The Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Review
by Joshua Ho on October 15, 2014 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Samsung
- Android
- Mobile
- Galaxy Note 4
GPU Performance
While CPU benchmarks are currently a bit poor in nature, our GPU benchmarks are definitely more helpful when comparing between devices and across platforms. In the case of the Galaxy Note 4 with a Snapdragon 805 we see the same Adreno 420 GPU clocked at 600 MHz that is also used in the Galaxy S5 LTE-A so performance should be relatively similar.
Once again, the Galaxy Note 4's GPU performance line up quite closely with what we expect from the Adreno 420. However, due to the higher 1440p resolution the performance improvements from the Adreno 420 are relatively small or none at all unless the application renders at 1080p.
NAND Performance
While NAND performance is generally an area where it's important to avoid dipping too low, there's are some cases that seem to improve in responsiveness with faster NAND, such as updating apps in the background while doing other tasks or similar cases where data committed to NAND becomes relatively random. In order to test this we use Androbench with some custom settings.
As one can see in the test results, Samsung continues to stay near the front of the pack when it comes to NAND performance. One shouldn't expect storage performance to become a bottleneck on this device.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
195 Comments
View All Comments
MattL - Thursday, October 16, 2014 - link
Not strange at all, often certain places will get early review devices, they got an early iPhone 6 and 6+ too.Arcetnathon7 - Thursday, October 16, 2014 - link
Yes, but every early review of iPhone 6 and 6+ are "strangely" without any benchmarks.We always have to wait for Anandtech :)
MattL - Friday, October 17, 2014 - link
Well Display Mate had Note 4 and iPhone 6 Plus screen reviews up for a while now... I honestly would trust them more on the screen side of things anyways (they are far more comprehensive in their analysis and are obviously specialized experts in screens)... just curious as to the differences seen between theirs and the analysis here since they found the Note 4 definitely more accurate vs here.I do agree that you see very few iPhone 6 reviews with benchmarks though.
I would be very interested in other sites doing in-depth screen analysis runs, should give a better picture... but unfortunately not many sites do and the couple others I have seen are *horrible*, they didn't even realize that the Note 4's screen modes actually supported different color gamuts so they critiqued the color accuracy on the Adaptive mode specifically designed to have a high saturation of the color gamut to fend off ambient light washing out that saturation or the Photo mode which supports the Adobe RGB color gamut (17% larger than sRGB) do a high degree of accuracy, but when viewing non Adobe RGB content it will analyze off obviously. While the Basic mode is designed to be extremely color accurate to the sRGB standard (again Display Mate found it to be the most accurate of any smartphone or tablet screen, even the iPhone 6 screens)... so those sites results are pointless.
tralalalalalala40 - Saturday, October 18, 2014 - link
Does the user have to manually change the color scheme on the note4 for every app?tralalalalalala40 - Saturday, October 18, 2014 - link
The golden phone review, hand picked by robots maybe? At least they aren't programming their phones to cheat benchmarks anymore (most likely)trynberg - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
So, the iPhone 6+ is declared the best phablet with no supporting statements or qualifications. The Note 4 gets "remains one of the best phablets on the market, but whether it's the best for a given user is a matter of priorities and personal preference rather than any absolutes".I mean, how blind do you have to be to not see the bias there?
KPOM - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
This is actually a much more positive review of the Note 4 than ArsTechnica. AT basically said it comes down to your OS preference.MattL - Thursday, October 16, 2014 - link
Ars had the most negative Note 4 review I've seen anywhere on the web... really surprised about that, very disappointed.tralalalalalala40 - Saturday, October 18, 2014 - link
Go to samsung's website, they have a great review of the note 4 that should cheer you up.TrackSmart - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
Thanks for the review! As always, this is much more complete information than you find at competing sites.That said, the Battery Charging Speed Test is not as useful as it could be. Supposedly this phone charges to 50% in the first 30 minutes. That means most of your testing time represents "topping off" the battery. Consider adding 50% or 75% charge speeds instead of (or in addition to) 100%. It would tell us which phones allow a user to quickly get back to business.