Note to Self

I got the phone I didn’t originally expect to purchase. As I wrote over the summer, I’ve been actively researching smart phones since I got my Samsung Galaxy S4 in July 2013. The S4 is a great phone, though newer flagship models have better specifications. The S4 was a huge step up from anything I had used previously. However, already by the fall of 2013, I knew I wanted a phone with a bigger screen. 

One of my employees in New Jersey had a Samsung Galaxy Note 3, and besides its larger screen size, it had a better camera. The S4’s camera was decent, but the Note 3’s was very good. Two other employees got the Note 4 soon after it was released, a year ago. Both were very happy with it, and I started to consider getting a Note when I would finally be able to upgrade in the summer of 2015.

As indicated in my earlier post, I considered many other phones. These included Sony Xperia models, LG Flex and G varieties, and some of the newer Chinese products. I crossed the Note 5 off my list when the first reports in the spring of this year suggested that it would follow the example of the Galaxy S6 and not have a removable battery or micro-SD card support. It looked like LG might be my best bet for getting a large, high-quality screen, a good processor, a removable battery, and a micro-SD card.

I was first disappointed that the LG G Flex 2 had a smaller screen than the original G Flex. The latter had a monster 6” screen that was awesome for productivity, but was low in resolution by 2014 standards. The Flex 2 had better resolution, but “only” a 5.5” screen, while I wanted larger. This summer’s G4 also had a 5.5” screen, and while it was quite good, it wasn’t as good as Samsung’s flagship screen. The Flex 2 had a Snapdragon 810 processor, which has a reputation for overheating (something supposedly fixed in the re-launched version made available this fall). This led LG to take a small step back, and use a Snapdragon 808 in the G4. 

LG did put out rumors that a “super deluxe” big brother to the G4 would be released this fall. It was to have a 5.8” screen, metal build, and a Snapdragon 820 processor. This finally emerged at the start of October as the V10, and it seems quite intriguing. But the 820 isn’t finished with development yet, and so the V10 comes with the re-launched 810, which is hopefully past its heating problem.

Samsung avoided the whole Snapdragon overheating issue by using its own Exynos 7420 processor in the S6 and Note 5. This is the best processor commercially available at this writing. The 820 and the next Exynos will probably surpass its specifications, but that will be six months from now.

Samsung traditionally releases the new Note in October each year. Apple releases the new iPhones in September, which cuts into potential Note sales, especially since the 6+ and now 6S+ have become available. Samsung therefore decided to release the 2015 Note, the Note 5, in August. I tried out the Note 5 as soon as it appeared in phone stores, and found the internet was incredibly fast and smooth. Part of this was because the Note 5 was the first (or one of the first) phones to come with 4 GB of RAM. This will be more common in 2016, but the V10, which should be in stores in November, is the only other readily-available phone with it right now.

I read critic and customer reviews on the Note 5. These were mostly positive, and confirmed that my experience with playing with the Note 5 at phone stores wasn’t an aberration. The Note 5 is the most powerful phone currently available in terms of having a big, bright screen (5.7”), a great processor, and plenty of RAM to sustain them. Thus, I began to reconsider my earlier decision to avoid the Note 5. Then, one of my employees here in Colorado upgraded from her S4 to the Note 5, and adored her new phone. I used it a bit, to see if it performed as well as the sample ones available under optimal conditions in the stores. It gave the same great experience, so I was convinced that, after all, it was the right phone for me.

I set the process in motion, and a few days ago, I became the proud owner of a Note 5. It took a few days, because I had to wait for Sprint to get in the larger-storage 64 GB version (which mostly offsets the lack of a micro-SD card). I also had to wait for the specific color combination of Otter Box that I wanted (dark blue outer casing, with light blue inner frame). It didn’t hurt that Sprint had an offer to get a free Galaxy Tab 4 tablet with the Note 5. The Tab 4 is a small, slightly out-of-date tablet, but it works well as a basic web-browsing device, and is far better than the off-brand Supersonic tablet I got as an anniversary gift from my job.

I’m enormously pleased with my Note 5 thus far. It truly is, as many reviews have stated, a beast of a phone. Besides being large and powerful, as I indicated above, it supports fast charging. With a cord, it charges incredibly quickly using its own wall socket plug, or the special car charger I bought. But it is also one of the only phones capable of high-speed wireless charging on Samsung’s wireless charging pad. This was another factor that led to my choosing the Note 5. The lack of a removable battery no longer bothers me, and the fixed battery gives great life anyway due to optimizing features built into the hardware and software. My opinion could certainly change with time, but at this moment I highly recommend the Note 5 if you can afford it. I’m paying a lot, but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make, since I feel I have the current best of the best.

One tangential point is that I stayed with Sprint. I was a free agent, and could have gone with any company. Verizon is usually considered the best provider, but Sprint is their equal in Denver, as Rootmetrics testing shows. Sprint tests their new processes first in Denver, and perfected LTE in the spring of this year. They have since been rolling it out to the rest of the country, and should be a solid choice in most urban and suburban areas by early 2016.

On a different “note,” Sunwheels and Siegrunen is at the printers, and should be available any day now. I’ll post an update when I get word that the release has become official. In the meantime, sample pages can be seen here.