Galaxy Note 4 is best Samsung phone

THERE’S not a health statistic about me I don’t know, thanks to the beefed up S Health app on the new Samsung Galaxy Note 4.

Note 4 leads Samsung’s offerings

I’M the most measured person you’ll meet. There’s not a single health statistic about me I don’t know, thanks to the beefed up S Health app on the new Samsung Galaxy Note 4, which I’ve been testing.

Like the Galaxy S5, the Note 4 has a heart monitor and counts steps, but it also measures oxygen saturation in your blood, your stress level based on heart rate variability, and the outside UV rating.

After spending time with the Samsung Galaxy Note 4, I’m convinced it’s the best phone that Samsung has produced. And it’s among the crème de la crème of consumer tech devices in 2014.

Its best feature is its beautiful 1440 x 2560 pixel quad HD screen, which displays the video you shoot with the camera at effectively 2K. What a treat.

The Note 4’s 5.7-inch super AMOLED screen resolution trumps the regular high definition 1080p displays on Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S5 smartphone and the Note 4’s predecessor, the Note 3, also with a stunning 515 pixels per inch.

I downloaded some 4K video clips I use for testing 4K TVs and played them on the Note 4 without even modifying them for phone use. The Note 4’s power packed 2.7 Gigahertz quad core processor and graphics capability played them effortlessly, so effortlessly that I could enlarge the video as it played with a pinch and zoom action.

The Note 4’s 16 megapixel back facing camera (up from 13 MP on the Note 3) shoots 4K video at 30 frames per second. You need to have a 2K or 4K screen to appreciate the quality of 4K video and the Note 4 gives you that chance. In my view, this is its best feature.

The 4K video consumes 4-5 megabytes for every second you shoot, but slotting in a 128 Gigabyte microSD card should solve that problem. But you’ll need a class 10 microSD card with a higher bitrate.

Samsung may have created a phablet smartphone with a big processor and QuadHD screen, yet it doesn’t chew through battery juice. I could watch video for more than 14 hours on one charge of its big 3220 milliampere hour battery, at 75 per cent display brightness.

The Note 4 has a more modern feel about it, when compared to its predecessor. It has aluminium sides and a polycarbonate body. It’s 8 grams heavier and a minuscule thicker than the Note 3 but that’s barely noticeable. The removable back plate of the Note 4 is still plastic but textured well enough to look attractive and offers grip.

The Note 4 isn’t water resistant like the Galaxy S5 which is a pity. The addition of the UV filter, together with water resistance would have made this a great phone for the long hot Australian summer and trips to the beach and the pool.

Samsung has ditched the USB3 cable that offered faster data speeds with the Note 3 and resorted to a slower USB 2. No doubt the change back saves space — remember, Apple’s move to a lightning connector?

The word is that many did not regard USB3 as a much needed feature but it’s sad to see regress rather than progress.

The Note 4 doesn’t have wireless charging but it does offer what Samsung calls “adaptive fast charging” — provided you use the specially provided adaptor. Any other Samsung device adaptor will not do the job.

This adaptor has a 9-volt charging mode that kicks in initially, charging from 0 to 50 per cent in 30 minutes. Getting to a fully charged phone takes another 50 minutes or so; in all you’ll save around 30 minutes when charging the Note 4 compared to the Note 3.

It’s fast, but not as fast as VOOC (Voltage Open Loop Multi-Step Constant-Current Charging) offered on China manufacturer Oppo’s Find 7 — which promises charging to 75 per cent in 30 minutes.

As for the Note 4’s S-Pen, I’ve never been a big note taker with the Note series but Samsung has done the job to ensure you can easily create notes, with a widget that lets you fire up a note from the home screen with one gentle tap.

To me, voice dictation is a more modern way of taking notes on the go. Samsung could toss the S-Pen and I would still think it is a terrific phablet phone.

Samsung uses its own proprietary form of Android called TouchWiz and on the Note 4 it has a few interesting features. When in an app, sliding your finger from the top left or top right to the centre will transform the app into a window sitting on top of what’s underneath — provided the app is compatible.

The fingerprint sensor which lets you unlock the phone is definitely more accurate than before and you can use it to sign into websites or pay with PayPal. Like many companies, we use VMWare’s AirWatch to manage our phones at work and unfortunately it prevents unlocking the phone with the fingerprint sensor — which is a pity, but there have been reports of the sensor being hacked.

One beef — Android KitKat and in particular Samsung’s variant of it doesn’t give the breadth of lock screen notifications you can have on an iPhone. Sure, when you pick up the phone, it tells you when you’ve missed a call and displays text messages but not emails — something I became accustomed to when reviewing the iPhone 6.

On the lock screen, it’s good to know if a message or email is important enough that you need to pick up your phone and read it in full, especially in the middle of the night. I tried adding third party apps from Google Play to enable this on the Note 4, but no luck.

Fortunately, Google gets to finally address this problem in the Lollipop operating system, the company’s new Android sugar hit which is starting to roll out now. It will be up to Samsung to upgrade its TouchWiz interface for this to be available on its phones.

Finally there’s one feature that the Note 4 is worth getting for exclusively — and that’s 360 degree immersive virtual reality. Samsung’s upcoming Gear VR headset, that lets you look around in 360 degree splendour, requires you to slot in a Note 4 for this to work.

This may be clever marketing in terms of selling Note 4’s, but it’s clever technology too.

The fact the public generally will get to enjoy this experience within the next few weeks is one of the most exciting developments in consumer tech this year.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 4 is deservedly among the cream of smartphones for 2014 but you will be paying almost a grand in Australian dollars to own one. You get what you pay for.

Rating: 9/10
Price: $949 recommended or on contract