The Samsung Galaxy Note5 and Galaxy S6 edge+ Review
by Joshua Ho on October 2, 2015 8:00 AM ESTFinal Words
The Galaxy Note5 is a bit of a break in form for Samsung, but in some ways it represents a return to form. To understand what this means, we can look at the various aspects that make up the Galaxy Note5 in contrast to the Galaxy S6. One of the easier places to start is the design, which shares a great deal in common with the Galaxy S6. We see a similar reflective coating under the glass, a glass back cover, an aluminum midframe, and the usual home button and thin bezels. The fingerprint scanner in the home button works about as well as you would expect and is comparable to the Galaxy S6.
The next aspect of the phone worth looking at is battery life. Here, we see that the Note5 gets a healthy bump in battery life relative to the Galaxy S6. Relative to the Note 4, battery life is basically comparable and not all that different. It seems that Samsung’s theme this year is maintaining battery life by reducing battery size and improving power efficiency. Those looking for a removable battery might be disappointed, but if you never swapped the battery in a phone like the Galaxy Note 4 there’s nothing to really worry about here. Samsung has also retained fast charging capabilities, so it isn’t nearly as important to swap batteries.
The display of the Galaxy Note5 continues to be incredible. Out of all the Android OEMs right now, Samsung is the best at display. I’m still of the opinion that the best LCDs are comparable with Samsung’s latest AMOLED panels, but within the next year or two I’m fairly confident that they won’t have any competition here. However, given the lack of second source suppliers it seems unlikely that OEMs will move en masse to OLED as strongly relying on a single supplier for any critical part of a product could easily be a disastrous mistake. The Galaxy S6 edge+ has a similar level of display quality, but the edges of the display are clearly distorted to the eye due to the subpixel arrangement used.
The SoC used continues to be the best SoC you can get in any mobile device running Android. This is likely to change next year, but given the data it’s incontrovertible that the Exynos 7420 is the fastest and most efficient SoC available in an Android device. These two factors strongly affect user experience in workloads like web browsing, updating and installing apps, and gaming. If you do any of those three things, SoC performance has a strong influence upon overall user experience for you. NAND quality isn’t quite at the same level as the Galaxy S6, but it’s more than sufficient and is unlikely to be a problem for the duration of a two year contract.
Overall, the software experience is actually quite acceptable. TouchWiz has gotten a lot better in the past generation, and any time I pick up a Galaxy S3 or Galaxy S4 I’m immediately reminded of this. However, as mentioned in the Galaxy S6 review I don’t think it’s necessarily perfect. The smoothness of the UI isn’t as amazing as some of the phones I’ve used in the past, and there are sometimes odd choices in application design like icon design. Using a Material Design theme from the theme store goes a long way to dealing with this problem, but that’s no excuse for the default theme. The Note features are useful and the single biggest reason to buy the Galaxy Note5 over another phablet, but the edge features are decidedly impractical and generally not very useful. I still think it's possible to make a better skin than TouchWiz, but I can live with TouchWiz on a primary phone.
In the camera department, on the surface nothing has changed relative to the Galaxy S6. Even if Samsung didn’t do anything for the Galaxy Note5’s camera relative to the Galaxy S6, it would still be one of the best Android cameras you can get today. However, Samsung has included a number of new features like RAW capture and improved manual mode controls. In addition, they’ve dramatically improved low light photo processing to the point that I’m confident in saying that the Galaxy Note5 beats the LG G4 and iPhone 6 Plus, but in video performance the iPhone 6 Plus is still slightly better. The Galaxy Note5 is either as good as or better than the iPhone 6 Plus for overall camera quality depending upon how strongly you want to weight video recording.
Outside of these main areas of focus, overall I like the the Galaxy Note5. In chosing to mimic the Galaxy S6 so closely it's not a bold design for Samsung and you won't find much in the way of new features, but instead what you get is in many ways a big Galaxy S6. Often because of that it's not a perfect phone - Samsung could still afford to work on polish, particularly in regards to issues like inserting the stylus backwards or RAW files that aren’t deleted - however it also does a lot well like the 5.7" SAMOLED display, the camera, and the Exynos 7420 SoC.
If you’re looking for the best Android phablet on the market today the Galaxy Note5 or Galaxy S6 edge+ is likely to be your best bet. They may not be a big jump up from the Galaxy S6, but they're still the best Android phablets you can get today. In that sense, Samsung is departing from the sort of strategy that we saw with the Galaxy Note 3 and 4 in the form of a new SoC and other improvements that came with the Note line, but like the Galaxy Note 1 and 2 these are phablet variants of their Galaxy S cousin.
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lopri - Friday, October 2, 2015 - link
Also odd that the author thinks the color shift on the Edge+ is due to RGBG subpixel layout. I thought the color shift would be there due to curves regardless of subpixel layout.In any case I give the author props for this effort. A rather thorough review, even if a little heavy on editorials.
lilmoe - Friday, October 2, 2015 - link
After being called out so many times, your "comparison charts" are still an absolute (intentional?) mess. Why do you have 25 different phones on one chart, and 10 completely different ones on others? Why is the crappiest browser on Android still being used for battery tests? Why is the iPhone 6 in GPU tests and the 6plus absent?While they do have really nice articles, Anandtech scores the lowest in the consistency department out of all sites. Please try being more consistent.
Can you just put 4-5 most popular phones of each platform on the SAME darn charts and keep them that way, without conveniently leaving some out and putting them back here and there? Like PLEASE?
Also, it would be nice if you'd explain why you're posting NAND performance benchmarks with your particular set of settings. I seriously find it VERY hard to believe that UFS 2.0 is equal or often slower than the very best of eMMC in sequentials and randoms.
lopri - Friday, October 2, 2015 - link
The real mess is the camera samples. (which by the way is not limited to Android devices for a change) It is maddening to sift through camera samples without knowing ahead what I am going to see only to click dozen more times to find out what I am looking for.Kuzi - Saturday, October 3, 2015 - link
Agreed their charts are a mess.Bob Todd - Friday, October 2, 2015 - link
The gigantor phone market is more competitive than ever, so it's interesting to see them dropping features and generally not taking full advantage of being the most vertically integrated Android OEM. They dropped microSD but capacity maxes out at 64GB. They had the opportunity to be ballsy and go higher capacity PCIe NVMe and absolutely crush every other Android OEM in storage performance. You have to *really* want the pen, because this looks like a tough sell at $780 for 64GB when $650 gets you a 128GB Nexus 6P and $500 gets you a 64GB Moto X Pure with expandable storage. Sure Samsung's SOC is better, but this is a pretty underwhelming release for me.TheinsanegamerN - Friday, October 2, 2015 - link
Not to mention the sealed, non removable battery. And samsung's terrible track record with updates.thedons1983 - Sunday, October 18, 2015 - link
Sealed, non removable battery = better looking device. Simple as. Never mind the fact, that most users do not want to swap the battery, as they simply don't need to. How obsessed with your phone are you anyway? You should probably try getting a life instead!!lilmoe - Friday, October 2, 2015 - link
Samsung knows a thing or two about fast storage, and their UFS 2.0 is pretty darn GOOD. It's just not showing well on you-know-who's charts.Bob Todd - Friday, October 2, 2015 - link
You are missing the point. They are charging more than "good enough" money for this thing. They need to offer compelling reasons to spend way more on this than the other solid new entries in this segment. Something like a PCIe NVMe solution would have been a good way to justify that price gap. I predict steep discounts (~$100+) shortly after launch.lilmoe - Friday, October 2, 2015 - link
"I predict steep discounts (~$100+) shortly after launch"They already priced the Note 5 cheaper than the Note 4 at launch. Sorry if American carriers are over charging.
"You are missing the point"
Read my *short* comment again. Their storage solution isn't particularly inferior. Random reads and writes are comparable, if not better. If you honestly believe that sequential performance is more important than random for everyday workloads, then I have nothing else to tell you. It's not like we have an extensive comparison of performance and power consumption/efficiency between Samsung's UFS 2.0 vs Apple's sourced NVMe solution (might not even be possible at this stage), nor is it the case that Samsung has already developed a miniature PCIe V-NAND 950 PRO NVMe SSD and is holding back to "cut corners".
Everything in this segment is overpriced, for better or worse. We just learn to "deal with it". That said, your point boils down to overall manufacturer costs, ie: BoM. You shouldn't make assumptions on your own over bits and pieces of the package. Samsung, despite manufacturing most of their parts, have a costlier BoM than most other OEMs, including Apple. Their external enclosure, AMOLED screens, Wacom Digitizers, DACs, etc. are always best in class and cost more than comparable parts from the competition. Other than the omission of SD-card controller, they went all out in every other detail (removable batteries don't contribute to cost, it's a design choice rather).
That said, I'd rather have them start with 64GB of standard storage (128GB option) and an SD-Card slot for a much more value proposition at that price range. A larger ~4000mah battery would have also been possible since the Note 5 is relatively large but is one of the lightest "phablet" out there. This goes for all manufacturers, not only Samsung.