Samsung Galaxy Note 5 review: A GREAT smartphone but it STILL hasn’t been released in the UK

Samsung Galaxy Note 5 review: Performance and battery life

As I’ve mentioned above, the Note 5 and S6 Edge+ are technically identical, but it’s not only one phone the Note 5 shares its DNA with. It’s also very similar to the smaller S6 and S6 Edge.

In a nutshell, beneath the Note 5’s sultry exterior resides a 14nm octa-core Exynos 7420 processor, comprising twin quad-core CPUs running at 2.1GHz and 1.5GHz. (One of these processors is for heavy lifting, and the other for lighter tasks). There’s also 4GB LPDDR4 RAM, 32GB or 64GB storage and, you guessed it, no microSD slot for storage expansion or user-replaceable battery.

Performance, as you might rightly expect it to be, is rip-snortingly good. You can see the benchmark results in the table below – they’re a match for the S6 Edge+ and faster than anything else on the market bar the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus.

It’s the incredibly responsive feel of the phone that really impresses here, however. Everything happens instantly, with no lag or delay at all, and it lapped up everything I threw at it during testing. Just imagine how good this phone would be running pure Android? The thought makes me go slightly weak at the knees.

Looking at the specifications, I did have my concerns over battery life. After all, 3,000mAh isn’t the biggest power pack around – it’s beaten to the punch by the enormous 3,450mAh battery in the Nexus 6P, for instance. The Samsung Exynos chip’s super efficient 14nm manufacturing process helps things along here, however, and just as with the S6 and S6 Edge, battery life is more than adequate.

It lasted a creditable 12hrs 43mins in our video rundown test (in flight mode with the screen set to a brightness of 170cd/m2), which is 45 minutes longer than the Nexus 6P, although fans of the Note 4 will be disappointed to discover that it’s a long way short of that phone’s stonking 15hrs 36mins.

Samsung Galaxy Note 5 review: Camera

If you’re into your photography, the camera is another great fillip. It has the same hardware as the S6 Edge+ – a 16-megapixel sensor with phase detect, optical image stabilisation (OIS), a bright aperture of f/1.9, and a dual-LED flash – and it captures spectacularly good photographs.

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Everything here works well: the phase detect autofocus latches onto photographic subjects quickly and reliably, the auto exposure always seems to produce a realistic balance of colours and contrast, and each and every image explodes with crisp, clean details.

Video quality is also superb, with recordable resolutions of up to 4K at 30fps and 1080p at 60fps, and with beefed up image stabilisation over the S6, there’s little evidence of the dreaded rolling shutter wobble as you shoot. I was able to walk at speed along the street without producing a mess of blurry, rubbery-looking footage. That’s very impressive indeed.

And Samsung has left no stone unturned in its quest for camera software perfection, either. Most won’t need to venture outside the scarily competent Auto mode, but if you do want to adjust the settings, there’s all the control you could possibly need in the Note 5’s “Pro” mode:  shutter speed, ISO sensitivity, white balance control, metering and even manual focus can all be adjusted quickly and easily.

 

	Samsung Galaxy Note 5 specifications
Processor	Octacore (quad 2.1GHz and quad 1.5GHz), Samsung Exynos 7420 SoC
RAM	4GB LPDDR4
Screen size	5.7in
Screen resolution	1,440 x 2560, 518ppi (Gorilla Glass 4)
Screen type	Super AMOLED
Front camera	5MP
Rear camera	16MP (f/1.9, phase detect autofocus, OIS)
Flash	LED
GPS	Yes
Compass	Yes
Storage	32/64GB
Memory card slot (supplied)	No
Wi-Fi	802.11ac (2x2 MIMO)
Bluetooth	Bluetooth 4.1 LE, A2DP, apt-X, UHQ, ANT+
NFC	Yes
Wireless data	4G, Cat9 and Cat6 (up to 450Mbits/sec download)
Size (WDH)	76.1 x 7.6 x 153.2mm
Weight	171g
Operating system	Android 5.1.1 Lollipop
Battery size	3,000mAh