Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Hands-On

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Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Hands-On

The Galaxy Note 4 is Samsung’s big hope for this end of the year, after a slowdown at the high-end took its toll on the company’s recent financial results. On paper, the new Note has everything going for it, from a sleek metallic design, to a cutting-edge screen, and enhanced software features. But will the Note 4 be the smashing hit Samsung’s been looking for?




S Pen
One of the most impressive is to do with the S Pen. It surprised me that the stylus (sorry Samsung, I know you hate that word) made a comeback with the Note range but four devices in and the S Pen finally makes a lot more sense.



For a start there are two new pen options: fountain and highlighter. Of these, fountain is the most interesting as it shows off how far the S Pen has come in terms of usability. Until now, using the S Pen has felt a lot like gliding a piece of plastic over a glass screen.



Performance

On paper the Galaxy Note 4 is one of the most powerful handsets out there and runs using a Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 processor and 3GB of RAM. We didn't get a chance to properly benchmark the Galaxy Note 4, or see how it coped with demanding tasks such as 3D gaming during our hands on, but found for general purposes it is very quick.

The Galaxy Note 4 opened applications and webpages in milliseconds and ran chug and stutter free, even when we had multiple apps running using the handset's multi-window support.



Camera

While we're still not convinced many executives would use the Galaxy Note 4's 3.7MP front camera for anything but video calling, we were also reasonably impressed with its imaging quality and found it is reasonably good at taking photos.

Storage 
The Galaxy Note 4 we tested came with 32GB of internal storage. Luckily for those looking for more space, a further 64GB can be added using the Galaxy Note 4's microSD card slot.



First impressions
Featuring a large, but crisp display and offering what appears to be top-end performance and a reworked more sensitive S Pen stylus, our opening impressions of the Galaxy Note 4 are very positive and the device certainly has the potential to be one of 2014's best handsets.
Samsung made a big deal about the Galaxy Note 4's 16MP rear camera with optical image stabilisation, and 3.7MP front camera, claiming they will offer users "industry-leading" imaging quality.​