The Samsung Galaxy Note5 and Galaxy S6 edge+ Review
by Joshua Ho on October 2, 2015 8:00 AM ESTSystem Performance
While subjective judgments of performance may be possible to make when the delta is significant, when the gap gets increasingly close within the range of perceivable performance differences it becomes important to rely on more precise and accurate methods of measuring the overall performance of the mobile device. For the most part, when we’re discussing system performance the single biggest factor is often the SoC, which makes sense given that an SoC contains the CPU, GPU, video encode and decode blocks, memory bus, and DSPs. There are other aspects of the device that determine the overall perception of performance and things that can have a meaningful effect on performance, but the SoC is often the gating factor.
In order to test this we run mobile devices through our standard suite of benchmarks. In the case of the Galaxy Note5 and Galaxy S6 edge+, there shouldn’t be too many surprises given the commonality in components with the Galaxy S6.
If you guessed that performance in these benchmarks would be similar to the Galaxy S6, you'd be right. Given the shared SoC and general commonality in components performance remains as high as it is with the Galaxy S6. In some cases we see improvements, likely a combination of changes to Chrome and changes to areas like the frequency governor to respond faster to changes in load. It's probably fair to say that the Exynos 7420 will continue to be the best SoC for Android mobile devices in 2015, although it's likely that we'll see significantly increased competition for 2016.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
225 Comments
View All Comments
neoraiden - Friday, October 2, 2015 - link
Samsung lost me the second they announced they weren't releasing the note 5 in Europe. I hope they get enough of a dent in their sales from annoyed customers that they release the note 6 here after. I have a feeling that's wishful thinking though.Lavkesh - Friday, October 2, 2015 - link
Excellent review as always Joshua never mind the brand wars in the comments. I was always an iOS user and thought Galaxy Note 5 is a good enough device to jump the ship for the terms of a contract. While I am reasonably happy with the device, I still think Software is Samsung's biggest issue.I also noticed an issue with the S-Pen sensitivity where it does not work at all at the bottom left and right corners of the device. This means that if I need to take a screenshot which goes right until the bottom right or left corner I cannot do it because the sensitivity simply vanishes. Also attaching a video to exactly show what the issue is. Can you check if your device also exhibits the same behaviour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XN41nE1lWGI
Tech_guy - Friday, October 2, 2015 - link
Samsung relied too much on Exynos 7420 this year. The Note 5 is supposed to be a huge improvement and their better phone from the S6 which is already considered kinda old in the tech world. It's all the same tech just later in the year. Yawn. The iPhone 6s technology just obliterates this phone. Good luck Samsung, you're going to need itmercucu1111 - Friday, October 2, 2015 - link
Exynos 8890 is on ready dudeTech_guy - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
Single core and most likely graphics performance won't match A9. I read a 45% increase in CPU performance that puts it under 2000 geekbench still.Arbie - Friday, October 2, 2015 - link
At first I was sad to see that neither of these included a microSD slot. That would be an awful omission on devices extremely well fitted to media consumption. That would rule them out of my consideration. But the photos made me wonder, so I looked further and found the slot mentioned in the middle of the review.Really... I know it is AT's sworn position that microSD is useless, irrelevant and obsolete... but how could you not even list it in the spec table? Just for those of us who continue to be deluded by our daily use of it. I never cease to wonder at the time and effort spent on describing case colors, and the blindness to important functional features.
Dobson123 - Saturday, October 3, 2015 - link
The S6, S6 edge, S6 edge+ und Note 5 DO NOT have a microSD slot.Arbie - Saturday, October 3, 2015 - link
Then these sentences are grammatically broken (wrong tense throughout): "The back cover is faux-leather plastic that peels off much like the Galaxy S2's back cover, with a removable battery and microSD slot. The display has the same buttons, but the bezel had a striped design for unknown reasons." As written this refers to the new devices, not the old ones!I won't even consider a device of this screen size without microSD. A read-only implementation would be fine (satisfying Android security needs).
Devo2007 - Sunday, October 4, 2015 - link
Those sentences shouldn't even be in this review. Definitely confusingDobson123 - Sunday, October 4, 2015 - link
They're about the Note 4.