techknow beat
by Bilal Iqbal
So then it’s a thousand-riyal question: To go for the latest and greatest Samsung Note 4 or its predecessor, the last year’s champion, Galaxy Note 3. The Galaxy Note 4 went on sale (and quickly out of stock) in Doha a couple of weeks back for QR2,800. But as supply met demand in the ensuing days, those of you prudent enough to resist the temptation may also be the ones thinking if what the Note 4 offers over Note 3 is worth the premium it charges. The Galaxy Note 3 in the market, the 4G version, is currently retailing for QR2,000 but can easily be had for QR1,800 with a little digging.
The Notes are currently the only high end phablets in the market to offer a stylus, the S Pen. And with the ability to mimic how pens write, complete with the capability to register over a thousand pressure levels, these are not your styluses of yore. No device of this size can compete with the productivity options that the Notes offer. This holds especially true for people who would like more control over editing the finer details in the pictures on their phones, or edit videos on the go. The human finger is just too fat for the kind of precise controls that such tasks demand.
This also means then that the S Pen is, and will continue to be, a niche accessory. Thankfully then, the Note doesn’t rely solely on the laurels of its innovative S Pen, and consistently offer some of the best smartphone experience in the market today. Their cameras are top notch. Their screens are superb. They are blazing fast. And their battery lives (starting with the Galaxy Note 3) will easily get you through a heavy day of usage, or two days of moderate use.
Visually, you will not find much of a difference between Note 3 and Note 4. They are virtually the same size and shape, with Note 4 being ever so slightly bigger and heavier (176grams vs 168grams). Holding them in hand though is a completely different experience, with the metal body of the Note 4 feeling significantly more premium than Note 3. You also get a higher resolution screen (2K display instead of FHD on Note 3), a better camera (16mp with OIS vs 13mp), better battery life (the battery in Note 4 is virtually the same size, but better hardware optimisation from Samsung results in better battery life, despite the QHD screen), faster charging (up to 30% faster, according to Samsung), heart rate monitor, fingerprint scanner, and, of course, a faster processor with better GPU.
Put together, are all these improvements worth the extra asking money? That would, of course, depend on you. Reviewers worldwide are in agreement that the Note 4 does indeed make a compelling argument for itself, and if you are the sort of person who must have the latest and greatest, then the decision may already have been made. No one will tell you that you washed your money down the drain.
Another thing to consider is that the Note 4 variant being sold in Qatar comes with the Samsung-made 64-bit Exynos chipset, instead of the more common Snapdragon 810. You do lose developer support when it comes to Exynos (we are talking custom ROMs like Cyanogenmod), but it is currently benchmarking higher than the Snapdragon variant. This means that it should be able to perform better on games going forward. Also, being 64-bit means it should play nicer with Android 5.0 Lollipop when it eventually comes out for Note 4 — Android 5.0 supports 64-bit processors. The Exynos variant does come with slower 4G speeds than the Snapdragon variant, but if our experience with the 4G networks in Qatar are any indications, you will not find any practical speed differences in daily use. So unless you like to change around the software running your phone, the Exynos variant should serve you plenty fine (unlike last year’s Exynos Note 3, which offered only 3G speeds).
But if you believe in getting the most from your money, or are just short on cash, the Note 3 still makes a very compelling case for itself. It is plenty fast, has 4G (with speeds as fast as the Exynos Note 4), decent camera, sufficient storage and is virtually guaranteed to get an update to Android 5.0 Lollipop.
Something must be said here for the painfully slow updates that Samsung pushes out to its phones in the MEA region — we got our Kit Kat update for the Note 3 months after its global rollout started. Unlike the HTC, who has promised Lollipop updates for their One M8 and M7 within 90 days, we are, going by Samsung’s past record, looking at 4-5 months or longer before the Lollipop update for Note 4 rolls out (maybe even longer in Qatar) and 7-8 months for the update to come to Note 3 (again, longer in Qatar). Samsung, officially, has made no comments on the update schedules for any of its devices.
What about existing Note 3 users? Should you throw away your one-year-old phone and rush to get the latest gadget? We will go here with our 24-month upgrade cycle. There are rumours that given Galaxy S5’s less-than-stellar sales performance, Samsung is working on the Galaxy S6 from scratch. The design cues in the Galaxy S6 will also make their way to Note 5, and it will be interesting to see what Samsung comes up with (here’s hoping they do away with their iPhone-inspired home button and go to a much nicer look for their TouchWiz).
Unless you are really excited by the potential that the Galaxy Gear VR has, the upgrades, while significant, are incremental and you could easy last another year with your Note 3. If you do want the Gear VR, we suggesting waiting until Samsung releases the headset. The promise of an Imax-like experience at home is tempting to say the least, but we would wait a couple of more months to see how the Gear VR actually pans out. It is rumoured to come out some time in December.