You’d hope so given the price of this phone, but the features, build-quality and functionality are all top-notch here. While it features Samsung’s usual removable back cover, this feels sturdy enough, despite being plastic. Under here you get the removeable battery, SIM card slot and a place to put a microSD card of up to 128GB. It’s all classic Samsung, and it’s the stuff that Android fans really like about the phones.
The S Pen is still great, if you use it
Call quality is great too. If you’re calling someone on your own network, and they have an HD Voice capable handset – and your network offers HD calling – then you’ll hear them with amazing clarity. The Note Edge might be a smartphone, but the phone portion remains as pleasant to use as ever.
Excellent especially considering product is first generation
on December 14, 2014
Posted by: VasekVI
from Atlanta, GA, USA
Expertise:Expert
This phone is simply awesome. The screen is vivid and sharp, and colors can be tailored to suit your taste. Whether you want the colors to be accurate, or if you want the highest level of vibrancy, it is all adjustable. The materials and build quality are top notch, with the metal body and its machined edge, it is beautiful to handle and is extremely solid. One thing that really surprised me is that the screen gets extra bright when outdoors during the day. There is no longer any issue with screen brightness in any situation.
The edge screen is very useful, with different panels available to use and scroll through, it really helps clean up the home screens for your most used apps, allowing you to keep them free for widgets instead. the curve on the edge feels really nice to use.
This evolution of touchwiz adds even more functionality. Coming from a Galaxy S4, the gallery is smart enough to sort your pictures by type, allowing you to search for documents, food, automobiles, faces, etc..
The cameras are excellent. The front facing 3.7MP camera has a nice wide angle to fit everyone in your selfies. The rear 16MP camera now has the correct aspect ratio to take pictures that fit the whole screen instead of the 4x3 that the S4 had at 13MP. Recording live events that have very loud volume, such as concerts and festivals are much better now, and the sound recorded by the multiple microphones is much less distorted.
In typical Samsung fashion, the battery is removable, allowing you to have a spare battery charging system to allow you not to have your phone stuck on a charger. I just ordered the spare battery charging system directly from samsung, and if it like the spare battery kit for the S5, the battery will charge quickly with the adaptive fast charger the phone comes with. (the Samsung S4 kit only draws 500mA, making the battery take 3 hours to charge)
Personally, I like the power button relocated at the top. This keeps you from accidentally turning the screen off when you are using the volume keys, as there is no opposing power button on the other side of the phone to accidentally press.
Drawbacks? The notifications can really be intrusive. I am a heavy user and I use many messaging applications. When a notifications comes in on this phone and you tap on it, you end up launching that application. The problem with that is, if you are using the edge screen for something else, you end up accidentally tapping on that notification. I propose that Samsung allow the user to choose notifications to come in on the top bar, or at the very least allow the user to disable tap to launch on notifications coming in on the edge screen.
Also, if you use an aftermarket keyboard, such as swiftkey, notifications will cover the rightmost letters, causing you to launch an app by accident. That can be very frustrating.
The phone is quite expensive, but considering the hardware, it makes sense. I wish I got 64GB storage for the AT&T model for the extra $150 over the note 4.
Overall, I am very pleased with the phone. I hope some customization will come with software updates regarding the intrusive notifications (Other Samsung android phones do not launch an app when tapping on a notification)
Whats not to love? Coolness factor-Check. Jealous friends-Check. Lots of eyebrow lifting and hushed chatter-Check. For the geeks in my life-the ruler (with cm and inch options) on the edge was "Awesome". Now for the practical aspect: I was pleasantly surprised by quite a few features that have not been mentioned elsewhere. If they have and I missed them-my apologies but I felt they are "note"worthy. In addition, many of these features may be present in the Note 4 and I am not aware of those since I am moving up from a Note 3. 1. Fingerprint scanner on home button to unlock phone and to enter information on webpage via keeper is a great feature. Scanner is pretty good-not hundred percent but more sensitive than the one I had on my laptop a few years ago. There is an option to store your fingerprint by scanning it in a position that is most comfortable! In my case that was while holding the phone in my right hand, swiping my right thumb sideways. No need to hold phone in one hand and carefully scan the finger on the other hand! Very thoughtful. 2. The panels on the curved Edge can be accessed without unlocking the phone-particularly handy for checking calendar appointments and skipping music. This also implies that the edge screen can be woken up directly. This does wake up the full screen though. 3. Still on the panel, if using the calendar/task panel, you can scroll the length of the panel (along the length of the phone) to see additional tasks/appointments for the day 4. The Edge panel was not in the way during normal single handed operations. It settles into a "sleep" screen with a personal message, if set. 5. Camera has some great options (select focus led to some amazing pictures) 6. The camera shutter button has moved to the edge panel which is very nice as it is similar to the position in a regular camera. It did require some getting used to since the screen is very sensitive and I kept selecting options or clicking pictures by mistake. The new shutter button position is a little awkward for selfies and needs a little more confidence to let go of the phone and hold it only by its edges. If I had a sturdy case and screen protector, I might have better success testing it. 7. Selfies has a panorama like option that lets you move the phone slowly to get a wider shot to include more people. I did not have this option in Note 3 and really like it. 8. Kindle for Samsung app has some great font options and does have an exclusive Samsung recommendations section from which one book may be borrowed each month. I found only four books in this section and I am not inclined to borrow any of them. There are other offers too in the Galaxy apps (parallels access, bloomberg news, etc)
The phone is slightly wider than the Note 3. If you are right-handed and use the phone one-handed, then the curved edge actually works to provide better grip! The curved portion sits right between thumb and index finger without awkwardness. Left-handed was a little tricky since I kept feeling the phone would fall. Speaking of falling-dropped the phone on hard concrete floor from a height of 2 feet-minor ding on the paint/plastic coating of the rim of the phone near the plastic back. Apparently, the plastic like rim is in fact coated metal or at least looks like it. Since the phone fell on its back (Whew!), there was no damage. There is just enough lip around the camera and Health monitoring sensor on the back to prevent damage in a fall. Yes there is a sensor to measure heartrate and SpO2. I have not compared their performance so will refrain from commenting about their accuracy. I like the phone too much to say anything bad about it, but sadly there are a few cons.
1. Battery life is very poor. My Note 3 had excellent battery stamina. With identical settings and usage and even with reduced usage, the Edge ran out of juice a good 3 hours before the Note 3. Extremely disappointed with this issue. Considered exchanging the phone for the Note 4 but did I mention how cool it is? not to mention the re-stocking fees!!! 2. The orientation of the text in the panels of the Edge screen cannot be flipped. If you are sitting with the phone side up and the edge facing you, then the information appears upside down! This is strange since the Night Clock has the correct orientation. I found this extremely weird especially since if you have a flip case for the phone, the display becomes very hard to read defeating the purpose of being able to monitor your feed, messages, notifications surreptitiously from your phone. Hopefully a future update can provide a flip display option. There is a round-about solution however. If you enable screen rotation and rotate panel by 180 degree (from panel settings) and flip the phone, then the display rotates. I just feel this option should be available irrespective of screen orientation and without having to go about flipping the phone just to ensure display direction each time I put the phone down!! 3. I did get text and Google hangout messages on the edge (continuously scrolling so I could read it without having to unlock my phone) however, I have been unable to get notifications of incoming emails etc on the edge screen. 4. No good case for the phone yet. A skin for the glass with a ultra slim case for the back seems to be the best option at this point.