5 ms·

Samsung Unveils the Galaxy Note 4

35 points by coreymgilmore 12y ago

toblender 12y ago
Wow... it looks just like the Note 3...
frou_dh 12y ago
Serious screen on that thing. Same resolution as a 2x2 grid of 720p HDTVs.
- mwfunk 12y ago
  In other words, 1080p.
  - ChrisClark 12y ago
    In other words, 1440p.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    720×2 != 1080
mindcrime 12y ago
I desperately need a new phone, but I'm torn as to whether or not to wait for this, or just buy a Note 3. Right now I'm leaning towards waiting, but I wish they'd given out some more pricing and availability info. :-(
- selectodude 12y ago
  Sometime in October, apparently.
- bane 12y ago
  I was in the same boat until a month ago and got a Note 3, I couldn't wait. The factory defaults are stupid, but once you get the phone configured how you like it's pretty awesome. Here's my micro review of the 3 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8264661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8264661 Short answer, the 4 looks like a fairly minor upgrade to the 3. If you're price sensitive that probably means you can get a 3 at a steep discount pretty soon (I got mine for $99 on contract) and won't be too disappointing. Spec wise, the 3 is already ahead of just about anything else on the market. I have a feeling it'll be a head of the iPhone 6 when that comes out.
  - mindcrime 12y ago
    Very cool. A friend of mine has a Note 3 and I've spent some time dorking around with it, and was fairly impressed. I think if I can find a sweet deal on a Note 3 I might just go ahead and go that route.
RKoutnik 12y ago
Also of Note: Samsung is entering the VR space with the Gear VR & Note 4: http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/03/samsung-virtual-reality/ http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/03/samsung-virtual-reality/
- kumarm 12y ago
  Wow Samsung turn around time is definitely Impressive. Google Cardboard Giveaway at Google I/O turned into production hardware with software partnerships in 2 months.
  - matthew-wegner 12y ago
    First rumor I could find goes back well before I/O, and certainly was a real project before that: http://www.engadget.com/2014/05/22/samsung-vr-headset/ http://www.engadget.com/2014/05/22/samsung-vr-headset/
  - higherpurpose 12y ago
    What makes you think this is a Cardboard partnership? Because you can put the phone inside? That's hardly been a first for Google. Also, you have to buy this phone to get the VR experience. Others allow you to use pretty much any ~5" phone.
bane 12y ago
Looks like a really minor refinement of the Note 3. That's not a bad thing, I just ended up with a Note 3 and love it (beautiful screen, unbelievable battery life, fantastic speakerphone, impeccable hardware, etc.) I have a flip cover for it that makes it look like a high-end paper notebook from a distance and it's a bit narrower and much thinner than my moleskine notebooks, which is what it's largely replaced. The pen works fantastic even if the included software is a little funky in some places. It's very low latency compared to finger input and can even recognize the difference between the pen and your finger so you can grab the screen without writing on it. I can write on it about as fine as I can write in my moleskines. The case replaces the back panel so it doesn't add any thickness to the device except for the front panel, which has a nifty window that just shows the time and lets you answer calls without opening it up all the way. It folds around the back so you can use the phone without it getting in the way. I showed it to my parents, and my octogenarian Dad, who's been struggling typing on his iphone (and hates hates hates it and has to use a stylus and reading glasses to use it at all), has already gone out and bought one and my mother is planning on upgrading from her flip phone to a Note very soon. Using it as a notepad is really natural for them, and after I showed them how to just email a pdf of their notes they were sold. Battery life is absurd. It's kind of strange what a transformative experience great battery life has on a phone. It turns your phone from an adversary into a companion. After heavy usage all day (multiple hours of phone calls and otherwise almost constantly doing something with it all day) it's usually above 50% at the end of the day and still has 30-40% by the time I go to bed. Amazingly, it fits pretty comfortably in my pocket. I don't wear skinny jeans so that kind of thing is usually not a problem for me. But I do find myself walking around with my phone more often than I realized. Usually on a call or something. The battery is replaceable/upgradeable and there's an SD card slot so I can plop in another 64GB if I really need to. The camera is pretty good. I'm not in a habit of taking pictures with my phones, but the few I've taken were as good as my old point and shoot. I don't like the camera software however, there's some UI issues with it I think could be done much better. And oh yeah, it has 3GB of RAM. It's hard to explain what that means for multitasking, but I used to regularly have apps shutdown in the background when I was doing something else. Now I can play music, answer and email, browse for the answer I'm about to type and have navigation running in the background without worrying something is going to get killed. My phone is almost as powerful as the desktop computer I recently replaced. Except it's no in my pocket. Issues: The Samsung TouchWiz I could live without, as I could with all the crapware installed by Verizon (there's a couple useful things installed so it's not a total loss). Some of the defaults are just plain stupid, like pushing home on the home screen to auto launch some kind of magazine app I don't want to use. It took a little while to figure out how to kill that "feature". I also wish the flip case had a lock position to use as a kickstand. This is something that Apple wouldn't have gotten wrong. It took me a couple hours to reconfigure the default factory phone into something I can really use, but it wasn't particularly painful. Performance is off the charts, GTA 3 plays like a dream on it for example as does Caustic (a CPU heavy soft synth). The capacitive buttons also don't light-up by default so you have to know they're there to push them. Then they light up. It's kind of stupid. They do provide a menu key on the Note 3, which I love. I don't get the obsession with moving menus from the dedicated menu button up to some random location in every application's gui. Fortunately, most apps observe the guidelines and remove the menu button in the gui and use the phone's button instead. (yeah yeah, well designed apps shouldn't have menus blah blah, well apps do have menus and they aren't going anywhere and shuffling the icon around the screen is worse then putting it under a dedicated button IMHO). I need more USB 3 cables. Every cable I have anywhere else is one of the old style USB 2 cables, which works fine with the phone. But being able to recharge it ultra quick with the 3 cable is really nice. Unless Samsung really craps the phones up in the future, I'm pretty sure my next phone in a couple years will probably be another Note.
walterbell 12y ago
There's also the Edge variant of the Note 4, with an independent curved display on the right side, http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/3/6097297/samsung-galaxy-note-edge-wraparound-display http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/3/6097297/samsung-galaxy-note... "The sloping screen’s default status is as a quick launcher of sorts, with easy access to a bunch of your most-used apps. There are a number of widgets, though, tickers of sorts that let you flip through news or tweets or information about how many steps you’ve taken. And you can do it all without ever changing or disturbing what you see on the larger display. In some apps, the edge acts as a toolbar, offering easy access to font menus or camera modes or in-app settings. At night, it can be your alarm clock, the time displayed on the side of the phone so you can see it without taking your head off your pillow. It’s an odd idea, turning this vertical rail into essentially an always-on secondary display"
- r00fus 12y ago
  > There's also the Edge variant of the Note 4, with an independent curved display on the right side How the hell does Samsung find it sustainable, let alone profitable, to support all these variations and iterations? Am I missing something here?
  - walterbell 12y ago
    Samsung engineers employ the Russia-pioneered methodology TRIZ to identify parameters for innovation, http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ It's no different than a VC funding a portfolio of startups. Note that their wildly successful phablet form factor was only one of many in-market variations. Keep what the crowd/sales identifies as good, discard the rest. If executive leadership supports research, manufacturing and distribution in lego/modular fashion, this approach can become embedded in the culture. It's a statistical approach to creativity. http://www.forbes.com/sites/haydnshaughnessy/2013/03/07/why-is-samsung-such-an-innovative-company/2/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/haydnshaughnessy/2013/03/07/why-...
vardump 12y ago
Still 32-bit? Wasn't this supposed to be a 64-bit model? Not buying. Not going to update again in 2 years, when apps start to require 64-bit for whatever reason. Korean (?) version is Cortex-A53, but international version is 32-bit.
- krisdol 12y ago
  Do these things have enough RAM to need a 64-bit processor?
  - vardump 12y ago
    Enough RAM? That's about the only thing why 64-bit processor is not needed in a phone. 32-bit ARM can support up to 1 TB of RAM.
darklajid 12y ago
Compared a friend's Note 3 to my OnePlus One recently. I gotta say I found the Note quite nice, I was surprised how good the stylus worked. I'm not a fan of Android skins (the 1+ wins by a large margin with official CyanogenMod support here) though, even if some of the additions looked nice and sensible. At the moment I'd say both are a little too big for me, but I understand that this isn't a factor for lots of guys and - well - the phablet features (split screen, stylus) wouldn't make a lot of sense with a tiny display.
slantyyz 12y ago
Does anyone know if there is such a thing as a Galaxy Note that can run a near-vanilla version of Android without losing S-pen support? The only thing that ever keeps me from getting one is TouchWiz.
- da_n 12y ago
  On the Note II I was able to load CyanogenMod and the S-Pen worked fine (minus button support).
michaelmior 12y ago
Ugh. When did TC start autoplaying videos? The pause button is also completely broken for me so I have no choice but to listen to the whole thing if I want to read the article.

35 points by coreymgilmore 12y ago

toblender 12y ago

Wow... it looks just like the Note 3...

frou_dh 12y ago

Serious screen on that thing. Same resolution as a 2x2 grid of 720p HDTVs.

mwfunk 12y ago
In other words, 1080p.
- ChrisClark 12y ago
  In other words, 1440p.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  720×2 != 1080

mindcrime 12y ago

I desperately need a new phone, but I'm torn as to whether or not to wait for this, or just buy a Note 3. Right now I'm leaning towards waiting, but I wish they'd given out some more pricing and availability info. :-(

selectodude 12y ago
Sometime in October, apparently.
bane 12y ago
I was in the same boat until a month ago and got a Note 3, I couldn't wait. The factory defaults are stupid, but once you get the phone configured how you like it's pretty awesome. Here's my micro review of the 3 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8264661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8264661 Short answer, the 4 looks like a fairly minor upgrade to the 3. If you're price sensitive that probably means you can get a 3 at a steep discount pretty soon (I got mine for $99 on contract) and won't be too disappointing. Spec wise, the 3 is already ahead of just about anything else on the market. I have a feeling it'll be a head of the iPhone 6 when that comes out.
- mindcrime 12y ago
  Very cool. A friend of mine has a Note 3 and I've spent some time dorking around with it, and was fairly impressed. I think if I can find a sweet deal on a Note 3 I might just go ahead and go that route.

RKoutnik 12y ago

Also of Note: Samsung is entering the VR space with the Gear VR & Note 4: http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/03/samsung-virtual-reality/ http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/03/samsung-virtual-reality/

kumarm 12y ago
Wow Samsung turn around time is definitely Impressive. Google Cardboard Giveaway at Google I/O turned into production hardware with software partnerships in 2 months.
- matthew-wegner 12y ago
  First rumor I could find goes back well before I/O, and certainly was a real project before that: http://www.engadget.com/2014/05/22/samsung-vr-headset/ http://www.engadget.com/2014/05/22/samsung-vr-headset/
- higherpurpose 12y ago
  What makes you think this is a Cardboard partnership? Because you can put the phone inside? That's hardly been a first for Google. Also, you have to buy this phone to get the VR experience. Others allow you to use pretty much any ~5" phone.

bane 12y ago

Looks like a really minor refinement of the Note 3. That's not a bad thing, I just ended up with a Note 3 and love it (beautiful screen, unbelievable battery life, fantastic speakerphone, impeccable hardware, etc.) I have a flip cover for it that makes it look like a high-end paper notebook from a distance and it's a bit narrower and much thinner than my moleskine notebooks, which is what it's largely replaced. The pen works fantastic even if the included software is a little funky in some places. It's very low latency compared to finger input and can even recognize the difference between the pen and your finger so you can grab the screen without writing on it. I can write on it about as fine as I can write in my moleskines. The case replaces the back panel so it doesn't add any thickness to the device except for the front panel, which has a nifty window that just shows the time and lets you answer calls without opening it up all the way. It folds around the back so you can use the phone without it getting in the way. I showed it to my parents, and my octogenarian Dad, who's been struggling typing on his iphone (and hates hates hates it and has to use a stylus and reading glasses to use it at all), has already gone out and bought one and my mother is planning on upgrading from her flip phone to a Note very soon. Using it as a notepad is really natural for them, and after I showed them how to just email a pdf of their notes they were sold. Battery life is absurd. It's kind of strange what a transformative experience great battery life has on a phone. It turns your phone from an adversary into a companion. After heavy usage all day (multiple hours of phone calls and otherwise almost constantly doing something with it all day) it's usually above 50% at the end of the day and still has 30-40% by the time I go to bed. Amazingly, it fits pretty comfortably in my pocket. I don't wear skinny jeans so that kind of thing is usually not a problem for me. But I do find myself walking around with my phone more often than I realized. Usually on a call or something. The battery is replaceable/upgradeable and there's an SD card slot so I can plop in another 64GB if I really need to. The camera is pretty good. I'm not in a habit of taking pictures with my phones, but the few I've taken were as good as my old point and shoot. I don't like the camera software however, there's some UI issues with it I think could be done much better. And oh yeah, it has 3GB of RAM. It's hard to explain what that means for multitasking, but I used to regularly have apps shutdown in the background when I was doing something else. Now I can play music, answer and email, browse for the answer I'm about to type and have navigation running in the background without worrying something is going to get killed. My phone is almost as powerful as the desktop computer I recently replaced. Except it's no in my pocket. Issues: The Samsung TouchWiz I could live without, as I could with all the crapware installed by Verizon (there's a couple useful things installed so it's not a total loss). Some of the defaults are just plain stupid, like pushing home on the home screen to auto launch some kind of magazine app I don't want to use. It took a little while to figure out how to kill that "feature". I also wish the flip case had a lock position to use as a kickstand. This is something that Apple wouldn't have gotten wrong. It took me a couple hours to reconfigure the default factory phone into something I can really use, but it wasn't particularly painful. Performance is off the charts, GTA 3 plays like a dream on it for example as does Caustic (a CPU heavy soft synth). The capacitive buttons also don't light-up by default so you have to know they're there to push them. Then they light up. It's kind of stupid. They do provide a menu key on the Note 3, which I love. I don't get the obsession with moving menus from the dedicated menu button up to some random location in every application's gui. Fortunately, most apps observe the guidelines and remove the menu button in the gui and use the phone's button instead. (yeah yeah, well designed apps shouldn't have menus blah blah, well apps do have menus and they aren't going anywhere and shuffling the icon around the screen is worse then putting it under a dedicated button IMHO). I need more USB 3 cables. Every cable I have anywhere else is one of the old style USB 2 cables, which works fine with the phone. But being able to recharge it ultra quick with the 3 cable is really nice. Unless Samsung really craps the phones up in the future, I'm pretty sure my next phone in a couple years will probably be another Note.

walterbell 12y ago

There's also the Edge variant of the Note 4, with an independent curved display on the right side, http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/3/6097297/samsung-galaxy-note-edge-wraparound-display http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/3/6097297/samsung-galaxy-note... "The sloping screen’s default status is as a quick launcher of sorts, with easy access to a bunch of your most-used apps. There are a number of widgets, though, tickers of sorts that let you flip through news or tweets or information about how many steps you’ve taken. And you can do it all without ever changing or disturbing what you see on the larger display. In some apps, the edge acts as a toolbar, offering easy access to font menus or camera modes or in-app settings. At night, it can be your alarm clock, the time displayed on the side of the phone so you can see it without taking your head off your pillow. It’s an odd idea, turning this vertical rail into essentially an always-on secondary display"

r00fus 12y ago
> There's also the Edge variant of the Note 4, with an independent curved display on the right side How the hell does Samsung find it sustainable, let alone profitable, to support all these variations and iterations? Am I missing something here?
- walterbell 12y ago
  Samsung engineers employ the Russia-pioneered methodology TRIZ to identify parameters for innovation, http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ It's no different than a VC funding a portfolio of startups. Note that their wildly successful phablet form factor was only one of many in-market variations. Keep what the crowd/sales identifies as good, discard the rest. If executive leadership supports research, manufacturing and distribution in lego/modular fashion, this approach can become embedded in the culture. It's a statistical approach to creativity. http://www.forbes.com/sites/haydnshaughnessy/2013/03/07/why-is-samsung-such-an-innovative-company/2/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/haydnshaughnessy/2013/03/07/why-...

vardump 12y ago

Still 32-bit? Wasn't this supposed to be a 64-bit model? Not buying. Not going to update again in 2 years, when apps start to require 64-bit for whatever reason. Korean (?) version is Cortex-A53, but international version is 32-bit.

krisdol 12y ago
Do these things have enough RAM to need a 64-bit processor?
- vardump 12y ago
  Enough RAM? That's about the only thing why 64-bit processor is not needed in a phone. 32-bit ARM can support up to 1 TB of RAM.

darklajid 12y ago

Compared a friend's Note 3 to my OnePlus One recently. I gotta say I found the Note quite nice, I was surprised how good the stylus worked. I'm not a fan of Android skins (the 1+ wins by a large margin with official CyanogenMod support here) though, even if some of the additions looked nice and sensible. At the moment I'd say both are a little too big for me, but I understand that this isn't a factor for lots of guys and - well - the phablet features (split screen, stylus) wouldn't make a lot of sense with a tiny display.

slantyyz 12y ago

Does anyone know if there is such a thing as a Galaxy Note that can run a near-vanilla version of Android without losing S-pen support? The only thing that ever keeps me from getting one is TouchWiz.

da_n 12y ago
On the Note II I was able to load CyanogenMod and the S-Pen worked fine (minus button support).

michaelmior 12y ago

Ugh. When did TC start autoplaying videos? The pause button is also completely broken for me so I have no choice but to listen to the whole thing if I want to read the article.