce the application area. I must say that this solution has the right to life, but it was not implemented entirely successfully, since the phablet screen is quite large, opening the notification curtain for convenience occurs right at the corner of the screen, and at the same time, in order to open the control center, quite often By chance it turns out to reduce the application and vice versa. On the other hand, it is encouraging that the number of applications that support this solution has increased, but the message “This application cannot be opened in a pop-up window” is still seen quite often.

S Pen

The built-in stylus, another hallmark of the Galaxy Note line, has become more functional and precise this year. Text recognition has been significantly improved. Since my handwriting is very difficult to call neat, using the Note 3 I had to adapt to the not very good detection of my scribbles and start writing with concentration and beauty, but with the Note 4 I stopped worrying about this because the device recognizes my handwritten text very well Fine.

The menu of contextual commands has changed a little - one new one called “Smart Selection” has been added here. It would be more correct to call it “Multiple Choice”, this would better reveal the essence of this function. With its help, you can select several elements throughout your smartphone, and then save them to the Scrapbook or send them to any application as pictures.

Other innovations of the S Pen include the incredibly convenient ability to select photos in the gallery using the same principle as it happens on a computer using a mouse. Last year, you could highlight text using the S Pen, but this functionality was only available in standard Samsung applications, but now you can do it everywhere.

S Note

The proprietary S Note application has also been updated, the main innovation being the function of instant text digitization. It allows you to take a photo of a board or paper, remove everything unnecessary from the photo and leave only the text on a white background. We also added new types of pens and slightly changed the application interface.

Cameras

The camera resolution has increased by three megapixels compared to last year and now the Note 4 has a 16 megapixel sensor that is capable of taking really high-quality pictures during the day, and if the conditions are close to ideal, then you will actually want to say “wow” when you see the finished result. However, Samsung flagships are traditionally not very good at night photography. If there are enough light sources (in a city at night, for example), then the image will be quite bright, but the signs of shops and restaurants will simply look like flashes of light. In addition, night shots have a lot of noise and low detail. It is worth noting that the live HDR mode, as expected, migrated from the Galaxy S5 to Note 4. In this case, pictures are taken just as quickly as without it.

Examples of photos taken with the main camera:

As for the technical characteristics, pictures are taken in a resolution of 5312x2988, video is recorded in 4K resolution. I was very pleased with the presence of such a recording mode as “smooth motion”, here the video is recorded in FullHD resolution and at a frequency of 60 fps - watching the finished video is a real pleasure.

Video shooting examples:

#1 FullHD 1080p

#2 FullHD 1080p

#3 4K 2160p

#4 1080p 60 fps

The front camera has increased significantly in size, but not without reason, because its resolution has increased from 2 to 3.9 megapixels. I must say that the pictures come out good, both in natural and artificial lighting. Photo resolution 2560×1440.

Examples of photos taken with the front camera:

At first glance, the Camera application looks quite simple and neat, but in fact, the developers hid all the variety of settings parameters behind three dots on the menu bar on the left. The number of preset shooting modes has decreased significantly; Samsung offers additional downloads in its company store.

Results

Samsung presented a very worthy continuation of the Note line; the device has improved in literally every respect. I can’t single out any main killer feature, but the total number of major and not so big improvements make you feel the difference compared to the Note 3. Externally, the device has become more attractive, the screen is better quality, the software is more beautiful and cleaner. Over the course of a year, the smartphone was simply licked to perfect condition.

During the testing period, I had no complaints about the Note 4, with the exception of periodic stutters, the cause of which for many years in a row has been poor optimization of the Samsung Exynos proprietary processor. I can confidently recommend the Note 4 for purchase if you are confident that you can get along with a large smartphone and if you choose the version with a Snapdragon processor.

Prices in online stores

It is possible to display similar models if this one is not in the catalog.

A productive tablet phone with a maximum range of capabilities

Samsung has once again updated its popular line of tablet phones, introducing a new model in the series called Galaxy Note 4 in early September. It is not surprising that the Galaxy Note line was updated again in the fall. It just so happens among mobile electronics manufacturers that they try to coincide the release of most new products with one of the popular international exhibitions: the spring MWC in Barcelona or the autumn IFA in Berlin. Samsung, like many other manufacturers, has made it a habit to announce new products from one of its popular line, Galaxy S, during the spring exhibition in Spain, and in the fall it traditionally presents the next model from the Galaxy Note series of tablets in Germany.

In general, there are not as many noticeable changes in the next version of the Galaxy Note as there were when the Galaxy Note 3 was released; the main differences lie in the hardware. Like last time, the Koreans released their new tablet phone with two different electronic components. For the Russian market, supplies of smartphones are planned, running on a new SoC of Samsung's own production called Exynos 5 Octa 5433, the eight-core processor of which has 4 Cortex-A57 cores operating at a frequency of up to 1.9 GHz, as well as 4 Cortex-A53 cores, maximum operating whose frequency is 1.3 GHz. We're out of luck, as always, because the Exynos system has traditionally been less energy efficient than the Qualcomm SoC. But the main thing is that in this configuration the smartphone only supports operation in the LTE Cat4 network - the higher-speed LTE Cat6 mode will not be available for it, unlike another modification of the Galaxy Note 4, based on the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 platform, where the maximum operating frequency of four Krait cores 450 is 2.7 GHz, and which just supports LTE Cat6. The modification based on the Qualcomm SoC has the index N910S, and for our market the main model planned is N910C - we repeat, on the Exynos 5 Octa 5433. This is the modification that was in our test laboratory, and it is this modification that we will talk about today.

Video review

To begin with, we suggest watching our video review of the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 smartphone:

Well, now let’s take a closer look at the characteristics of the new product.

Main characteristics of Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (model N910С)

• SoC Exynos 5 Octa 5433, 8 cores ARM big.LITTLE (4 cores [email protected] GHz + 4 cores [email protected] GHz)
• GPU Mali-T760
• Operating system Android 4.4 with TouchWiz shell
• Touch display Super AMOLED, 5.7″, 2560×1440, 515 ppi
• Random access memory (RAM) 3 GB, internal memory 32 GB
• Supports microSD memory cards up to 128 GB
• Communication GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
• Communication WCDMA: 850/900/1900/2100 MHz
• Data transmission LTE Cat4 150/50 Mbps
• Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac (dual band), (HT80) MIMO PCIe
• Bluetooth 4.1 (BLE, ANT+), NFC, IR port
• USB 2.0, OTG, MHL 3.0
• GPS (A-GPS), Glonass, Beidou
• 16 MP camera (optical stabilization, autofocus, LED flash), 2160p video
• Camera 3.7 MP (front), f/1.9, wide-angle lens
• Accelerometer, proximity and light sensors, gyroscope, fingerprint sensor, UV sensor, e-compass, barometer, heart rate sensor
• Working with the S pen stylus
• Li-ion battery 3220 mAh (removable)
• Dimensions 154×79×8.5 mm
• Weight 176 g

Appearance and ease of use

As for the dimensions, the Galaxy Note 4 has not changed much compared to its predecessor, remaining almost the same dimensions and with the same screen size. The new smartphone has become literally a couple of millimeters longer and a few grams heavier, but given the overall considerable dimensions, such changes seem completely insignificant. Note 4, like previous models in the series, is itself a very large and quite heavy mobile device, but nothing about its dimensions should seem unusual to users already accustomed to modern “shovel phones.” Moreover, presented at the same time in Berlin, the direct and most important competitor among top-end tablet phones today, the wonderful Huawei Ascend Mate 7, despite all its positive qualities, turned out to be even larger and more massive (however, it also has a larger screen). Be that as it may, it is not entirely reasonable to seriously discuss the dimensions of this type of device, since large dimensions (resulting from the placement of a large screen in the body) are a key attribute of tablet phones. We have before us a mobile device, the main purpose of which is to combine the capabilities of a smartphone and a tablet, so in this case there can be no talk of miniature size. However, nothing prevents us from tracing the evolution of the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 series products down to fractions of a millimeter:

• Samsung Galaxy Note - 146.8 x 82.9 x 9.6 mm, 178 g
• Samsung Galaxy Note 2 - 151x80.5x9.4 mm, 180 g
• Samsung Galaxy Note 3 – 151.2 x 79.2 x 8.3 mm, 168 g
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 – 153.5×78.6×8.5 mm, 176 g

In general, in terms of overall appearance and design, the new Galaxy Note 4 is very similar to its predecessors: there are the same rather strongly rounded corners, the same arrangement of parts, controls, the same oval mechanical button under the screen, and even the same coating, imitating leather on the back cover. The only thing that has changed is the wide side rim that runs along the entire perimeter of the device’s body. Here it received not only a rougher, somewhat brutal shape with straight edges and sharply cut edges, but also made of metal, and not plastic, as before. The changed bezel gives more seriousness to the device, makes it a little rough and angular, and visually adds volume and heaviness to the smartphone.

The bezel is painted in the same color as the body, but the chamfers on it shine with silver metal, and the whole thing is very reminiscent of the creations of the Chinese brands Vivo and Oppo, which BBK Electronics has been producing with exactly the same bezel since last year. Whether Korean designers borrowed this element from the Chinese or came up with it on their own is unknown, but for people familiar with the Vivo Xplay 3S and Oppo N1 smartphones, such a visual find may seem familiar and secondary.

As for the mentioned back cover, it has also undergone some changes in appearance. The pattern extruded into the plastic has become more prominent and now resembles the real texture of the skin much more than before. However, the “seam” “stitched” along the edge of the lid was missing. In general, the changes have only benefited the smartphone; the rough surface of the back cover allows the device to be held securely in the hand and not slip out. There is no need to talk about how dirty the case is: fingerprints can only be left on the front glass, but not on the back surface and sides.

The back cover of the smartphone, as before, is a removable element, so the method of installing cards is familiar for such cases: the memory card and SIM card are inserted into slots hidden under the cover. The microSD memory card is hot-swappable, but you cannot remove the SIM card without removing the battery. The Samsung Galaxy Note 4 uses a Micro-SIM card, and this fact is surprising since many well-known manufacturers such as Sony, HTC, Motorola, Huawei and Acer have presented their top devices in the new season with support for Nano-SIM cards . We are not at all going to advocate for any of the standards, but if there is a movement among manufacturers towards the transition to Nano-SIM, then I would like the market to completely come to a single standard and settle on it in the end! The use of as many as three different SIM card formats in different modern smartphones is annoying, and in this case, Samsung could show foresight and alleviate the suffering of mobile technology users. If the market is destined to switch to the Nano-SIM standard, it would be good to do it quickly and smoothly, and not drag out the process for years.

On the outside of the lid, in addition to the usual camera windows and LED flash, you can now find a speaker grille, which is somewhat surprising, because in the previous model the sound output was organized through the bottom end. There is a small protrusion next to the speaker grille, and the camera window protrudes noticeably outward, raising the lying device above the surface, but all this does not help much: the sound of the main speaker of the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 is still noticeably muffled when the smartphone is lying face up. This was not observed with the Galaxy Note 3, so it becomes completely incomprehensible why such a sudden “regression” suddenly occurred in the next model in the series.

Next to the flash, a single block is placed, as in the case of the Galaxy S5, a heart rate sensor, the functionality of which has been expanded this time. Now, by placing your finger on this small recessed window on the back of your smartphone, you can not only measure your heart rate, but also determine the oxygen level in your blood, and even assess the level of stress your body is experiencing at the moment. All this becomes possible using the pre-installed S Health application, and the sensor on the rear wall can also be used as a shutter button when taking photographs with the front camera, which is convenient.

The front panel is completely covered with scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass 3. In the upper part of the glass there is a slot cut out for the shiny metal grille of the speaker, and nearby you can see the eyes of the sensors and the front camera. To the left is an LED status indicator, shining with a large but dim dot when the screen is off and signaling the charging status and incoming messages. There is a special item in the settings menu to regulate the indicator’s operation.

The most recognizable element of all top Samsung smartphones, the oblong hardware mechanical key under the screen, remained in its place and, as in the case of the Galaxy S5, received additional functionality - a fingerprint scanner. You need to swipe the scanner with your finger; simply touching it, like the Huawei Ascend Mate 7, is not enough. Consequently, you will have to use your second hand to hold the device at this moment. In general, it’s worth admitting that Samsung’s current implementation of the fingerprint sensor is the most inconvenient of all; I don’t want to use it in real life.

The touch buttons next to the mechanical one on the front panel have a bright white backlight with an adjustable glow time; there is also a special item for this in the settings.

The remaining mechanical controls are located on the side edges of the device: on the right is the power and lock button, and on the left is a paired volume key. These metallic keys are not as large and wide as before, but overall there are no special complaints about them. The buttons are quite easy to feel blindly, have a soft springy action and a clear response.

The headphone audio jack (3.5 mm) is located on top here, next to the secondary microphone hole. An infrared transmitter was also placed here, which serves to emulate a remote control for various household appliances. The corresponding proprietary application called Smart Remote moves from model to model - naturally, it is also available here. The functionality of the Smart Remote program is excellent: it is not only capable of connecting a smartphone using an infrared port with any equipment, but can also act as an interactive program guide.

At the bottom end, between two microphones (there are three in total in the device), you can see a standard Micro-USB 2.0 connector. Unlike the previous model, which supported USB 3.0, in the subsequent modification the Koreans abandoned this and returned to USB 2.0. The traditional stylus, which has become the hallmark of the entire Samsung Galaxy Note series, is also in its place. In general, the electronic pen has the same dimensions and shape, but the surfaces have changed slightly: now the plastic part has become ribbed, and the metal back has lost its notches and has become completely smooth.

The developers report that in the Galaxy Note 4, the electronic S pen and its operation have again been improved, and the response to pressure has been improved, although there was nothing to complain about in the previous model. The Wacom pen technology used here is unique in its own way, and no other manufacturer's attempts to achieve similar results have even come close. The screen processes so many different degrees of pressure that you can not only write with the stylus, but also draw the most intricate pictures. The new model even has a special service called Pen.up, where you can view the most interesting user works drawn using the S pen.

The smartphone comes to the market in four different color modifications, with a choice of white, black, pink and gold cases. The connectors of the device are not covered with plugs, and there are no fastenings for the strap on the case. The device, contrary to everyone’s expectations, did not receive protection from water and dust, nor did it support wireless charging.

Screen

Samsung Galaxy Note 4 is equipped with a Super AMOLED touch matrix. The screen dimensions are 71x126 mm, the 5.7-inch diagonal remains the same, but the resolution has increased - it is now 2560x1440 pixels (Quad HD). Accordingly, the dot density increased to 515 ppi - this is a very high figure.

The thickness of the side frames from the edge of the screen to the edge of the body is more than 3 mm, but with such large dimensions they still seem quite narrow. The screen can be operated with gloves; this functionality is separately enabled in the settings.

The display brightness can be adjusted manually, or you can use automatic adjustment. Multi-touch technology here allows you to process 10 simultaneous touches. When you bring the smartphone to your ear, the screen is locked using a proximity sensor.

A detailed examination using measuring instruments was carried out by the editor of the “Monitors” and “Projectors and TV” sections, Alexey Kudryavtsev. Here is his expert opinion on the screen of the sample under study.

The front surface of the screen is made in the form of a glass plate with a mirror-smooth surface that is scratch-resistant. Judging by the reflection of objects, the anti-glare properties of the screen may be slightly worse than those of the Google Nexus 7 (2013) screen (hereinafter simply Nexus 7). For clarity, here is a photo in which a white surface is reflected when the screens are turned off (on the left is Nexus 7, on the right is Samsung Galaxy Note 4, then they can be distinguished by size):

The screen of the Galaxy Note 4 is slightly lighter (photo brightness 102 versus 96 for the Nexus 7) and does not have a pronounced tint. Note that the reflection from bright objects on the Galaxy Note 4 screen has a pale bluish halo without a pronounced directionality. The ghosting of reflected objects on the Galaxy Note 4 screen is very weak, indicating that there is no air gap between the layers of the screen. Due to the smaller number of boundaries (glass/air type) with very different refractive indices, screens without an air gap look better in conditions of strong external illumination, but their repair in the case of cracked external glass is much more expensive, since the entire screen has to be replaced. On the outer surface of the Galaxy Note 4 screen there is a special oleophobic (grease-repellent) coating (very effective, noticeably better than that of the Nexus 7), so fingerprints are removed much easier and appear at a lower speed than in the case of regular glass.

When the white field was displayed in full screen and with manual brightness control, its maximum value was 350 cd/m², the minimum was 2 cd/m². You also need to take into account the fact that in this case, the smaller the white area on the screen, the lighter it is, that is, the actual maximum brightness of the white areas will almost always be higher than the specified value. For example, when displaying white on half the screen, the maximum brightness with manual adjustment increases to 385 cd/m², and if the white field occupies 10% - up to 450 cd/m², and, as an example, the white area on the main page of our site had a brightness of 415 cd/m² (though with a dark banner at the top of the page). As a result, readability during the day in the sun should be at a fairly good level. The reduced brightness level allows you to use the device even in complete darkness without any problems. There is automatic brightness adjustment based on the light sensor (it is located to the right of the front speaker slot). You can make adjustments to the operation of this function by moving the adjustment slider from −5 to +5 units. Below, for three conditions, we present the screen brightness values ​​for three values ​​of this setting - for −5, 0 and +5. In complete darkness in automatic mode, the brightness is reduced to 4, 10 and 20 cd/m², respectively (the first is a little dark, the rest are normal), in an office illuminated by artificial light (approximately 400 lux) the brightness is set to 70, 150 and 290 cd/m² (dark - just right - light, which corresponds to the specified correction), in a brightly lit environment (corresponds to lighting on a clear day outdoors, but without direct sunlight - 20,000 lux or a little more) - increases to 350 cd / m² regardless of the position of the slider . This value is equal to the maximum for manual adjustment. In general, the result of the automatic brightness adjustment function is as expected. At any brightness level there is modulation with a frequency of 240 Hz. The figure below shows brightness (vertical axis) versus time (horizontal axis) for several brightness settings:

It can be seen that at maximum (and close to it) brightness the modulation amplitude is low, and as a result there is no visible flicker. However, as brightness decreases, the relative modulation amplitude increases and the duty cycle decreases. Therefore, at approximately 50% and below, the presence of modulation can already be seen in a test for the presence of a stroboscopic effect or simply with rapid eye movement. Depending on individual sensitivity, this flickering may cause increased fatigue.

This screen uses a Super AMOLED matrix - an active matrix on organic light-emitting diodes. A full-color image is created using subpixels of three colors - red (R), green (G) and blue (B), but there are twice as many green subpixels, which can be referred to as RGBG. This is confirmed by a fragment of a microphotograph:

For comparison, you can see the gallery of microphotographs of screens used in mobile technology.

In the fragment above you can count 4 green subpixels, 2 red (4 halves) and 2 blue (1 whole and 4 quarters), and by repeating these fragments, you can lay out the entire screen without breaks or overlap. For such matrices, Samsung introduced the name PenTile RGBG. The manufacturer calculates the screen resolution based on the green subpixels; based on the other two, it will be two times lower. The placement and shape of the sub-pixels in this variant is similar to that found in the Samsung Galaxy S4 screen and some other newer Samsung devices with AMOLED screens. This version of PenTile RGBG is better than the old one with red squares, blue rectangles and stripes of green subpixels. However, some unevenness of contrast borders and other artifacts are still present. However, due to the very high resolution, they have a minimal impact on image quality.

The screen is characterized by excellent viewing angles, although the white color, when deviated even at small angles, acquires a slight blue-green tint, but the black color remains simply black at any angle. It is so black that the contrast setting is not applicable in this case. When viewed perpendicularly, the uniformity of the white field is excellent. For comparison, here are photos in which the screens of the Galaxy Note 4 (profile Basic) and the second comparison participant, identical images were displayed, while the brightness of the screens was initially set to approximately 200 cd/m², and the color balance on the camera was forced to switch to 6500 K.

Note the excellent uniformity of brightness and color tone of the white field. And a test picture (profile Basic):

Color reproduction is good - however, the color balance of the screens varies slightly, and the colors on the Galaxy Note 4 are slightly more saturated. This is for the profile Basic, there are four in total:

What happens in the three remaining profiles is shown below:

Adaptive display:

Color saturation has increased slightly, but skin tones have suffered somewhat.

Movie AMOLED:

Saturation and color contrast were noticeably increased, and the skin became slightly more reddish.

Photo AMOLED:

The saturation is still high, but the color contrast has returned to normal, and the skin remains excessively reddish.

Now at an angle of approximately 45 degrees to the plane and to the side of the screen (again profile Basic). White field:

The brightness at an angle for both screens has noticeably decreased (to avoid strong darkening, the shutter speed was increased by 2.5 times compared to the previous two photographs), but in the case of Samsung the drop in brightness is much less pronounced. As a result, with formally the same brightness, the screen of the Galaxy Note 4 visually looks much brighter (compared to LCD screens), since you often have to look at the screen of a mobile device from at least a slight angle. And a test picture:

It can be seen that the colors have not changed much on both screens, and the brightness of the Samsung at an angle is noticeably higher. Switching the state of the matrix elements is performed almost instantly, but at the switching edge there may be a step with a width of 16.7 ms (which corresponds to a screen refresh rate of 60 Hz). For example, this is what the dependence of brightness on time looks like when moving from black to white and back:

In some conditions, the presence of such a step can lead to plumes trailing moving objects, but in normal use these artifacts are difficult to see. Quite the contrary - dynamic scenes in films on OLED screens are distinguished by high clarity and even some “jerky” movements.

In case one of the three profiles is selected, except the profile Movie AMOLED, constructed using 32 points with equal intervals according to the numerical value of the shade of gray, the gamma curve did not reveal any blockage in either highlights or shadows, and the index of the approximating power function is equal to 2.18-2.20, which is almost equal to the standard value of 2.2 , while the real gamma curve deviates very little from the power-law dependence (the captions in parentheses show the exponent of the approximating power-law function and the coefficient of determination):

For profile Movie AMOLED The gamma curve has a slightly pronounced S-shape, which increases the apparent contrast of the image, but shades are still distinguishable in the shadows.

Let us recall that in the case of OLED screens, the brightness of image fragments dynamically changes in accordance with the nature of the displayed image - it decreases for generally light images. As a result, the resulting dependence of brightness on hue (gamma curve) most likely slightly does not correspond to the gamma curve of a static image, since the measurements were carried out with sequential display of shades of gray on almost the entire screen. This image dynamism increases when you select the option Auto tuning screen brightness. In this case, on the graph of brightness (vertical axis) versus time (horizontal axis), when moving from black to white and back, a descending section appears, that is, the brightness of the white field begins to decrease after 370 ms:

Color gamut for profiles Adaptive display And Movie AMOLED very wide and almost covers the Adobe RGB gamut:

When selecting a profile Photo AMOLED coverage is adjusted to Adobe RGB boundaries:

When selecting a profile Basic The coverage is further compressed, almost to the limits of sRGB:

Without correction, the spectra of the components are very well separated:

In case of profile Basic with maximum correction, the color components are already noticeably mixed with each other:

Note that on screens with a wide color gamut, without appropriate correction, the colors of regular images optimized for sRGB devices appear unnaturally saturated. Hence the recommendation - in most cases, watching movies, photographs and everything “natural” is better when choosing a profile Basic, and only if the photo was taken on an Adobe RGB setting, does it make sense to switch the profile to Photo AMOLED. Profile Movie AMOLED, despite the name, is the least suitable for watching movies or anything else.

The balance of shades on the gray scale is not ideal, but, in general, acceptable. Color temperature in profiles Adaptive display And Movie AMOLED above 6500 K, in the remaining two - close to 6500 K, while in a significant portion of the gray scale this parameter does not change very much. The deviation from the blackbody spectrum (ΔE) over most of the gray scale remains below 10 units, which is considered a good indicator for a consumer device, and also does not change much:

(The darkest areas of the gray scale can in most cases be ignored, since color balance there is not very important, and the error in measuring color characteristics at low brightness is large.)

Let's summarize. The screen has a fairly high maximum brightness and has good anti-glare properties, so the device can be used outdoors even on a sunny summer day without any problems. In complete darkness, the brightness can be reduced to a comfortable value. It is permissible to use a mode with automatic brightness adjustment, which works quite adequately. The advantages of the screen include a very good oleophobic coating, as well as an sRGB color gamut and a color balance close to standard (if you select the appropriate profiles). At the same time, let us remind you about the general advantages of OLED screens: true black color (if nothing is reflected in the screen), excellent uniformity of the white field, noticeably less than that of LCDs, and a drop in image brightness when viewed at an angle. Disadvantages include modulation of screen brightness. For users who are particularly sensitive to flicker, this may cause increased fatigue. However, overall the screen quality is very high.

Sound

In terms of sound, there have been no noticeable changes compared to the previous version of the smartphone, except for the speaker being placed on the rear side. Galaxy Note 4 produces a loud, clear, moderately bassy sound, but it doesn’t live up to HTC and Oppo/Vivo devices, and there’s only one speaker. At the maximum volume level, the speaker does not wheeze, the sound remains clear. The interlocutor’s speech is recognized confidently, and the earpiece clearly conveys all the intonations and timbre of the voice. Thanks to three built-in microphones, the noise reduction system has been improved.

To play music, a proprietary player with a maximum number of settings is used as standard. All sound effects in it are combined with a technology called SoundAlive - although some of them are only available with connected headphones. The same applies to the sound optimization function. There are a lot of different virtual effects, they are combined into a matrix of squares, you can experiment for a very long time.

Traditionally, an FM radio is not included in the standard configuration of a smartphone, but there is a voice recorder, and the developers have improved its functionality. An “Interview” mode has appeared, in which sound is recorded simultaneously from two microphones, and in the “Meeting” mode, the device is able to distinguish up to 8 sound sources, and after recording is complete, it becomes possible to select individual sources for listening. The functionality of the voice recorder is wide, but the smartphone has not learned how to record telephone conversations.

Camera

Samsung Galaxy Note 4 is equipped with two digital camera modules with a resolution of 16 and 3.7 megapixels. The front-facing 3.7-megapixel camera with F1.9 aperture provides a default shooting angle of 90 degrees, as well as 120 degrees in wide-angle mode, allowing users to take even group selfies. To create a panoramic selfie, you need to rotate the camera left and then right, following the arrows and prompts, as when creating a regular panorama.

The main rear camera with Isocell technology has a 16 megapixel matrix. The camera is equipped with autofocus and LED flash, as well as intelligent optical stabilization (Smart OIS), which will allow you to take high-quality pictures when the device is shaken, and will also automatically lengthen the exposure time in low light conditions. Among other camera features, there is a selective focus mode that allows you to highlight a specific part of the image, leaving the background blurred.

When shooting at maximum resolution, photos are 5312x2988 pixels in size. The camera resolution, organization and design of the control interface are all exactly the same as the Galaxy S5. The settings menu is clear and intuitive, representing a matrix of interactive settings elements. The drawing of the elements is clear, the menu is perfectly visible even in the brightest sunlight.

The camera can shoot video in maximum UHD resolution (3840×2160). Examples of test videos shot at different resolutions are presented below.

• Video No. 1 (229 MB, 3840×2160)
• Video No. 2 (73 MB, 2560×1440)
• Video No. 3 (54 MB, 1920×1080)

	The foliage is well finished, but there is a strong blur on the right side.
	In the background, the foliage merges, although the program tries to separate it. There is a slight soapiness throughout the image.
	Sharping is clearly visible on the wires, but noise in the shadows is well hidden.
	Sometimes you can find noise in the shadows.
	Despite the slight soapiness, the license plates of the cars are quite clear, although the foliage still merges in the distance.
	Sometimes the camera manages to work out the shadows well, and overall the image is very decent. Of course, not counting the same soapiness and strong sharpening on the wires.
	We can say that even the license plate of a distant car is distinguishable.
	We can look again at the sharpening, which is too bold for such a resolution.
	Overall, the camera's handling of foliage isn't too bad, but it's not great either. The blur at the edges has reappeared.

We're probably so used to good cameras in top-end Samsung devices that the Note 4's camera doesn't seem very good. Of course, Samsung cameras cannot be called ideal or the best, but they have always been at the level. Here we are dealing with either an unfinished module, or, most likely, with unfinished firmware. Noise reduction works differently from time to time, and sometimes its work can be called good. But often it doesn't work very smoothly. In addition, blurring around the edges in some photographs catches the eye, which also cannot be interpreted unambiguously, since the camera does not blur systematically. In addition, pictures of the text confirm that the camera actually does not have any significant problems with the optics. In general, the quality of the camera is quite high, but the above-mentioned points cannot but disappoint.

	Lighting ≈3200 lux. The camera does a good job.
	Lighting ≈1400 lux. The situation is not changing.
	Lighting ≈130 lux. The resolution drops, but noise is still not visible.
	Lighting ≈130 lux, flash. The flash improves the situation significantly.
	Lighting<1 люкс, вспышка. В темноте вспышка справляется практически так же хорошо.

The laboratory test in some sense confirms the noted problems. It is possible that the sensor here is similar to the S5, but the camera performs noticeably worse. However, it cannot be said that the quality of the optics has let us down, since the spread of resolution values ​​in the center and at the edge of the frame is, of course, large, but not criminal, and besides, the curves are very similar. And in general, the dependence is not so bad, and the use of the flash completely increases the average resolution value. However, it still remains lower than many other cameras. Perhaps this can be attributed to the program not working well enough.

However, the camera is quite suitable for artistic and documentary photography. It has potential, and with a firmware update it should still be revealed.

Telephone and communications

The smartphone works as standard in modern 2G GSM and 3G WCDMA networks, and also supports fourth generation 4G networks. Moreover, in the case of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 platform, support for the faster LTE Cat6 is promised, while the version supplied with SoC Exynos 5 Octa 5433 supports only the standard LTE Cat4 mode with a theoretical maximum speed of 150 Mbps for reception.

The network capabilities of the smartphone are extensive and correspond to a truly top level: there is support for NFC technology, Bluetooth 4.1 (BLE, ANT+), Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac (HT80) MIMO PCIe has support for two bands (2.4 and 5 GHz), as well as 2x2 MIMO mode - in it, data can be received and transmitted in two streams, that is, up to two times faster than in the first generations of devices compatible with 802.11ac.

As standard, you can organize a wireless access point via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth channels; there is an infrared port for controlling household appliances. The Micro-USB port supports USB OTG mode and is compatible with MHL 3.0, but only provides USB 2.0 speed (unlike the Galaxy Note 3, which supported USB 3.0 mode). The navigation module works with both GPS and the domestic Glonass system, and also sees satellites of the Chinese Beidou.

It’s convenient that the virtual keyboard immediately displays an additional top row of numbers for typing—you don’t have to switch the layout every time. But here you have to switch language layouts by scrolling sideways using the spacebar key. The phone application supports Smart Dial, that is, while dialing a phone number, a search is immediately carried out by the first letters in contacts. Support for input by continuously sliding from letter to letter (Swype) is also implemented here. Using the settings, the virtual keyboard can be reduced in size for ease of control with the fingers of one hand; you can also reduce the size of the entire working screen - for current top-end tablets, all this is quite familiar and familiar functionality. A virtual sidebar of keys has appeared, duplicating the bottom row of hardware control buttons - it can be customized and moved to any of the edges of the screen.

OS and software

The device uses the Google Android software platform version 4.4.4 and the latest version of the proprietary graphical interface called TouchWiz as a system. Exactly the same one was used in the Samsung Galaxy S5, but some changes and improvements did appear. First of all, a new multitasking mode has appeared, in which you can work in several windows at once. The user selects the format for working with applications - full screen; screen divided into several windows; or pop-up window mode. You can also use the sliders to easily change the size and location of application windows on the screen.

The functionality of working with the electronic pen S pen has been expanded due to the updated service for creating notes S Note. In addition to standard features such as taking notes by hand or using the virtual keyboard, as well as converting handwritten text to typed text, the updated S Note app has received an instant digitization function (Snap Note), which allows you to convert images into an editable format. For example, a user can take a photo of his note, made by hand on paper, and then edit it. The Smart Select Album feature allows you to bring together content from various sources and share it with friends.

The shell is maximally saturated with all sorts of tricks for one-handed control, support for contactless and contact gestures. The settings menu can be displayed in two versions: either as a continuous list, when an additional section appears at the top with quick access to the main parameters, or in the form of several tabs, when the settings are divided by topic. By the way, if you move the home screen to the left, the Flipboard interactive news feed will appear, very similar in functionality to HTC BlinkFeed.

The pre-installed application for tracking your own health, called S Health, has a wide range of health-promoting functions: pedometer, exercise recording, nutrition monitoring, fitness trainer. Now the program, in addition to reading heart beats using a sensor located on the back of the smartphone, also measures the level of oxygen in the blood, as well as stress resistance.

Performance

Samsung has again released a model from the Galaxy Note series in two versions - on two different hardware platforms (Qualcomm and its own Exynos). As for the modification based on the Qualcomm SoC (N910S), it will run on the latest Snapdragon 805 with four Krait 450 cores at 2.7 GHz, Adreno 420 graphics core and LTE Cat6 support.

Another modification (N910C) is intended for the Russian market, the hardware platform of which is based on the latest single-chip system (SoC) of Samsung's own production - Exynos 5 Octa 5433, made using a 20 nm process technology. The eight-core processor here has 4 Cortex-A57 cores operating at up to 1.9 GHz, as well as 4 Cortex-A53 cores, the maximum operating frequency of which is 1.3 GHz. Here the graphics core is the Mali-T760 GPU, operating at 700 MHz, and only standard LTE Cat4 is supported. This review tested exactly this modification of the Samsung Galaxy Note 4.

The smartphone has 3 GB of RAM, 32 GB of built-in flash memory, and can also expand the memory using microSD cards up to 128 GB. It supports connecting external flash drives to the Micro-USB port using a special OTG adapter.

To get an idea of ​​the performance of the platform of the smartphone under test, we will conduct a standard set of tests.

For convenience, we have compiled all the results we obtained when testing the smartphone in the latest versions of popular benchmarks into tables. The table usually adds several other devices from different segments, also tested on similar latest versions of benchmarks (this is done only for a visual assessment of the obtained dry numbers). Unfortunately, within the framework of one comparison it is impossible to present the results from different versions of benchmarks, so many worthy and relevant models remain “behind the scenes” - due to the fact that they once passed the “obstacle course” on previous versions of test programs.

Testing in MobileXPRT, as well as in the latest versions of AnTuTu and GeekBench 3:

According to benchmark testing results, the new product showed very high performance results. In AnTuTu 5.x, the test subject lost a little to its main rival, Huawei Ascend Mate 7, in the rest the result was almost equal, the difference was small. As for other previously tested top-end devices, it is not yet entirely clear how the results of the two versions of the popular benchmark correlate with each other, because now the fourth version has been replaced by the fifth, and all new smartphones are now tested in it. Now we have to mark in tablets which version of the benchmark this or that model was tested in, until we accumulate enough results for the fifth version of the benchmark. In any case, the smartphone uses a very powerful SoC; its hardware capacity will be enough for a long time to complete any assigned tasks.

When testing in 3DMark, the most powerful smartphones now have the ability to run the application in Unlimited mode, where the rendering resolution is fixed at 720p and VSync is disabled (which can cause the speed to rise above 60 fps).

Results of testing the graphics subsystem in the Epic Citadel gaming test, as well as Basemark X and Bonsai Benchmark:

Browser cross-platform tests:

As for benchmarks for assessing the speed of the javascript engine, you should always make allowance for the fact that their results significantly depend on the browser in which they are launched, so the comparison can only be truly correct on the same OS and browsers, and this is possible during testing not always. For Android OS, we always try to use Google Chrome.

Playing video

To test the omnivorous nature of video playback (including support for various codecs, containers and special features, such as subtitles), we used the most common formats, which make up the bulk of the content available on the Internet. Note that for mobile devices it is important to have support for hardware video decoding at the chip level, since it is often impossible to process modern options using processor cores alone. Also, you shouldn’t expect a mobile device to decode everything, since the leadership in flexibility belongs to the PC, and no one is going to challenge it.

According to the testing results, the smartphone was not provided with full support for all necessary decoders. To fully play most of the most common files on the network, you will have to resort to the help of a third-party player - for example, MX Player. True, even in it you will first have to change the settings, switching from hardware decoding to software or to a new mode called Hardware+(not supported by all smartphones).

¹ MX Video Player only played sound after switching to software decoding or a new mode Hardware+; The standard player does not have this setting

Additionally, the MHL interface was tested. To test it, we used the ViewSonic VX2363Smhl monitor, which supports direct MHL connection (in version 2.0) using a passive adapter cable from micro-USB to HDMI. Let us recall that Samsung has implemented its own version of this interface at the physical level. As a result, to connect an external device via MHL, you need to use special adapters or connect standard MHL adapters through simple passive adapters.

In this case, we carried out the test using a proprietary adapter from Samsung, and output via MHL was carried out at a resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels at a frequency of 60 frames/s. When the smartphone is in portrait orientation, the image is displayed on the monitor screen in portrait orientation, while the image on the monitor is inscribed within the height of the screen, and wide black fields are displayed on the right and left:

When the smartphone is landscape-oriented, the image is displayed on the monitor screen in landscape orientation, while the image on the monitor fits within the boundaries of the screen and exactly matches the image on the smartphone screen. The exception is the start screen, which is displayed only in portrait orientation.

Sound via MHL is output and has good quality. At the same time, at least multimedia sounds are not output through the loudspeaker of the smartphone itself, and the volume is controlled by buttons on the smartphone body. In principle, in the smartphone settings you can select the sound output mode - stereo or surround. However, in our case, the monitor only received stereo sound, so there was no choice. The smartphone connected via MHL is charging (or at least the indicator indicates this).

Next, using a set of test files with an arrow and a rectangle moving one division per frame (see “Method for testing video playback and display devices. Version 1 (for mobile devices)”), we checked how the video is displayed on the screen of the smartphone itself. Screenshots with a shutter speed of 1 s helped determine the nature of the output of frames of video files with various parameters: the resolution varied: 1280 by 720 (720p), 1920 by 1080 (1080p) and 3840 by 2160 (4K) pixels and frame rates of 24, 25, 30, 50 and 60 fps. In the tests, we used the MX Player video player in the “Hardware+” mode. The results of this (block entitled “Smartphone Screen”) and the next test are summarized in the table:

Note: If in both columns Uniformity And Passes Green ratings are given, this means that, most likely, when watching films, artifacts caused by uneven alternation and frame skipping will either not be visible at all, or their number and visibility will not affect the viewing comfort. Red marks indicate possible problems with playback of the corresponding files.

According to the criterion of frame output, the quality of playback of video files on the screen of the device itself is good, since frames (or groups of frames) can be output with more or less uniform alternation of intervals and without skipping frames. When playing video files with a resolution of 1920 by 1080 (1080p) on a smartphone screen, the image of the video file itself is displayed exactly along the border of the screen. The clarity of the picture is high, but not ideal, since there is no escape from interpolation to the screen resolution. However, for the sake of experimentation, you can switch to the one-to-one mode by pixel; there will be no interpolation, but the features of PenTile will appear - the vertical world through the pixel will be in a grid, and the horizontal one will be slightly greenish. This is on test worlds; the described artifacts are not present on real frames. The brightness range displayed on the screen actually corresponds to the standard range of 16-235 - in the shadows only a couple of shades merge with black, but in the highlights all gradations of shades are displayed.

With a monitor connected via MHL, when playing a video player MX (not the standard one!), the video file image is displayed only in landscape orientation, while the monitor displays an exact copy of the mobile device screen.

The results of the monitor output tests are shown in the table above in the “MHL (monitor output)” block. The output quality is good. When playing video files with Full HD resolution (1920 by 1080 pixels) on the monitor screen, the image of the video file itself is displayed exactly along the border of the screen, maintaining true proportions, and the resolution corresponds to Full HD resolution. The brightness range displayed on the monitor is equal to the standard range of 16-235, that is, all shade gradations are displayed in shadows and highlights.

The conclusion is typical - an MHL connection can be used for games, watching movies, displaying web pages and other activities that benefit from multiplying the screen size. True, you will have to purchase an adapter specifically for Samsung or find an appropriate adapter.

Battery life

Samsung Galaxy Note 4 has a powerful battery; its capacity has remained virtually unchanged compared to Note 3 and is 3220 mAh, so according to testing results, the new representative of the series demonstrates almost the same or slightly shorter battery life. In terms of efficiency, the device lacks stars from heaven, which would be strange with such a high resolution and large display area. However, Huawei Ascend Mate 7 showed much better results in the same modes.

Continuous reading in the FBReader program (with a standard, light theme) at a minimum comfortable brightness level (brightness was set to 100 cd/m²) lasted until the battery was completely discharged in less than 11 hours, and when continuously watching videos from YouTube in high quality (HQ) with The device lasted 8.5 hours at the same brightness level via a home Wi-Fi network. In 3D gaming mode, the smartphone worked for almost 4 hours.

The smartphone battery charges quite quickly - here the developers have provided a fast charging function, in which the battery is charged by about half in half an hour, but for this you need to use the included charger. Fully charging the battery takes less than two hours.

Bottom line

Currently, the cost of Samsung Galaxy Note 4 for the Russian market is set at almost 35 thousand rubles, the start of official sales in retail chains is scheduled for the second half of October this year. The main competitors are the all-metal Huawei Ascend Mate 7 with a lower price, larger screen, better battery life, maximum performance, more advanced fingerprint scanner, and the Apple iPhone 6 Plus, which is not as technologically well-equipped and costs even more. but there is a completely different OS and a more attractive power of brand popularity.

An excellent screen, high-quality build, highest performance and an excellent camera, one of the best at the moment - all this deserves the highest praise in the Samsung Galaxy Note 4. As always, the design, which this time has also become angular, as well as the manufacturing materials, are questionable. Competitors have entirely metal cases, but here they again use plastic, albeit with a metal rim. An inconvenient fingerprint scanner, lack of moisture protection and wireless charging also cannot be considered the strengths of the new product. In general, this time there are much fewer changes in relation to the previous model, but in terms of the overall set of technical and hardware characteristics, Samsung’s next tablet phone turned out to be not only very worthy; This is currently one of the best deals among large-screen smartphones on the mobile market.

General characteristics

Deciding on the type of device (phone or smartphone?) is quite simple. If you need a simple and inexpensive device for calls and SMS, it is recommended to choose a telephone. A smartphone is more expensive, but it offers a wide variety of options: games, videos, the Internet, thousands of programs for all occasions. However, its battery life is significantly less than that of a regular phone.

Screen

Multimedia capabilities

Connection