Got my note 4 (despite a *many censored words* queue jumper in the store). Looking extremely good at the moment! It fit in my jeans with the smallest pockets so thats one major concern out the way. Just have to adapt to android as I've never used it before.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Galaxy Note 4
- Thread starter The Game 161
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Be sure to post any questions you have. You will find most here pretty willing to help!
Anybody with a black Note 4 experiencing light scratches on the bezels after days of use? It seems that some people over at XDA are experiencing this issue with the black models.
I don't like the white Note but if this is the case I might have to go and get it instead of the black one.
I don't like the white Note but if this is the case I might have to go and get it instead of the black one.
I have the black N4 and have not had that happen. I use mine without a case too....
No scratches on mine either and I use mine without a case. But if you scratch it with a sharp object, I suspect it will scratch since.it is.metal.
Was thinking about making the Switch from the Plus to the Note 4. I dont run any other Apple products so it comes down which device I like better. I love the 6 Plus and everything about it but idk I just am attracted to the Note 4....really touch decision.
Both are great phones! It comes down to how you use them. Which one suits your need better......
yeah very true, I always miss having an SD when I start using the iPhone again. I have to sit and think about it becuse I really dislike Touchwiz and the android lag thats always present.
I'm not experiencing any lag at all. I'm new to Samsung, so not sure how much is TW compared to stock Android. I have to say though, I really like this UI. Basic things like swiping left or right on a contact for calling or texting that contact is nice function. Or even smart alert and direct call, extremely useful and well thought out functions. This is the first phone that I am able to recommend without any hesitation.
Last edited:
yeah I am an avid android user and all is well right now but just wait till you get your phone loaded with pics and apps and documents and other things, it tends to lag afterawhile. But they may have found a way to get rid of the lag so I cant comment.
I returned my Note 4. I experienced no lag with moving between home screens and opening apps, but I did experience annoying scroll lag or stutter. It happened in Chrome, Firefox, Yelp, MyFitnessPal, and Trip Advisor, the apps I used most often in the couple of days I had it. I was able to replicate this on a store model for a couple of applications that I was able to download. You didn't see it when scrolling slowly. When you slightly flicked to scroll, it would start out normal and as it slowed down it would hesitate for milliseconds a couple of times before stopping. It was like this with the browsers and more pronounced on the other applications. Some people may or may not notice this or may not care. It was enough of an issue for me with a modern $800+ phone that I didn't want to keep it or deal with it. It's a bummer because overall I liked the phone.
It seems like I will be sticking with this thing as its fantastic so far. So I was wondering about SD cards. Does a really fast card make any difference or can I get a slower, cheaper one?
For example, would I notice any differnce between these two?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-Memory-MicroSDHC-without-Adapter/dp/B00J2C87T8/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1414607402&sr=8-10&keywords=micro+sd+card
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-Memory-MicroSDHC-UHS-I-Adapter/dp/B00J29FF4G/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1414607435&sr=8-2&keywords=micro+sd+card
For example, would I notice any differnce between these two?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-Memory-MicroSDHC-without-Adapter/dp/B00J2C87T8/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1414607402&sr=8-10&keywords=micro+sd+card
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-Memory-MicroSDHC-UHS-I-Adapter/dp/B00J29FF4G/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1414607435&sr=8-2&keywords=micro+sd+card
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
It does make a difference. I would only get Grade 1 Class 10 cards. These are faster and more reliable.
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
Re: Lag
TL;DR:
It's all about single-core CPU speed. The Snapdragon 805 is about half way between the A6 and A7 when it comes to single-core, and in real usage that's the speed you feel. The Note 4 can be 20%+ faster in single-core than a Note 3, but that advantage is almost certainly taken away by the higher screen res when you're doing normal phone stuff or scrolling up and down webpages.
-----------------
Between the marketing and the fact that review sites insist on focusing on multi-core benchmark scores you'd almost believe that Qualcomm's SoCs are comparable to Apple's SoCs, but it's just not true for one very important reason:
In real usage single-core is king. It's really, really hard to parallelize real-time lag-sensitive tasks. So hard that it's generally not done. What ends up happening with multiple cores is that they're each handed a job, but in most situations one of those jobs will be "rate determining." In other words one of the tasks, given to a single core, will take longer to complete than any of the others.
When this happens your perceived performance is now entirely based on single-core speed, and this is where the SoCs on the market are at a huge disadvantage to Apple's chips. Even in the best case scenario (a fully parallelized task that can use all cores) the thermal limits render any possible advantages from more cores meaningless. Both the iP6 and Note 4 cap out around 2800 (Geekbench) when they hit thermal limits for devices in the phone size range. This is why the A8X is the first 3-core SoC from Apple; the thermal overhead is finally available due to SoC optimizations combined with the large case.
So in practice your situation ranges from far slower to dead heat. While parallelization will continue to improve at the software level there are some tasks will remain difficult to multi-thread. A great example is the brush engine for Sketchbook, which has been stuck on a single core for a long time and even on desktop platforms shows no signs of changing soon (it's the worst case; real time and lag sensitive).
Basically if I'm at Qualcomm I'm pulling my hair out trying to figure out how to match Apple's single-core since until that happens these quad core SoCs are going to be slow in practical application.
-----------------
For some contrast this invalidates the claim I've been seeing that the Note 4 is not any faster than the 3 in CPU-bound tasks. Whenever I read this the reviewer immediately points to some multi-core benchmarks and says "look how similar they are." That would be correct if the normal work load was a well-threaded rendering job, as both chips hit the same thermal limit and throttle since they're similar architectures on the same process node.
In a real world situation the thermal limit won't come into play and the "rate limiting" core will run more or less at full speed. If the Geekbench numbers are accurate than this means the Note 4 can potentially be 25% faster in these situations. This is why you see a 20%+ improvement in things like the browser benchmarks Anandtech uses even while benchmark suites like Antutu or multi-core Geekbench report nearly identical scores
So why doesn't that translate into improved UI performance? Most likely these gains are being eaten by the increased screen res which ends up taxing the CPU more. Much of the pre-rendering UI compositing will be done by the CPU and doing that work at higher resolutions does increase the work load. (We saw this on the Retina MBP line where UI performance is bound by single-core CPU speed, not the GPU or multi-core CPU).
Where you can probably see some gains is when you're out of the UI in a 3rd party application that needs a lot of CPU power. Sketchbook is a great example. In this situation does the extra resolution balance things out to no net gain vs the Note 3? Without being able to compare the two side by side I can't say.
------------
If I were in charge of Samsung's product development I would have stuck with 1920x1080 and gone with a full RGB stripe. Instead they moved to a higher resolution, but stayed pentile, which is confusing to me. This means you only get slightly higher fidelity than RGB 1080P, but you have to render at full 2560x1440. It's a waste of CPU/GPU cycles for minimal benefit over a full 1080P subpixel layout.
I probably also would have waited for the snapdragon 810. Neither of these choices do anything to pad the spec sheet, so instead they went.. the way they did. I just hope they don't seriously go pentile 4K next year, because as it is 1080P (RGB) at this size is already over the line into seriously diminishing returns.
------------
Last bit: I just want to say that even though I have plenty of negative things to say here I am loving this device purely as a tiny Cintiq (with a PDP-like display, which is crazy impressive at night). Unless Apple suddenly decides to produce a "phablet" with a Wacom digitizer I think the Note line has a place in my device lineup. I'm not sure if I need a brand new one or whether I want it to be my phone, but now that I've had it I can't give up the pocket Cintiq as a concept.
TL;DR:
It's all about single-core CPU speed. The Snapdragon 805 is about half way between the A6 and A7 when it comes to single-core, and in real usage that's the speed you feel. The Note 4 can be 20%+ faster in single-core than a Note 3, but that advantage is almost certainly taken away by the higher screen res when you're doing normal phone stuff or scrolling up and down webpages.
-----------------
Between the marketing and the fact that review sites insist on focusing on multi-core benchmark scores you'd almost believe that Qualcomm's SoCs are comparable to Apple's SoCs, but it's just not true for one very important reason:
In real usage single-core is king. It's really, really hard to parallelize real-time lag-sensitive tasks. So hard that it's generally not done. What ends up happening with multiple cores is that they're each handed a job, but in most situations one of those jobs will be "rate determining." In other words one of the tasks, given to a single core, will take longer to complete than any of the others.
When this happens your perceived performance is now entirely based on single-core speed, and this is where the SoCs on the market are at a huge disadvantage to Apple's chips. Even in the best case scenario (a fully parallelized task that can use all cores) the thermal limits render any possible advantages from more cores meaningless. Both the iP6 and Note 4 cap out around 2800 (Geekbench) when they hit thermal limits for devices in the phone size range. This is why the A8X is the first 3-core SoC from Apple; the thermal overhead is finally available due to SoC optimizations combined with the large case.
So in practice your situation ranges from far slower to dead heat. While parallelization will continue to improve at the software level there are some tasks will remain difficult to multi-thread. A great example is the brush engine for Sketchbook, which has been stuck on a single core for a long time and even on desktop platforms shows no signs of changing soon (it's the worst case; real time and lag sensitive).
Basically if I'm at Qualcomm I'm pulling my hair out trying to figure out how to match Apple's single-core since until that happens these quad core SoCs are going to be slow in practical application.
-----------------
For some contrast this invalidates the claim I've been seeing that the Note 4 is not any faster than the 3 in CPU-bound tasks. Whenever I read this the reviewer immediately points to some multi-core benchmarks and says "look how similar they are." That would be correct if the normal work load was a well-threaded rendering job, as both chips hit the same thermal limit and throttle since they're similar architectures on the same process node.
In a real world situation the thermal limit won't come into play and the "rate limiting" core will run more or less at full speed. If the Geekbench numbers are accurate than this means the Note 4 can potentially be 25% faster in these situations. This is why you see a 20%+ improvement in things like the browser benchmarks Anandtech uses even while benchmark suites like Antutu or multi-core Geekbench report nearly identical scores
So why doesn't that translate into improved UI performance? Most likely these gains are being eaten by the increased screen res which ends up taxing the CPU more. Much of the pre-rendering UI compositing will be done by the CPU and doing that work at higher resolutions does increase the work load. (We saw this on the Retina MBP line where UI performance is bound by single-core CPU speed, not the GPU or multi-core CPU).
Where you can probably see some gains is when you're out of the UI in a 3rd party application that needs a lot of CPU power. Sketchbook is a great example. In this situation does the extra resolution balance things out to no net gain vs the Note 3? Without being able to compare the two side by side I can't say.
------------
If I were in charge of Samsung's product development I would have stuck with 1920x1080 and gone with a full RGB stripe. Instead they moved to a higher resolution, but stayed pentile, which is confusing to me. This means you only get slightly higher fidelity than RGB 1080P, but you have to render at full 2560x1440. It's a waste of CPU/GPU cycles for minimal benefit over a full 1080P subpixel layout.
I probably also would have waited for the snapdragon 810. Neither of these choices do anything to pad the spec sheet, so instead they went.. the way they did. I just hope they don't seriously go pentile 4K next year, because as it is 1080P (RGB) at this size is already over the line into seriously diminishing returns.
------------
Last bit: I just want to say that even though I have plenty of negative things to say here I am loving this device purely as a tiny Cintiq (with a PDP-like display, which is crazy impressive at night). Unless Apple suddenly decides to produce a "phablet" with a Wacom digitizer I think the Note line has a place in my device lineup. I'm not sure if I need a brand new one or whether I want it to be my phone, but now that I've had it I can't give up the pocket Cintiq as a concept.
Last edited:
They are both grade 1 class 10 in this case, the difference is 48 MB/s vs 90MB/s
I guess ill play it safe and get the fastest one.
Yup. I get that. But I know why it's there. From what I've read, that's always been the menu button on Samsungs. So it's serving double duty now. Tap gives you recent apps, long press gives you menu. Sorta like the home key lag and double press for S Voice. But with that, you get the option to turn off the double tap function. And the home key lag is gone. Maybe a future update will give us that option for the recent apps button.
On my note 3 I always kept 1 page too
Image
I miss playing with my home screen lol
----------
No Dropbox promotion this time?
hey what mods did you use to get your home screen to look like that?
Note 4 with "Ok Google" While Screen is off
I did not know this was possible! But it works great! Found it on XDA
This enables the Google now "Ok Google" Feature where you can activate Google now while the screen is off.
How To:
1) Open Google Now
2) Go to Google Now Settings
3) Click on "Voice"
4) Enable "Audio History"
5) Click "Ok Google Detection"
6)Click "Always on" and follow the remaining directions.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/note-4-verizon/general/note-4-ok-google-screen-off-t2906323
I did not know this was possible! But it works great! Found it on XDA
This enables the Google now "Ok Google" Feature where you can activate Google now while the screen is off.
How To:
1) Open Google Now
2) Go to Google Now Settings
3) Click on "Voice"
4) Enable "Audio History"
5) Click "Ok Google Detection"
6)Click "Always on" and follow the remaining directions.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/note-4-verizon/general/note-4-ok-google-screen-off-t2906323
You have to be using a supported language as the default too, for some strange reason it doesn't work with English/UK or english/Ireland on my device, I have to change language to English/US in settings otherwise its OK google from anything other than google search screen is grey'ed out.