The last time we got a Galaxy Note device for review, I declared it to be
too big for humans and handed it off like a pair of dirty gym socks to the
nearest Linus Media Group employee. In this case, it ended up being Luke to do
the video for me. And yet, here we are a
mere 2 years later, and not only have I been using the Note 5 as my daily driver
for a couple of weeks, I might have even
enjoyed it.
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out the link in the video description to learn more. So, let's start with a
physical tour of the Galaxy Note 5. At the back is a camera, the flash, and a
sexy leather finish vinyl skin, courtesy of Dbrand, who provided our phone. On
the sides are the almost perfect lock button on the right and volume rockers
on the left. They've got great tactile feedback and are easy to feel for when
you're not looking, but I wish the lock button was just a touch lower so that I
wouldn't accidentally mash the volume down while pressing it. On the bottom is
the headphone jack, the hopefully not long for this world microb charging
port, the retractable SPEN housing, and a speaker that makes up for its poor
positioning by being surprisingly loud without distortion. A definite calling
card of the Note series. And then finally at the front is the stunner of a
5.7 inch 1440p AMOLED display with
shockingly thin bezels, a 5 megapixel selfie camera, a satisfyingly
tactile physical home button, and a
couple of difficult to avoid in landscape capacitive buttons for back
navigation and multitasking. something
that I found myself wishing I could turn off in favor of onscreen buttons like
with the OnePlus 2 during the frequent times that I was watching videos on this
device thanks to how gorgeous the screen
is. And yet the physical tour somehow
doesn't tell the whole story of the Note
5 somehow. And I don't know how they did it but I'm not the only one who noticed.
The Note 5 is big, but it doesn't feel
as ungainainely and difficult to hold as
other Fab class devices that I've played with in the past, like the One Max,
iPhone 6 Plus, and previous Notes. And
there's more that's different about it as well. While Samsung used to use the
bulky size of the Note series to cram every feature under the sun and their
fastest hardware into what we argued at the time wasn't even really a phone
anymore. They've backpedalled on that a fair bit this time. I mean, sure, almost
everything the S6 can do, the Note 5 can do better. It lacks a 128 gig model, but
it's got the same Exynos 7420 octaore
CPU and GPU. a hefty bump up from 3 gigs
to 4 gigs of low power DDR4 RAM surely
to assist with those uh TouchWiz multi-wind and split screen features
that only really make sense on a large screen device like this. The Corning
Gorilla Glass 4 topped display, I know I already said this, but it merits another
mention. Is absolutely fantastic with
pitch blacks, vibrant whites, and thanks to its barely existent bezels, a kind of
like window into another place look to
it. And it's got all the usual tech specs. NFC looking at you OnePlus AC
wireless quick charging both on a wire and wirelessly on the Note and a
fingerprint sensor on the home button whose speed and accuracy I didn't
properly appreciate until I spent a couple of weeks with the ZTE Axon along
with of course an absolutely kick-ass 16
megapixel still 4K video rear camera
whose lightning fast launch times, great lowlight performance, and generally
amazing usability have contributed to a lot of captured moments of my kids that
wouldn't have happened before I upgraded my wife to the S6 Active, which features
the same camera. But is that good
enough? Well, I guess there's also the S Pen. You click it and it turtles out
kind of like Luke's lightsaber in that scene on Jabba's sailbarge. Then you
unchath it so you can unleash your ideas, goals, and dreams or some [ __ ]
like that. Actually, it's nothing to do with Dreams. It's just a stylus. A
pretty good and thankfully batteryfree passive stylus, but still just a stylus.
It's low latency, but not latency free, it's not particularly ergonomic. While
the palm rejection really is very excellent and the software does offer
some handy features. Uh being able to press the button on the stylus to load
up useful cloud syncing apps like OneNote or quickly scribble on a screen
capture stood out to me. I just didn't find myself using it much to jot down
quick notes about like eggs I need to buy or whatever. I mean, maybe if I
didn't type as quickly as I do on a touchcreen, or if I needed to add little
doodles in any of the seemingly infinite number of ink colors, thicknesses, and
pen tips, each with their own distinctive simulated writing sound, it
might make more sense for me. But personally, the benefit of quickly
launching a note-taking app is quickly outweighed by the relative slowness of
writing with a pen compared to typing. But if you're like me and you don't care
about the stylus, never fear. Just put it into the phone backwards and you'll
never be able to get it out again. Or you could just ignore it, whatever is
better for you. Now, we're almost at the conclusion, but I do have a couple of
more notes. Uh, TouchWiz adds a triple tap on the home button to get a smaller
version that's easier to reach with one hand. That's a winner for me. The uh
smart lock with trusted Bluetooth devices still sucks so much ass that
it'll turn your teeth brown. I was using fingerprint authentication and when I'm
in range of a trusted device sometimes and I can't quite find the pattern, I
actually have to press unlock, slide the screen, and finally I still have to use
my fingerprint to unlock the freaking thing. This is something that works just
fine on other phones. There's more good
news though. The battery life is surprisingly good considering the anemic
3000 milliamp battery. And um yeah, I
don't know. I I guess okay, we can get on with the conclusion. It's like it's
kind of an S series but bigger and ever so slightly better with a pen. And maybe
that's my issue here. Since when is the Note series supposed to be the S series
with a couple of minute improvements and a bigger screen? In the past, it really
had its own identity as a as a power user phone or a productivity phone. And
while the stylus or S Pen remains, gone
is the removable battery that allowed creative users to stuff multi-day
battery packs under modified rear housings. Gone is the expandable storage
that allowed this user to equip his Note 2 with 288 gigs of storage back in 2013.
What do we get in return exactly, Samsung? Well, for me personally, I
guess I got a device that is ergonomically usable as opposed to one
that feels completely derpastic. It's astounding how much of a difference a
couple fractions of a millimeter make. Although, I think Apple is taking it one
step too far with their modified 3 and a half millimeter jack patents. But, I
just don't know if that's going to appease the power users who have been
using Fablets since before it was cool.
In typical Samsung fashion, they built an entire product category off of these
folks. And now that it's gone mainstream, they've just left them
hanging. I mean, they're still going to sell a metric whack ton of these anyway
since, and I understand this, for most people, a device that requires a plastic
duad like a fly grip just to hold it has
zero appeal. But this is still in my
mind the kind of short-term thinking that is exactly what keeps Samsung
focused on selling widgets to their customers rather than building
relationships with their customers through long-term support and
understanding and meeting their needs the way that someone like Apple does. A
point that was driven home by Apple's recent announcement that the iPad 2, a
device from 2011, can now be updated to
iOS 9. The same cannot be said about my
Galaxy Tab 10.1 that I purchased a full year later and has received barely any
updates at all. Okay, so putting all of that aside, when viewed in a vacuum, is
the Note 5 a success? Yeah, it is. It's
a beautiful masterpiece of a device. But I just had to get that last bit out of
my system for previous Note users and anyone else who has an old Samsung
device still running some antiquated version of Android and doesn't feel like
Samsung puts enough effort into the long-term support of these gadgets that
we drop what in the case of this one is an awful lot of money on. Speaking of
spending an awful lot of money on your gadgets, why not drop an extra couple
bucks over at dbrand.com/lininusnote5 and get a vinyl
skin that'll protect it from incidental scratches while it's in your pocket or
sliding across the table cuz you're Canadian and you're doing, you know,
fabt curling or whatever the case may be. They've got a wide variety of
different styles, all precision cut to look and feel gorgeous on your device. I
mean, we're talking they got leather finishes, wood finishes, carbon fiber
finishes, pretty much any color under the sun. And it's not limited to just
phones. They've actually got skins for anything from phones to game controllers
to game consoles to even selected notebooks. So, check it out. That's
dbrand.com/Linus note5, which is also linked in the video description. And a
huge shout out thanks to dbrand for hooking us up with the Note 5 and
sponsoring this episode. So, thanks for watching, guys. If this video sucked,
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I personally think it's awesome. I'm a little biased. Where I build a wicked
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