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.
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synaesthetic - Saturday, October 18, 2014 - link
Isn't that the whole point of using Android? I mean, it's kind of a trainwreck when OEM skins and carrier bloatware gets involved. If it wasn't for custom OS flashing I would probably be using a Jolla phone or hanging onto the old Nokia N9. Or just using an iPhone. I mean, if I can't tweak and customize, then my problem with iOS largely disappears.snake2332 - Wednesday, October 22, 2014 - link
That literally is the first thing I do, but I'm not average. However, do average consumers read anandtech? I think not, so there is some relevance to arguing against uhuznaa's statement since a fair amount of people won't be using the stock ROM at all.tralalalalalala40 - Friday, October 17, 2014 - link
So you want him to root the phone to get a proper test. That sounds like an accurate way to model the average consumer use. hasnake2332 - Wednesday, October 22, 2014 - link
Who cares about the average consumer here?seanlumly - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
This review is good, but lacks discussion (or mention, for that matter) about Gear VR, a very significant first-step development in the world of mobile phones. If nothing else, VR may have an effect on the decisions surrounding critical hardware found in future mobiles.theduckofdeath - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
I noticed that too. the Gear VR is actually one the toys I'm looking forward to the most over the next few months.seanlumly - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
Me too! And while I'm looking forward to it, I'm confident that it is a bold and important step for the industry. It potentially adds an alternative to large-screen TVs that have become standard, and open up new ways of sharing information. More importantly, the mobile phone is so ubiquitous that this lowers the cost of VR significantly, and puts it into more hands.Such a thing deserves serious mention in a review of this device as its a serious development.
theuglyman0war - Monday, October 20, 2014 - link
if this is a petition for the interest in the future coverage of vr and phones strapped to my face with rubberbands then count me in pleeeze ( me to )firstever - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
From the brightness tests, the display is 331 nits. How is the readability in the daytime? What does the auto boost do to make the display brighter?theduckofdeath - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
With a contrast ratio of nearly 1,000,000:1 it has a dynamic range in the region of 1000 times better than any LCD display.That gigantic difference means that those miniscule differences in the specs sites like Anandtech always loves to focus on are pretty much irrelevant. I think it was GSM arena who made an visual comparison of outdoor readability on all major brands a few months ago, and even though the GS5 had around half the brightness of the "best" competitors, the GS5 was a lot more readable outdoors.
The adaptive brightness increased the outdoor brightness of something like 100 nits on older Samsung devices, I guess this is in the same region.