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My Note 4 thoughts

I figured it might be a good idea to share my thoughts on the Note 4, since I always put a lot of research into smartphone buying and someone might find it useful There are some of you that are still leaning toward different flagships all of the time (like I did!), so I hope this helps.
First of all I would like to mention that about a month ago I made up my mind to give up my LG G2 and switch to a new smartphone.
The Xiaomi mi4 came up first.
I liked the design, UI, price, specs. Everything about the mi4 is just above average, but thats about it. It didn't have that even slightest "wow factor" that I needed to push me to buying one. It's a very good phone, but the warranty would require me to send the phone far into the unknown in case something was wrong, I wasn't sure If I would pay tax as well. Nobody had the 64 gb model either (16gb and no card expansion, really?!). I decided that this would probably be a wise choice but it didn't offer anything more than what I already had on the G2, and in some cases, it was worse (camera). I passed.
My second choice was the LG G3.
So like always, I started researching, checking out different variants and prices, digging through the specs, looking for its strong sides and flaws. I liked the quad hd display at first, the SD 801 SoC, good camera with laser autofocus. The UI was a nice upgrade from the LG G2's cartoonish look. The 32 gb model seemed a good option with its 3gb of ram (although I didn't like the design as I wanted something different from the G2).
As I started to dig deaper though, I noticed that the display isn't all that awesome, as there is more to it than just resolution. I think they might have made the phone much better if they sticked to a 1080p panel and focused on other aspects like color reproduction, brightness, power consumption. I found out that the 801 chip is stretched to its limits (even over them..) with that display, which caused overheating, throttling and lagging in demanding tasks and games. I believe a smartphone should be able to handle anything you throw at it so I dumped the G3 from my plans.
Then the Z3 came up.
So again- researching, digging, looking at the cons and pros. I liked the design a lot better than the G3 (besides the plastic corners, although I can justify the reason they used them for). The display was beytter than the Z2, with very good brightness and color reproduction after making some adjustments to the stock settings. The audio quality is superb as well, the whole phone is waterproof and its battery life was very well above the current smartphones.
The camera in the Z3 is top of the line, but I didn't like how it overheats. Making the phone thinner wasn't necessary in my opinion and sony might have thought about the component allocation in the device, as putting everything in the top part of the phone wasn't too smart of a choice. The UI was something that I didn't like the most though. I know I could throw a custom ROM at it in a while, but I wasn't sure how that would work with the camera, battery life and other features sony offered in the stock ROM.
I almost made my mind up on the Z3, as it had everything I wanted and I could live with its cons but then the price came into my mind: 515 pounds including tax.
Thats the part the note 4 came into play.
I watched the Note 4 presentation: the phone impressed me in overall, I liked the design, UI, hardware etc. So I started digging again.
I've always wanted the best out of my phone, no matter if I was going to use all of the functions it had or not. I used my phone for calling, texting, making notes in google keep, gps, playing games, listening to music, browsing the web, taking pictures. Usually I endep up rooting it and putting a stock like ROM on it (although I used the stock LG G2 ROM all the way). The design of the phone was always important for me, thats why I had an iphone 4s and 5 for a month before ditching it cus of the awfully simple and boring OS.
The Note 4 seemed to be a very good phone that offered what I wanted and much more beyond that:
1. The display
It's resolution could have been not increased. Samsung could have stayed with a 1080p panel. But thats not whats important about this panel. This is what the DisplayMate test results are:
"The Galaxy Note 4 delivers uniformly consistent all around Top Tier display performance: it is the first Smartphone display to ever get all Green (Very Good to Excellent) Ratings in all test and measurement categories (except one Yellow for a Brightness Variation with Average Picture Level) since we started the Display Technology Shoot-Out article Series in 2006, an impressive achievement for a display. The Galaxy Note 4 has again raised the bar for top display performance up by another notch. "
The display is a window through which you interact with your phone, and it is a component that must be top of the line. There should be no compromise here. Samsung exceeded my expectations in this matter.
2. Performance
There are 2 variants of the Note as most of you know. I'm still having a hard time with both of them. At first I thought the Snapdragon is an obvious choice considering it was superior to all of the other chips last year.
But then the 64-bit affair came into place. Anyone would like their phone to be futureproof, and a 64-bit SoC would be a wise choice. The exynos and snapdragon chips offer pretty much the same performance. I tried looking at the benchmarks, real world usage, gaming, but one outpaces the other in different things and it is very hard to tell the difference. I believe the fluidity of the UI and overall performance must be taken into consideration the most, as I believe both chips will handle anything you throw at them when apps and games are optimized. The choice is either taking the 20nm exynos and hope for better battery life and 64-bit support OR the snapdragon one and expect better dev support.
I wanted the Exynos for the wolfson chip, as I like good quality music from my phone. I'll be using good headphones and PowerAmp so I figure I wouldn't notice much difference anyway. At least not enough to pay extra and import the exynos variant.
I'm pretty much set on the Snapdragon 805 as I believe the battery life should be good on both (the andreno 420 is powerful with lowered power consumption). Like I mentioned earlier I might change the ROM after a while if something good comes out. It's a matter of personal taste- NOT performance of the chips. Thats my opinion on the matter.
3. User Interface
Touchwiz was out of the question for me up until I saw the Galaxy S5 UI. I actually liked the flat style and functions it offered. The note 4 UI is pretty similar. I really like the S-Pen experience, it should be a great change for people who haven't used it before. I love taking notes and I'll use it often. I like the functions it offers, the selection in different UI elements, the ease of copy/pasting, more precise touch input.
Touchwiz has a lot of useless apps that I might not like, but I'm sure it will be possible to get rid of the ones you don't like later on, the dev community in here will surely help. I could go on about the stamina mode, multi-window, the ability to resize apps etc, but you've all seen that on videos. The most important fact for is that touchwiz had been improved, it is eye pleasing, smoother and faster than ever. It is the best custom android OS you can get atm.
4. Camera
On paper both of the cameras looked really good to me, but I wanted to wait and see the real world results. I wasn't disappointed. there were some early comparisions done, but some of them were pictures or videos not taken with the note 4, so getting a correct view at the performance was quite hard. We have these results now and the note camera is a top notch performer. I find day pictures top of the line, the details are there, colors are popping, OIS helps as well. 4k shooting isn't all that important to me but its a nice addition. The camera seems to be very capable and will perform great in a day-to-day user's hands as well in an experienced person ones.
You may find the night shots worse than of the lumia or z3, but thats just terribly trying to find a flaw to me. Come on- who the hell is going to photograph a piece of paper in the dark of the night!? insane. There are pictures taken with the note at night, i like how the lights aren't blurred and everything seems very crisp and detailed. Do remember what you'll be using the phone camera for, and the Note 4 delivers more than I want in those terms.
5. Battery life
Many people find this very important. I thought the Note 4 might get bad results cause of that screen so I checked out some vids of the LTE-A Galaxy S5 with the higher res display. The results were the same as the standars S5.
I am not sure if its the chip that is more power efficient, some power saving changes in the OS, or the screen, or maybe all of these at once, but the results people are having on the Notes they recently picked up are very pleasing to me.
Final words
I probably shouldn't, cause its so ridiculous, but I'll mention the gap gate as well- I don't give a crap about it. I wont even notice it. Especially with the case I'm going to put on the phone. And its something that samsung probably addressed already in the new batch of phones. There are other things I should maybe mention, but these 5 are most important for me. I really like the performace of the Note 4, its UI, functions, metal frame design, micro SD storage expansion, camera, battery, IR blaster and everything else that seems to be a full package that many will find good enough to put their money on. I surely will. On the black one of course

You have really done some good work digging up info and comparing them.

Just to add couple points to OP's excellent write up:
The battery life concern in #5 is actually addressed in already mentioned DisplayMate article, right towards the bottom it clearly states that the new screen, despite having larger number of pixels is more power efficient than 1080p screen of Note3 (0.05W for 50% and 0.2 W for 100% brightness), about 5 to 10% more efficient and Note 3 has proven itself to have very good battery life already.
The gap between screen and frame around might be by design, due to combination of plastic, glass and metal having different expansion rate due to temperature changes. My thinking is that if the phone was brought from very warm room into very cold outside, metal frame would cool and shrink much faster than the rest and could even possibly crack the glass, doing so. The gap possibly allows for contraction/expansion without doing any damage. Either way, outside of aesthetics, it doesn't affect anything and it's a non issue. Probably blown out of proportions as an attempt to shift attention away from bendgate.

pete4k said:
The battery life concern in #5 is actually addressed in already mentioned DisplayMate article, right towards the bottom it clearly states that the new screen, despite having larger number of pixels is more power efficient than 1080p screen of Note3 (0.05W for 50% and 0.2 W for 100% brightness), about 5 to 10% more efficient and Note 3 has proven itself to have very good battery life already
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think he was referring to the increased GPU load due to the higher resolution which is a valid concern.
But as it has already been said, even the S5 LTE-A with its Snapdragon 805 and QHD resolution has the same battery life as the regular S5 with Full HD and Snapdragon 800.
Still, it would be interesting to see the battery life on a Snapdragon 805 device with only a Full HD display.

I would prefer the note 4 to have a 1080p panel with the same characteristics. But how many people actually use their head before buying a phone? It's a spec war for android phones..

han4mi said:
I would prefer the note 4 to have a 1080p panel with the same characteristics. But how many people actually use their head before buying a phone? It's a spec war for android phones..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Normally I would agree that FHD 1080p would be more than enough. However, since the GN4 is going to host the Gear VR, with magnifying lenses, I'm happy it went for the QHD
Sent from my Surface Pro 3 using Tapatalk

Audio Quality
Thanks for taking the time for the write up.
One area I would really like to know about is the quality of the rear speaker.
The sound quality is much more important to me than the placement (and sometimes the rear placement actually helps when you put it on a flat hard surface). I ruled out the Note 3 because its speaker was worse than the Note 2 which is still my current phone. The Note 2's speaker is actually pretty decent if the 4's is equal or better I would be thrilled.
Any input?

ymmp said:
Thanks for taking the time for the write up.
One area I would really like to know about is the quality of the rear speaker.
The sound quality is much more important to me than the placement (and sometimes the rear placement actually helps when you put it on a flat hard surface). I ruled out the Note 3 because its speaker was worse than the Note 2 which is still my current phone. The Note 2's speaker is actually pretty decent if the 4's is equal or better I would be thrilled.
Any input?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have the same question, ´cause I am afraid, that speeker-quality will be on low level and I am used to fantastic stereo sound of my current htv one m8.
I think, the price for Note 4 ist extremly high. Meanwhile Samsungs flagships are playing in the same €-league with the latest iphons. So I want to hold it in my own hands first before buying it. In center of Europe the Note 4 will be available in about 2 weeks.
Maybe the new Nexus 6 has a better balance between price and specs. We´ll check it out.

Just read Phone Arena's review. Here's a quote:
"Unfortunately, the audio portion of the media experience isn't so spectacular. The single speaker of the Galaxy Note 4 is rather quiet and lacking any depth, making it sound thin and weak. It's not too bad, but it's far from the best we've heard"
How disappointing! The new Moto X is supposed to have an amazing front speaker. I just wonder if it is more like the Note 2 or 3.

I believe the speaker will be good enough to play the ringtone I choose. I prefer earphones+ Poweramp for my music. Like I said, it depends what you're expecting to use the phone for. The Note 4 meets my demands in key aspects and thats why I'm going for it. I don't want THE BEST PHONE. Such a phone does not exist. All of the flagships have their strenghts and weaknesses and a smart person would take the one with the most personally suitable set of features.

iPhone 6 Plus vs Note 4 vs Nexus 6: Specs Comparison

Came across this comparison, Note 4 crushes the competition.
Note 4 was found to have superior:
Display
Battery
Camera
Storage
RAM
I really think with the 16MP Camera, Samsung has finally created the best smartphone camera.
Check it out.
Source

Display.- Yes, definitely.
Battery.- I have heard the iphone 6+ has better SOT from most reviews. Not sure, though.
Camera.- iPhone has better low light shots, Samsung has better day light shots.
Storage.- Well... you can get a 128GB iphone, but that will depend on what you want to waste, for the same price, yes, you get more space with the note
RAM.- Android uses more ram than iOS, I'd say that iphone performs smoother due to optimization.

I've only looked into half a dozen reviews, and I'm not going to deny that the iPhone 6+ has some strengths (battery life). These phones are both excellent so I don't really see a clear-cut victor. Maybe that will change over time with new software.

I've been using the camera non-stop all week because I've been at a wedding in Sonoma. I'm not a photographer by a long shot and have used the camera on "auto" with HDR "on." I took this one this morning at a vinyard. They asked me to e-mail it to then to use on their website.
Ultra low light is nothing to write home about. Low light can be impressive.
Here's another good pic...
The Note 4's camera is good. And as a point-and-shoot which is the way 90% of people will use it. If I can get shots like this, anyone can.

At the end of the day, we have amazing choices of phones right now especially if you consider the Droid Turbo (I know it's Verizon only, but rumored variants coming to other carriers).
The differences between them have definitely narrowed and it comes down to what's most important to the customer. MAC/iOS people gonna iPhone, Android fanatics gonna Nexus... and the rest are up for grabs.
The Note 4 is definitely an amazing phone. Built in multi-window, floating apps, and the stylus are freaking amazing for a power user like myself. I can't believe I waited this long to jump on board.
The iPhone's better low light photos and marginally better battery life (if that's the case) is irrelevant to the features exclusive to the Note 4 line. (Apple isn't even an option for me even so.)
You just can't really go wrong if you're getting a top of the line phone for what you want. Sure there are some sacrifices to weigh, but there's never going to be a perfect phone for everyone.
To borrow from Nintendo, NOW WE'RE PLAYING WITH POWER!

Note 4 has the advantage of the external battery. You can buy Samsung battery pack with the charger and stop worrying about battery life. Now about ram ios doesn't require the same as Android to run smoothly but if you want to have over 3-4 tabs on safari without refreshing then you have a problem. Look at the new Ipad air with 2gb ram
Sent from my Note 4

Just remembered, Note 4 also has the MicroSD card slot. That's a huge difference in them.

I just switched to a Note 4 from an iPhone 6 Plus after 2.5 months. Here's my feedback:
Display - Note 4 is definitely better.
Battery - My iPhone lasted much longer than Note 4 but that may be because I have been installing apps/widgets left and right. We'll see once things settle.
Camera - Note 4 is slightly better for low-light pictures.
Storage - I had a 64GB iPhone and that was good for me. With Note 4, I will need to buy a card.
RAM - Note 4 may have 3GB of RAM (vs. 1GB on iPhone) but my iPhone ran much smoother than Note 4. I get occasional freeze and lag with Note 4.

I have booth Note 4, iPhone 6 plus and a Nexus 5.
Camera. Slighty better but much slower than the iPhone. On the other hand is speed essensial for my kind of usage.
Smoothness. Note 4 ain't close to Nexus and iPhone. I was a bit shocked when I noticed that not very much had happened since the S5, my chinese MX4 is butter compared if you counting all small lags. I flashed latest firmware two days ago and it feels a little bit better.
Storage. Has 64 on the iPhone and it's more than I need right now.
Display. Really good but I haven't used it outdoor on a sunny beach yet
Battery. Not as good as I hoped for. I have exactly the same apps and usage on all androids and it's very ok but not stunning. So far LG G2 and OnePlus roles my SOT with hours. I have a feeling the iPhone is slightly better. You can't really count on tests like GSM arena, they don't have my 84 apps installed.

Im using both for 2.5 months now.
Screen=note 4 is better but both great
Camera= i dont see any speed difference. Daylight note 4 better. In low light 6 plus abit better. Both very close.
Video=quality for note 4 Ois performance better on 6 plus.
Performance: note 4 is faster on pretty much every 3rd party app. 6 plus faster on system apps(gallery, phone etc)
Smoothness is pretty much same for me i dont realy see big difference. Only recents app has 0.5 delay on note 4(happens sometimes)
6 plus definetly needs 2gb ram safari is headache with 1gb. 2-3 tabs then reload is suck. Multitasking is better on note 4 too. But both good.
Battery in my usage note 4 is better.

From the design iPhone 6 plus loses to the Note 4. Apple did absolutely nothing for the iPhone 6 Plus other than stretching the iPhone 6. (or shrinking the iPad Air, depending on how you look at it) The phone is so slippery and uncomfortable even for occasional one-handed operation. I know people will augment the grips with cases, but that still does not help with its underlying design incompetence. Some of these iSheep would argue how inferior plastic is compared to aluminum used for soda cans, and would insist that cases should not be a consideration when discussing phone designs. How the times have changed.. I totally share Erica Griffin's experience with iPhone 6 Plus' ergonomics. (minus the girl jeans part, lol) Compare that with the Note 4, it looks abundantly clear who has more knowledge and experience in manufacturing phablets.
The rest of stuff is more about iOS v. Android to me, and I know which way I roll. There is just no competition. Though it does help to make a decision that iPhone 6 Plus lags and Safari refreshes tabs more than ever before thanks to the puny 1 GB of RAM Apple deliberately put in for planned obsolescence.

Note 4 has very good screen and battery life for me, but regarding smoothness Samsung is miles behind my Nexus 5 or even 4. Storage is impressive with SD card, but then again I didn't have problems with space on Nexus either. It is very good hardware with very bad soft. Things changed drastically with CM12 tough, now it is far smoother than Nexus 5.
I do not understand all the fuss with photos, none of the phones has good enough camera to replace proper camera. You can take a photo when needed.
If u don't mind rooting, Note 4 is great piece of hardware. If you prefer not to do it you might be better off with Nexus 6.

The best camera in the world should be the one you carrying around daily
I think and hope that the Lollipop for the Note is going to give it a bit less bumpy road. Some people care for it and some don't, same as with everything else in the world. If the Note can give me 50-60 fps and less hiccup I'd love the ride.
Sent from a 6 Plus.

Note 3 has higher animation frame rate than Note 4!

Hello every one
I want to put in a quick overview on my experience with the N4 for 3 days of use till date,
Coming from the note 3 & Note 2 before it.
The phone is in a sense feels not a huge leap over the Note 3, The noteworthy upgrades that i enjoy are the better aesthetics ,the much improved low light camera capabilities (including OIS which turns out to be much useful than i thought) and the improved accuracy of the S pen which i use extensively for business and pleasure.
But what bugs me -and i felt this with every note 4 i held not just mine- Is the frame rates of animations , I am not talking about lags or stutters (which are no better or worse than my note 3) but the smoothness of stutter free animation.
I held both my note 4 & note 3 side by side , Loaded with the same set of apps and both with Nova launcher, And the animations of scrolling through the home screen or scrolling through lists ,apps etc feels smoother on the Note 3.
I feel that upping the screen resolution has its toll on the Snap dragon 805 ,the combination of SD800+FHD seems to work better than SD805+QHD , and the sad part for me is that no matter how hard i try , i just cannot see any considerable deffirence in the N4 as opposed to the N3's screen that warrants the compromise of performance (or battery life if any, not tested this yet).
Also, I am not a heavy gamer but i occasionally play DC's Injustice which is a heavy 3D game, The game plays better on the Note 3 than on the Note 4 while both are cold(higher FPS but a tad longer loading times) , Once things start heating a bit , the throttling on the note 4 kicks much sooner and heavier than on note 3, a price to pay in 3D performance for a non descreminable bump to screen quality?
The screen of the Note 4 have much cooler whites than on Note 3 i give it that, But it is disturbing to find the performance lacking.
I'm keeping the Note 4 as i like lots of things in it, But i think it missed out on being a really perfect phone.
Just my thoughts

marwanhamed said:
Hello every one
I want to put in a quick overview on my experience with the N4 for 3 days of use till date,
Coming from the note 3 & Note 2 before it.
The phone is in a sense feels not a huge leap over the Note 3, The noteworthy upgrades that i enjoy are the better aesthetics ,the much improved low light camera capabilities (including OIS which turns out to be much useful than i thought) and the improved accuracy of the S pen which i use extensively for business and pleasure.
But what bugs me -and i felt this with every note 4 i held not just mine- Is the frame rates of animations , I am not talking about lags or stutters (which are no better or worse than my note 3) but the smoothness of stutter free animation.
I held both my note 4 & note 3 side by side , Loaded with the same set of apps and both with Nova launcher, And the animations of scrolling through the home screen or scrolling through lists ,apps etc feels smoother on the Note 3.
I feel that upping the screen resolution has its toll on the Snap dragon 805 ,the combination of SD800+FHD seems to work better than SD805+QHD , and the sad part for me is that no matter how hard i try , i just cannot see any considerable deffirence in the N4 as opposed to the N3's screen that warrants the compromise of performance (or battery life if any, not tested this yet).
Also, I am not a heavy gamer but i occasionally play DC's Injustice which is a heavy 3D game, The game plays better on the Note 3 than on the Note 4 while both are cold(higher FPS but a tad longer loading times) , Once things start heating a bit , the throttling on the note 4 kicks much sooner and heavier than on note 3, a price to pay in 3D performance for a non descreminable bump to screen quality?
The screen of the Note 4 have much cooler whites than on Note 3 i give it that, But it is disturbing to find the performance lacking.
I'm keeping the Note 4 as i like lots of things in it, But i think it missed out on being a really perfect phone.
Just my thoughts
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When i compare my s800 note3.and my exynos note4. Note 4 is definetly faster in everyway and its very obvious not even close. When i put power saving on note 4 performance is pretty much equals. And when i compare my exynos version with my friends snapdragon note 4 performance difference is definetly there but i dont think its cuz s805 has lower performance i think its just about software. Only 1 complain i have is recent apps 0.5 sec delay everything else very very smooth that i couldnt expect from samsung as an old.nexus user. Also it heats very less and i didnt see throttlong frame drops.(only benchmarks.show its throttled.)

I seen all complain from S805. I am happy i decide to pick Exynos 7 (5433) edition. I am existing Note 3 owner as well. I can assure Exynos edition N910C animation smoothness is far ahead than Note 3.

Maybe. I havent noticed it myself, not having tested them side by side though (i could, i just havent ).
I wouldnt have minded the Note 4 being FHD as long as the screen itself was as good in terms of white balance, realistic colours, brightness, etc etc etc. But I dont see a reason personally NOT to have it QHD.
That being said, the spen and multitasking, as well as the small design changes and camera, make it an easy choice of course. However, I would not have minded a FHD screen, as mentioned.
Maybe the 5.0 update helps. Quite looking forward to seeing how that update will affect the note 4.

marwanhamed said:
Hello every one
I want to put in a quick overview on my experience with the N4 for 3 days of use till date,
Coming from the note 3 & Note 2 before it.
The phone is in a sense feels not a huge leap over the Note 3, The noteworthy upgrades that i enjoy are the better aesthetics ,the much improved low light camera capabilities (including OIS which turns out to be much useful than i thought) and the improved accuracy of the S pen which i use extensively for business and pleasure.
But what bugs me -and i felt this with every note 4 i held not just mine- Is the frame rates of animations , I am not talking about lags or stutters (which are no better or worse than my note 3) but the smoothness of stutter free animation.
I held both my note 4 & note 3 side by side , Loaded with the same set of apps and both with Nova launcher, And the animations of scrolling through the home screen or scrolling through lists ,apps etc feels smoother on the Note 3.
I feel that upping the screen resolution has its toll on the Snap dragon 805 ,the combination of SD800+FHD seems to work better than SD805+QHD , and the sad part for me is that no matter how hard i try , i just cannot see any considerable deffirence in the N4 as opposed to the N3's screen that warrants the compromise of performance (or battery life if any, not tested this yet).
Also, I am not a heavy gamer but i occasionally play DC's Injustice which is a heavy 3D game, The game plays better on the Note 3 than on the Note 4 while both are cold(higher FPS but a tad longer loading times) , Once things start heating a bit , the throttling on the note 4 kicks much sooner and heavier than on note 3, a price to pay in 3D performance for a non descreminable bump to screen quality?
The screen of the Note 4 have much cooler whites than on Note 3 i give it that, But it is disturbing to find the performance lacking.
I'm keeping the Note 4 as i like lots of things in it, But i think it missed out on being a really perfect phone.
Just my thoughts
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The Annandtech tests back when the LG G3 was launched showed that 800& FHD gave the same performance as 805& QHD. You notice a big difference on the LG G3 which has an 801 with QHD. That phone suffers from terrible frame rates and lag. The Note 4 I find is fine.

Offcourse the resolution will kill performance. It's alot of pixels to drive, and it makes the screen sweet to look at!
There is software that can force a lower resolution to games and stuff if you suffer from low framerate.
The 805 has alot of power though. Just benchmarked my tablet with the Tegra 3 processor (with overclock) and i get around 2800 points in 3Dmark unlimited.
About 20050 on my note 4 Snapdragon stock.
Quite the performance boost in just a few years.

Gamebench v1.3 analysis of Asphalt 8 game play - Device: Note 4 Exynos
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=58709458&postcount=2020

On CM12 my SD note 4 absolutely flies, unfortunately TW is far slower than it should be on such great hardware; hopefully the Lollipop update will be more optimised

I think this problem is for the note 4 exynos users because the frame rate is poor. I'm coming from note 2 and my brother had a note 3 snap Dragon and the note 4 is a downgrade where framerate is concerned. I compared it with the note 2 and note 3 and it is obviously different. and saying that the reason for its lack of fluidity is because of its quad hd display isn't good enough. why make a screen with such high ppi and not have good gpu rendering? anyway I don't believe note 4 users with the snapdragon processor are having this rendering problem because the snapdragon is actually a better processor. and lastly I hope that the lollipop update should, in some way, improve the graphic performance of the exynos 5433. I look forward to all future development!
Sent from my SM-N910C using XDA Free mobile app

We Have it too
Sent from my SM-N910G using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

ddaharu said:
I think this problem is for the note 4 exynos users because the frame rate is poor. I'm coming from note 2 and my brother had a note 3 snap Dragon and the note 4 is a downgrade where framerate is concerned. I compared it with the note 2 and note 3 and it is obviously different. and saying that the reason for its lack of fluidity is because of its quad hd display isn't good enough. why make a screen with such high ppi and not have good gpu rendering? anyway I don't believe note 4 users with the snapdragon processor are having this rendering problem because the snapdragon is actually a better processor. and lastly I hope that the lollipop update should, in some way, improve the graphic performance of the exynos 5433. I look forward to all future development!
Sent from my SM-N910C using XDA Free mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Exynos Note 4 has a higher frame rate than Snapdragon variant in every title - use Gamebench to measure practical real life FPS performance not the benchmarks

ddaharu said:
I think this problem is for the note 4 exynos users because the frame rate is poor. I'm coming from note 2 and my brother had a note 3 snap Dragon and the note 4 is a downgrade where framerate is concerned. I compared it with the note 2 and note 3 and it is obviously different. and saying that the reason for its lack of fluidity is because of its quad hd display isn't good enough. why make a screen with such high ppi and not have good gpu rendering? anyway I don't believe note 4 users with the snapdragon processor are having this rendering problem because the snapdragon is actually a better processor. and lastly I hope that the lollipop update should, in some way, improve the graphic performance of the exynos 5433. I look forward to all future development!
Sent from my SM-N910C using XDA Free mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You seems to be very well informed [emoji14]
Actually Exynos 5433 beats the SD805 in games and performance. And both of them outperform the Note 3.

midreestaj said:
Exynos Note 4 has a higher frame rate than Snapdragon variant in every title - use Gamebench to measure practical real life FPS performance not the benchmarks
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Lodix said:
You seems to be very well informed [emoji14]
Actually Exynos 5433 beats the SD805 in games and performance. And both of them outperform the Note 3.
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Thats great to hear seeing that i have the exynos verision lol but back to the main topic, the frame rate is actually lower than the note 3. this isnt gaming performance but rather regular usage. Like using third party lockscreens, coming in and out of app drawers, and just regular transitions, yuh know? stuff like that. i held it side by side to the note 3 and i was dissappointed. and people say that the exynos is better but i saw this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83Hkb3FAncc and it clearly shows that the graphics on the snapdragon is better. :/ i'm not trying to be a hater or anything like that. i was just dissappointed in the framerate. spread love and joy!

ddaharu said:
Thats great to hear seeing that i have the exynos verision lol but back to the main topic, the frame rate is actually lower than the note 3. this isnt gaming performance but rather regular usage. Like using third party lockscreens, coming in and out of app drawers, and just regular transitions, yuh know? stuff like that. i held it side by side to the note 3 and i was dissappointed. and people say that the exynos is better but i saw this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83Hkb3FAncc and it clearly shows that the graphics on the snapdragon is better. :/ i'm not trying to be a hater or anything like that. i was just dissappointed in the framerate. spread love and joy!
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The Snapdragon has a bit better GPU power, but the Exynos runs better games due to its more simple architecture. And both have higher frame rate then Note 3.

Lodix said:
The Snapdragon has a bit better GPU power, but the Exynos runs better games due to its more simple architecture. And both have higher frame rate then Note 3.
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thanks! I looked at a couple videos a few minutes ago and the exynos won over the snapdragon so I do have the better device! lol and well I hope the lollipop update activates the total 64 bit processor.
Sent from my SM-N910C using XDA Free mobile app

The Note 3 is quicker than the Note 4, but it's probably software and the screen.
The difference between SD and Exynos is negligible really. I don't trust Exynos since S2 days when games took time to become optimised or never came out for it at all.

Difference Between Snapdragon and Exynos on the Galaxy Note 9

I used my wife's Note 9 (Snapdragon - ATT ) and ran ANTUTU Benchmarks for grins and giggles and the phone got a score of about 284,000 - very respectable.
When I received my N960F - a Note 9 from Clove in the UK, I ran the same Benchmark from ANTUTU and the best score I could get was 236,000 - a HUGE difference.
I really expected more parity between those phones and wonder why there is such a big difference? Is the Exynos Process that far behond Snapdragon's latest?
(I know these benchmarks don't mean much - but just the same, after spending nearly a grand on this phone, I would have expected better)
Any thoughts?

same chips but on the S9. should give you an idea

Geekser said:
I used my wife's Note 9 (Snapdragon - ATT ) and ran ANTUTU Benchmarks for grins and giggles and the phone got a score of about 284,000 - very respectable.
When I received my N960F - a Note 9 from Clove in the UK, I ran the same Benchmark from ANTUTU and the best score I could get was 236,000 - a HUGE difference.
I really expected more parity between those phones and wonder why there is such a big difference? Is the Exynos Process that far behond Snapdragon's latest?
(I know these benchmarks don't mean much - but just the same, after spending nearly a grand on this phone, I would have expected better)
Any thoughts?
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What are your thoughts on battery life between the 2?

lawtq said:
What are your thoughts on battery life between the 2?
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great question but I haven't used either long enough to really get a sense for it - On first blush, battery seems similar on both - I can easliy get thru an entire day without charging - though I find myself automatically placing my phone in my wireless charger from time to time because I have always had to - I think I can break myself of that habit though - will play around a bit more on both and see how they fair in a comparison of daily use....

soraxd said:
same chips but on the S9. should give you an idea
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lawtq said:
What are your thoughts on battery life between the 2?
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Geekser said:
great question but I haven't used either long enough to really get a sense for it - On first blush, battery seems similar on both - I can easliy get thru an entire day without charging - though I find myself automatically placing my phone in my wireless charger from time to time because I have always had to - I think I can break myself of that habit though - will play around a bit more on both and see how they fair in a comparison of daily use....
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Did Samsung work on the kernel sources to improve the Exynos 9810's efficiency and performance to be on par with Snapdragon 845 ?
The answer is "NO".

Looks like the the tides have turned recently in favor of the snapdragon chipset.
Sent from my SM-N960U1 using Tapatalk

Virgo_Guy said:
Did Samsung work on the kernel sources to improve the Exynos 9810's efficiency and performance to be on par with Snapdragon 845 ?
The answer is "NO".
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I know and I don't understand why. I think Exynos could be as good or better than the Snapdragon - but for some reason - it lags behind...

Geekser said:
I know and I don't understand why. I think Exynos could be as good or better than the Snapdragon - but for some reason - it lags behind...
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Could the Exynos 9810 be better in the s9/s9+/Note 9? - Probably to an extent working on the kernel but would still be behind the SD.

Geekser said:
great question but I haven't used either long enough to really get a sense for it - On first blush, battery seems similar on both - I can easliy get thru an entire day without charging - though I find myself automatically placing my phone in my wireless charger from time to time because I have always had to - I think I can break myself of that habit though - will play around a bit more on both and see how they fair in a comparison of daily use....
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Thanks. Look forward to hearing from you

Snapdragon Note 9 : Will Allow you to Play FASTER Gamecube/Wii/PSP Emulation. But Will not allow you to install custom roms or root your device.
Exynos Note : Will not play gamecube/Wii Games Smoothly but will allow you to install custom rom.
Personally if I didn't want Wii/Gamecube emulation, I would have easily bought exynos.

Ok in synthetic benchmarks such as antutu the 845 gets a higher score because of the better graphics processor. When it comes to the cpu side of things the 9810 is at least as good and sometimes better.

Cool Person said:
Snapdragon Note 9 : Will Allow you to Play FASTER Gamecube/Wii/PSP Emulation.But Will not allow you to install custom roms or root your device.
Exynos Note : Will not play gamecube/Wii Games Smoothly but will allow you to install custom rom.
Personally if I didn't want Wii/Gamecube emulation, I would have easily bought exynos.
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dolphin emulation on both chipsets recently took a massive jump forward. exynos included.
you can root on international snapdragon variants of the Note 9. I believe China has unlocked snapdragon. I've heard chit chat mentioning Canada as well, fact check these yourself tho.

mikey_sk said:
Ok in synthetic benchmarks such as antutu the 845 gets a higher score because of the better graphics processor. When it comes to the cpu side of things the 9810 is at least as good and sometimes better.
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Aha, but then the real world performance of the sd is far better than the exynos + it's more efficient leading to a lot better battery life + the modem is better. Then you throw in a GPU that is literally another class in a phone that potentially will be used also for gaming and this year a lot of heavy games were released with vastly different experience on the two variants (last year samsung got a free pass on their lossy g71 mp20 as no heavy games released, not the case this year and it's shaping more to release frequently in the future).
g72 mp18 can't even come close to the PREVIOUS year sd 835 in real world gaming. sd 845 benefits heavily from the note 9 cooling as it had some thermal restrictions and sustain performance was close to the sd 835 one (still far better than g72 mp18 sustain for both snapdragons), while the mali GPU doesn't benefit that much from the new cooling, the GPU is just slow.
In Europe we actually pay more for that phone, 1000 euros are not equal to 1000 us dollars, all that while we get a SOC that is between midrange and highend instead of the highend one that is for the US market. Previous years the exynos was better (galaxy s7 for example), but the difference between the two variants were never that big as this year.
Edit: check the other real world benchmarks like pcmark, browser benchmarks and so on - the sd variant wipes the floor with the exynos. Still, benches are not all, sadly the real world difference is also there and noticeable.

Again if you look at the geek bench scores for cpu (android central, did a comparison) the cpu side of the exynos 9810 outperformed the 845. I would agree when factoring in the 845 graphics the overall score of the 845 is better. Again you would be VERY hard pressed to notice the difference in the real world. And there is zero lag on either of these variants I found.
I know people in the industry and alot of the perceived difference is due to the scheduler for the 9810 not being as optimised as for the 845. Rule on the street is that Sammy will redress this soon with an update.
Also the woolfson DAC on the exynos provides a better quality audio experience and fuller sound stage than that of the aqstic DAC on the 845.
Again the difference is slim. I've noticed zero lag even on fortnite.
Reast assured both chips ate brutes. After all both the 845 and 9810 are currently fabricated/manufactured by samsung.

mikey_sk said:
Again if you look at the geek bench scores for cpu (android central, did a comparison) the cpu side of the exynos 9810 outperformed the 845. I would agree when factoring in the 845 graphics the overall score of the 845 is better. Again you would be VERY hard pressed to notice the difference in the real world. And there is zero lag on either of these variants I found.
I know people in the industry and alot of the perceived difference is due to the scheduler for the 9810 not being as optimised as for the 845. Rule on the street is that Sammy will redress this soon with an update.
Also the woolfson DAC on the exynos provides a better quality audio experience and fuller sound stage than that of the aqstic DAC.
Again the difference is slim. I've noticed zero lag even on fortnite.
Reast assured both chips ate brutes. After all both the 845 and 9810 are currently fabricated/manufactured by samsung.
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It's a lot more complicated than a simple scheduler and if it was going to be fixed, it was going to be fixed for the note 9 launch as it's a good few months from the s9/s9+ release with the same SOC (that is a lot in the fast moving forward mobile industry). Most likely they won't do any improvements even in future major android releases. Geekbench score is peak performance on burst load tasks, it's not counting task migrations, frequency scaling, cores hotpluging and so on. There are good articles for the 9810 in anandtech, how it can be improved, why it can not be improved beyond given point, but they are kinda techy and not easy to read if you are not into it.
tl:dr The CPU cores are great, but has some flaws and everything around them is sh*t (sorry for my language, but yeah). The DAC is great tho, this is totally true.
For the GPU part there are a lot of materials about adreno 630 vs g72 mp18 with actual stats like max fps, min fps, FPS stability and so on. Fortnite will run ok, but on the sd845 it can run maxed out fluently (for the most part). Also when one spend 1000 euro, he should think about future proving and gaming is moving fast forward this year. If you game on your phone, it's kinda a bummer to settle for lower GFX settings on one of the most expensive phones this year, if you want smooth experience.
Not saying the exynos is super bad, it's not, but it's not on par with the sd845.

Again you would be hard pressed to notice the difference. Both variants are perfectly fine so everyone buy either with confidence.

It's not true, marvel strike force is unplayable on exynos version

9810 user here and i have to limit the exynos speed for it to get to a day. This sucks. I paid usd1000 but need to turn pn battery saver every morning

No rows written here reflect the reality. Just snapdragon users happy with their chipset. Another report on the S9 test that is outdated. The smallest SOT with exynos is 7h with only mobile data. Who does not know how to use an android or uses it as a playstation is his job. For a normal user it's great.

roticanai said:
9810 user here and i have to limit the exynos speed for it to get to a day. This sucks. I paid usd1000 but need to turn pn battery saver every morning
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I don't even have to do that with my Note 8. You can likely squeeze more out of it, but a lot depends on usage patterns of course.

Smart watch

What do you guys suggest? Anyone here or the T1 Tacital watch? Sorry to part question [emoji41]
Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Space Technology

I use my Galaxy S3 Classic with it without any issues. It's an older smartwatch but in the world of Android smartwatches still one of the best available options. I briefly owned the newer version of Samsung's offering, the stainless steel variant of the Active2 watch, but I found that it didn't offer much if anything in terms of improvements to the S3 Classic, while sacrificing a lot in design and practicability of the UX.

For Android you'll want to go with one of the new offerings with the gig of RAM, makes a huge difference in the GUI where they are vastly more smooth in operation. I'd set my sights on either the Gen 5 or TicWatch Pro. The Samsung devices work better with Samsung phones but still work ok with other android phones and have much better battery life but you give up all the options Wear brings with it. There are often big sales on smartwatches, often enough I'd consider it worth defining which one I wanted and waiting for a good sale to pick it up.

krabman said:
For Android you'll want to go with one of the new offerings with the gig of RAM, makes a huge difference in the GUI where they are vastly more smooth in operation. I'd set my sights on either the Gen 5 or TicWatch Pro. The Samsung devices work better with Samsung phones but still work ok with other android phones and have much better battery life but you give up all the options Wear brings with it. There are often big sales on smartwatches, often enough I'd consider it worth defining which one I wanted and waiting for a good sale to pick it up.
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I'm curious - what options is he giving up because my understanding is that Wear watches are literally the worst wearables out there with the least useful features. Samsung devices are regarded as only second to Apple and work with any Android device. Genuine question.

Nah, the feature set was never the problem, it was the performance and poor battery life. I haven't owned an Apple watch and I'm not going to as the iphone is an answer to a question I never asked. Being as it's not a part of this discussion or going to be used on this phone I think we can set it aside. The Sammy offerings have much better battery life, it's not even close, and that is their primary benefit. They did also have far better performance but that has changed so long as you get one of the new offerings with a gig of RAM. Now the performance is much closer although I'd still give the nod to the Samsung devices. It is close enough however that it becomes a matter of features and available apps to my mind unless you have a Samsung phone and use their apps, in that case I'd go all in with Samsung. Now that wear can legitimately make it through a long day of use before it needs to go on the charger and the sluggish performance has been fixed wear becomes much more compelling than it once was. You have many more apps, watch faces, etc. Integration with Google maps is much better which is a big plus if you travel.
There was a reason why I mentioned both, Google essentially gives you options that you cant get with Samsung, the Samsung still has much better battery life and it's tight integration makes it better on Samsung devices but still good on other android phones if you're not missing any apps that you could have had on wear. It's something a user needs to make some calls on in terms of what they want. The only absolute mistake you can make here in my opinion is getting an older wear device without the extra ram, you want the 3100 and the 1 gig; that's a must have.

mobgod said:
What do you guys suggest? Anyone here or the T1 Tacital watch? Sorry to part question [emoji41]
Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Space Technology
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I'm using a Fitbit Versa 2 & have been very satisfied with it.
Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

krabman said:
Nah, the feature set was never the problem, it was the performance and poor battery life. I haven't owned an Apple watch and I'm not going to as the iphone is an answer to a question I never asked. Being as it's not a part of this discussion or going to be used on this phone I think we can set it aside. The Sammy offerings have much better battery life, it's not even close, and that is their primary benefit. They did also have far better performance but that has changed so long as you get one of the new offerings with a gig of RAM. Now the performance is much closer although I'd still give the nod to the Samsung devices. It is close enough however that it becomes a matter of features and available apps to my mind unless you have a Samsung phone and use their apps, in that case I'd go all in with Samsung. Now that wear can legitimately make it through a long day of use before it needs to go on the charger and the sluggish performance has been fixed wear becomes much more compelling than it once was. You have many more apps, watch faces, etc. Integration with Google maps is much better which is a big plus if you travel.
There was a reason why I mentioned both, Google essentially gives you options that you cant get with Samsung, the Samsung still has much better battery life and it's tight integration makes it better on Samsung devices but still good on other android phones if you're not missing any apps that you could have had on wear. It's something a user needs to make some calls on in terms of what they want. The only absolute mistake you can make here in my opinion is getting an older wear device without the extra ram, you want the 3100 and the 1 gig; that's a must have.
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This is really good feedback. Maybe I should look at some Android Wear options again. I extended the life of my S3 by replacing the battery, and it is still a stellar option but one thing I always disliked was poor integration with Google Maps (relies or 3rd party app). It would be much better to have something native, closer to what one would encounter on an Apple Watch.

The Gen 5 is pretty good especially if you can get it for less than regular. It was $172 a few weeks ago on Amazon. I've had it since August and it's not perfect but I think very good. Battery isn't an issue for me as I just top off in the morning while getting ready and when I get home from work, a good 14-15 hours later with usually 40% or so to spare.
Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

I've had the Sammy s2 and s3, and I DID like them a lot, at least at first. They were smooth and the battery life was good, but, the OS and features seemed pretty basic. I hated the workout app, and the only other offerings were terrible. Also, Samsung support suuuccckkks... It was like talking so someone who was just hired and had no idea what they were talking about.
Anyway, I have a Fossil Q Explorist 4 HR and I love it. It IS a little jittery sometimes, so you should definitely go with a gen 5, but it's great. Tons of apps to choose from, it looks great (I wear it to the office even), and battery life is almost on par with the s3. I take it off the charger at around 6:30am and at 10pm I typically have 40-ish% left. It would certainly last a full day.

One word of warning if someone might be setting their sights on a Ticwatch Pro: Get the LTE even if you don't want to use LTE because it has the extra RAM, the older version that is not LTE does not have it and it suffers from the sluggish GUI problem that all Wear watches had up until the recent offerings with the upped RAM. I know it's tempting because the LTE version is more expensive but you really, really, want that RAM, it completely alters the user experience while manipulating the GUI. Much, much smoother, apps load faster, etc.

Pebble Time Steel in Gold! Until a watch that can match the battery life (10 days!) + features comes along, I'll be sticking with my Pebble. Recently picked up another Gold, because my 4 year old one finally had the battery worn out too much, and also got a black one too.

krabman said:
One word of warning if someone might be setting their sights on a Ticwatch Pro: Get the LTE even if you don't want to use LTE because it has the extra RAM
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Yes definitely this. 1GB RAM makes the difference. I believe it has the old 2100 processor but that's not really much a factor for performance as RAM is.
Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk
---------- Post added at 08:44 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:42 AM ----------
ryandanger said:
Pebble Time Steel in Gold! Until a watch that can match the battery life (10 days!) + features comes along, I'll be sticking with my Pebble. Recently picked up another Gold, because my 4 year old one finally had the battery worn out too much, and also got a black one too.
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Classic. I got the original Pebble when it was on Kickstarter.
Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

I bought the Fossil Carlyle on sale and it's really been great and it came with 3 watch bands that swap out easily. I had a Moto 360 Gen 2 that fell apart a few months ago so I was in the market. I just looked at the new Moto 360 and it looks really nice. The price tag is a little over the top at $350 but it should come down. I'm a little gun shy when it comes to Moto since the support was horrendous previously. Hopefully, it's gotten better.

Yep, the old Ticwatch pro uses the 2100 so it doesn't have the co-processor for ambient mode like the 3100. In their case they have the second display which also uses little power so it negates some of the loss but not all of it as the ambient isn't as efficient as it can be with a 3100 and lacks the 16 colors, adaptive brightness on ambient, etc. Still it doesn't change the performance when manipulating the GUI where both are using the same A7s so the felt performance is similar to a 3100 when the extra ram is in the mix.

The 3100 offers nothing in terms of a performance increase. It is literally a 2100 then Qualcomm slapped on the coprocessor and called it a day. The major difference will come from the extra gig of RAM which WearOS desperately needs. When you compare a 512 MB device to a 1GB device the performance difference is quite staggering. I have the TW Pro 4G using the JanJan rom and I couldn't be happier with the performance. Ball is still in Google's court to make something out of WearOS and for Qualcomm to stop being lazy scumbags.