FINALLY SAMSUNG RELEASED THE PHABLETS, THE BIG BROTHERS SAMSUNG GALAXY NOYE 5 & SAMSUNG GALAXY S6 EDGE +
Samsung’s phablets have been one of their greatest smartphone success stories, finding traction in a market when many thought there wouldn’t be a place for such a large phone. And while you will never see some competitors directly admit to it, products like the Note series have legitimized the phablet form factor and required that the competition catch up as well, making the phablet form factor as much of a home court for Samsung as there can be.
Starting with their 2014 models, Samsung introduced two different phablets, the Galaxy Note 4 and the simply titled Galaxy Note Edge. This year Samsung is retaining the dual phablet approach, however in the case of the Edge product Samsung has shifted gears on what they want to do. For 2015 Samsung seems to be going after a new audience in the form of the Galaxy S6 edge+, which is a more distinct derivative of the Note 5 platform with some greater feature changes than just a curved screen. To try and explain what I mean, I’ve included the specs below.
There are really two important differences between the two, namely the removal of the S-Pen and addition of the curved display to the Galaxy S6 edge+. The result is that while the Galaxy Note 5 is a traditional Note phablet, the Galaxy S6 edge+ is closer to a very large Galaxy S6 edge, and this is why these two closely related devices are placed in very different product lines. The Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 edge+ share a lot in common. They have the same SoC, same amount of DRAM, almost identical displays, the same cameras, fingerprint scanners, and the same battery. Ultimately what differs between the two devices is not the underlying hardware, but the functionality and form factor of the devices.
GALAXY NOTE 5
Galaxy S6 Edge +
S-Pen
QUICK SPECS OF BOTH BIG BROTHERS :
Samsung’s phablets have been one of their greatest smartphone success stories, finding traction in a market when many thought there wouldn’t be a place for such a large phone. And while you will never see some competitors directly admit to it, products like the Note series have legitimized the phablet form factor and required that the competition catch up as well, making the phablet form factor as much of a home court for Samsung as there can be.
Starting with their 2014 models, Samsung introduced two different phablets, the Galaxy Note 4 and the simply titled Galaxy Note Edge. This year Samsung is retaining the dual phablet approach, however in the case of the Edge product Samsung has shifted gears on what they want to do. For 2015 Samsung seems to be going after a new audience in the form of the Galaxy S6 edge+, which is a more distinct derivative of the Note 5 platform with some greater feature changes than just a curved screen. To try and explain what I mean, I’ve included the specs below.
There are really two important differences between the two, namely the removal of the S-Pen and addition of the curved display to the Galaxy S6 edge+. The result is that while the Galaxy Note 5 is a traditional Note phablet, the Galaxy S6 edge+ is closer to a very large Galaxy S6 edge, and this is why these two closely related devices are placed in very different product lines. The Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 edge+ share a lot in common. They have the same SoC, same amount of DRAM, almost identical displays, the same cameras, fingerprint scanners, and the same battery. Ultimately what differs between the two devices is not the underlying hardware, but the functionality and form factor of the devices.
GALAXY NOTE 5
S-Pen
One of the major updates changes to the Galaxy Note 5 is improvements on the S-Pen, which has a number of new changes to the design and software functionality. On the hardware side, the pen itself now has a changed mechanism that has a push button top that allows the pen to be completely flush inside the phone when not in use, but easily ejected by pushing on the top of the pen to make it protrude.
Galaxy S6 edge+ | Galaxy Note 5 | |
| SoC | Samsung LSI Exynos 7420 4xA57 @ 2.1GHz 4xA53 @ 1.5GHz | Samsung LSI Exynos 7420 4xA57 @ 2.1GHz 4xA53 @ 1.5GHz |
| GPU | Mali T760MP8 @ 772MHz | Mali T760MP8 @ 772MHz |
| RAM | 4GB LPDDR4 | 4GB LPDDR4 |
| NAND | 32/64GB UFS 2.0 | 32/64GB UFS 2.0 |
| Display | 5.7-inch 2560x1440 SAMOLED Dual edge display | 5.7-inch 2560x1440 SAMOLED |
| Network | 2G / 3G / 4G UE Category 6/9 LTE | 2G / 3G / 4G UE Category 6/9 LTE |
| Dimensions | 154.4 x 75.8 x 6.9 mm 153 grams | 153.2 x 76.1 x 7.6 mm 171 grams |
| Camera | 16MP rear camera, 1.12 µm pixels, 1/2.6" CMOS size, F/1.9. OIS 5MP F/1.9 FFC | 16MP rear camera, 1.12µm pixels, 1/2.6" CMOS size F/1.9, OIS 5MP F/1.9 FFC |
| Battery | 3000 mAh (11.55 Wh) non-removable | 3000 mAh (11.55 Wh) non-removable |
| OS | Android 5.1 with TouchWiz (At launch) | Android 5.1 with TouchWiz (At launch) |
| Connectivity | 2x2 802.11a/b/g/n/ac + BT 4.2, USB2.0, GPS/GNSS, NFC | 2x2 802.11a/b/g/n/ac + BT 4.2, USB2.0, GPS/GNSS, NFC |
| SIM Size | NanoSIM | NanoSIM |
Meanwhile the Air command floating button and customizable shortcuts are somewhat more mundane. The floating button just allows for one-tap access to what was previously hidden behind the button press of the pen, and customizable shortcuts in the Air command menu is useful but not exactly life-changing.
Scroll capture is also arguably a “minor” feature, but I would argue that its value is significant when it comes to improving the user experience of the phone. In short, this screenshot mode makes it possible to screenshot a long list in an entire screenshot, so something like Google Maps directions can be taken as a single scrollable screenshot rather than 2-20 screenshots that might have overlapping information and potentially missing information from the ListView. However, as far as I can tell this capture mode is strangely hidden behind S-Pen functionality when it really should be integrated into the existing screenshot capture gestures that programmatically determines whether to present this scroll capture mode.
