Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Quad-HD 5.7-inch smartphone is launched
Samsung has just unveiled the Galaxy Note 4 at the IFA Unpacked event in Berlin. As you might expect the Galaxy Note 4 offers evolutionary rather than revolutionary advances upon its predecessor. Samsung has been steered by current smartphone trends and fashion, influencing the new Selfie features, and also has improved the standard Note-type features of this phablet, its stylus and incremented general hardware specs. In other words, “The new Galaxy Note 4 introduces the most refined Note experience to-date by combining all the latest technology that users expect from the Galaxy series,” said JK Shin, the CEO of Samsung Electronics.
Samsung’s Galaxy Note 4 has the same sized screen as last year’s Note 3 but the pixel density has been pumped up. The new Super AMOLED display crams 2560×1440 (Quad HD) into the display in your hand. This improves on screen imagery and also the multi-window multi-tasking functionality.
Camera functionality gets a selfie boost
Everyone sees the camera functionality of mobiles as being increasingly important and Samsung has pushed this aspect of this smartphone further again. The firm has kitted out the new Note with a 16 megapixel rear-facing camera with OIS and a 3.7 megapixel front-facing camera with f1.9 lens for selfies. The camera sensors are said to provide brighter and clearer images. The selfie functionality of the front facing 3.7 MP camera is made more useful by Samsung allowing users to fire the shutter using a button on the back of the phone – that’s ergonomic. We were also told in the presentation, that Samsung offers a new ‘Wide Selfie’ function so you can turn the phone to always ensure you get your complete crowd of friends in the picture.
S Pen evolution
The S Pen, another key Note feature, has been evolved to provide “a much more authentic pen experience, with a more natural brush effect that perfectly emulates writing on paper with a fountain or calligraphy pen.” Air command pen hovering functionality has been boosted with more note taking, section and clipping abilities. Samsung demonstrated an interesting ‘Snap Note’ feature which was basically a camera OCR type ability integrated into the pen tools suite. That’s supposed to be useful for students in classrooms, for example.
Another important aspect of our smartphones is battery life and stamina. Samsung has made the Note 4 both longer running and faster charging, despite the extra power and higher density screen on offer. Other new features of erm… note, include the improved fingerprint scanner, multiple microphones with noise cancellation, voice tagging and Voice Memo. It will launch with Android 4.4 and will be made available in October.
In the Samsung UnPacked presentation we also heard of a new partnership with Mont Blanc for posh S Pen styli and a continued partnership with Swarovski for blingy-crushed-glass-cases.
The full tech specs of the new Samsung Galaxy Note 4 are tabulated below:
Network | 2.5G (GSM/ GPRS/ EDGE) : 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz 3G (HSPA+ 42Mbps): 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100 MHz 4G (LTE Cat 4 150/50Mbps) or 4G (LTE Cat 6 300/50Mbps) * May differ by country and carrier |
AP | 2.7 GHz Quad-Core Processor 1.9 GHz Octa-Core (1.9GHz Quad + 1.3GHz Quad-Core) Processor *May differ by country and carrier |
Display | 5.7 inch (143.9mm) Quad HD Super AMOLED (2560 x 1440) |
OS | Android 4.4 (KitKat) |
Camera | Rear Facing: 16 Mega pixel Auto Focus camera with Smart OIS Front Facing: 3.7 Mega pixel camera with f1.9 |
Rear Facing Camera : HDR (Rich tone), Selective Focus, Rear-cam Selfie, Beauty face, Virtual Tour Shot, Shot & More, Dual Camera Front Facing Camera: Selfie, Wide Selfie |
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Video | Codec: H.264, MPEG-4, H.263, VC-1, WMV7, WMV8, Sorenson Spark, MP43, VP8 Recording & Playback: up to UHD |
Audio | Codec: MP3, AAC/AAC+/eAAC+, WMA, AMR-NB/WB, Vorbis, FLAC(*) (*) Ultra High Quality Audio (~192KHz, 24 bit) support |
S Pen Optimized Features | Air Command (Action Memo, Smart Select, Image Clip, Screen Write) S Note, Snap Note, Direct Pen Input |
Additional Features | Multi Window |
Ultra Power Saving Mode | |
Voice Recorder (Normal Mode, Interview Mode, Meeting Mode, Voice Memo) | |
Download Booster | |
S Health 3.5 | |
Dynamic Lock Screen | |
Briefing | |
Google Mobile Services | Chrome, Drive, Photos, Gmail, Google, Google+, Google Settings, Hangouts, Maps, Play Books, Play Games, Play Newsstand, Play Movie & TV, Play Music, Play Store, Voice Search, YouTube |
Connectivity | WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac (HT80) MIMO PCIe GPS / GLONASS / Baidu NFC, Bluetooth® v 4.1 (BLE,ANT+) IR LED (Remote Control), USB2.0, MHL 3.0 |
Sensor | Gesture, Accelerometer, Geo-magnetic, Gyroscope, RGB,IR-LED Proximity, Barometer, Hall Sensor, Finger Scanner, UV, Heart Rate Monitoring, SpO2 (Dependent on market) |
Memory | 32 GB Internal memory + micro SD slot (up to 64GB) 3GB RAM |
Dimension | 153.5 x 78.6 x 8.5mm, 176g |
Battery | Standard battery, Li-ion 3,220mAh, Fast Charging (Adaptive Fast Charging & QC2.0) |