Note 4, the good and the bad, my thoughts so far

[Verizoned]

First post, but interested in hearing thoughts from others. I got my Note 4 a few days ago and then bought a 2014 Moto X the next day because the sound quality on calls was pretty bad coming from AT&T and an iphone 5s. Here's something I tried to post elsewhere:

First, I'm on Verizon in the San Francisco area. I'm coming from AT&T and an iPhone 5s. So far, the voice quality on calls is worse for sure. Overall the phone offers a ton of features, but many things don't feel very polished. Today I bought a 2014 Moto X to compare and I'll keep one of them (thanks Best Buy!).

- External speaker on the Note 4 is poor. Tinny and distorted compared to the iphone 5s and especially to the Moto X which has a GREAT sounding speaker

- Sluggish. It's not terrible, it's actually good in terms of responsiveness but if compared to using the iphone 5s, the Moto X or my Nexus 7 tablet it is slower.

- Terrible noise reduction, smearing and over sharpening on pictures. This is fairly typical for camera phones however. I guess my expectations are too high in this area. The iPhone 5s that I had actually took very good photos though. The color quality on the Note 4 is very good, the stabilization does actually work well. The problem is when you look at any picture at 100% view (either on the phone or on a computer) you can see terrible blurring of details and smearing, and then sharpening artifacts. I might be able to excuse this in poor light but this happens in good lighting situations as well. Anyway, decent for a phone, but the iPhone 5s photos were better. The 2014 Moto X if you're interested is much worse (terrible in low light and no stabilization, I need to do some tests with it mounted to a tripod). So, the camera is somewhat of a disappointment. UPDATE: did outdoor daylight shots with both cameras Note 4 photos a little better but the surprise was that in good light the Moto X camera was almost as good and i didn't notice the smearing/sharpening issues as much as on the Note 4.

- Music. At first listen, the Samsung sound alive software does a very nice job of adding digital eq and other effects (tube amp, echos etc) and music thru headphones sounds very very good. This has been the big surprise on the phone..the sound thru headphones impressed me (at first, read on). It does not have enough power to drive a lot of headphones though. So -1 for the weak amp. I tested it with my Sennheiser Amperiors, Sennheiser HD650's, Hifiman HE-400's and Sony MDR-MA900's. No surprise that on the efficient headphones (amperiors and MA900's) it sounded the best. Oddly I took the line out into a dedicated headphone amp (Schitt Asgard 2) and it sounded terrible. Not sure what is going on here. Suffice to say when hooking headphones directly to the Note 4 I think you will be impressed. Having said that, the same headphones on the Moto X sound BETTER. The Moto X has a bit cleaner sound and a bit more power to drive the headphones.

UPDATE: Another day of listening and the sound of the Note 4 is really starting to bother me. It has a lot more distortion at 75% volume than the Moto X does. Reminds me of ipods that no matter what volume you are at, as soon as you use any eq you get noticeable distortion. It also rolls offf bth high and low frequencies sooner than that Moto X. Another day on the Moto X and the sound is really really good. The Note 4 external speaker is crappy and combined with a distorted signal from the phone itself it's just not that great. The Moto X has a very good speaker and minimal distortion coming from the electronics to make a big improvement.

- I have not played with the sPen much so won't comment on that.
- The Verizon model of the Note 4 uses a DIFFERENT size hole for the mic so many Note 4 cases will not work properly.
- Some of the navigation when using the Samsung apps just doesn't make sense when laid on top of regular Android. They need to work on their apps more.

The overall experience with the phone feels nowhere as polished as an iphone or the moto x. Having said that it does offer some really important features that those two don't - SD card memory expansion, removable battery. I'm not sure which phone I'll keep. The Note 4 just has so many bells and whistles it's very easy to get enticed by them, but the overall quality of the hardware and software just don't feel as well done as the Moto X or iphone.

My BIGGEST ISSUE is voice quality as a phone. It's just not that great so far. If the Moto X beats it here I may end up with that.

UPDATE: Well day two and no surprise the Moto X is the best sounding cell phone I've ever used. I would say the radio in it is no better than the Note, but the audio circuitry and software is much better. Having said ALL of that, I still may keep the note instead, for the following reasons -

- Expandable memory
- battery life
- sHealth of all things. I'm kind of thinking I might get some use out of it.

One other note...in bright sunlight the Moto X screen was better. I was not expecting that. All of the above are just my opinions of course.

UPDATE: forgot to mention, the delay in clicking the screen to take a pic and the pic being taken is over a second maybe even two. This is very sluggish. I made sure all other apps were closed to try to speed this up but it didn't work. The Moto X is a lot faster FWIW.

 

[M3Stang]

Really good insight. I just came from an iPhone 5 with iOS 8 and I can agree with you that it was ALOT more polished. Although the note 4 is my first android phone ever, the clunkiness doesnt really bother me because I knew that getting into it. The way I look at it, the android os is more of an "enthusiast" based OS being that it is open source, and has so many customization features. iOS is more for the average joe who wants a smartphone that just "works" and doesnt really have any sort of customization, other than changing your wallpaper, and oh, reorganizing your apps on the home screen and the limited 4 space dock. (sarcasm lol)

 

[IrishFXDB]

Nice to see grounded feedback for a change. Be ready for a likely backlash from the fanboy set, though.

Regarding call quality, I had the T-Mobile version, but that stupid HD voice crap drive me insane. I was on the Note 4 and my wife adopted my old S5 so both phones were capable of using HD voice and when both phones are capable there is no way to turn it off. For the life of me I can't understand why it's called "HD Voice"... It sounds awful. I'm not sure if Verizon offers something similar, but that might have been what you were experiencing if they do.

I personally returned the Note 4 for now. I need to see the Nexus 6 first since my reason behind buying the Note 4 (and 2 and 3 in the past) was screen size and battery life. I couldn't care less about the S Pen, I don't do battery swapping, I don't use SD cards, I hate Touchwiz, etc. If the Nexus 6 bombs I'll get the Note 4 again, but I need to compare first hand before I commit.

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[BJM9282]

Coming from 6 years of iPhones and after a couple of weeks with the Note 4, I do agree with pretty much everything you said:

iOS is definitely more polished and "smooth" feeling. Hopefully Lollipop will fix this.

The camera on my iPhone 5 was faster and seemed to take better pictures (I think this is mainly due to over-processing on Samsung's part). Sometimes I'm experiencing a 1-2 second lag between pushing the shutter button and the phone actually taking the picture . Again, I'm hoping Lollipop fixes the over-processing issue with the ability to take RAW photos.

The speaker of the Note 4 is definitely tinny compared to the iPhone, but not a bad speaker by any means.

I miss iMessage and FaceTime. I send and receive lots of MMS messages and now that they have to go through AT&T'S servers rather than through Apple's, half the time I don't receive them or my recipient doesn't receive them and when I do receive them, they're so compressed that they look like an 8-bit video game. This isn't the Note's fault though. It's just an observation coming from iOS.

I can't stand the lag when I press the recent apps button.

All of that being said, the multi-tasking abilities of the Note 4 far exceed that of the iPhone. The customizability of Android is great! The screen is beautiful! The S Pen is a nice feature. I love the ability to use sd cards and the user-replaceable battery. I really do love the Note 4 and I'm just hoping Lollipop fixes the majority of my gripes. If so, it'll be the closest to a perfect phone that I've ever gotten.

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[bassplayrguy]

Maybe the Verizon version? I have used iphone and note 4 but have experienced noned of these problems My Note 4 on ATT is the best phone I have used to date No lag or hesitation, excellent picture quality and screen, sound is good. I don't know. Maybe Verizons is different.

 

[IrishFXDB]

I miss iMessage and FaceTime. I send and receive lots of MMS messages and now that they have to go through AT&T'S servers rather than through Apple's, half the time I don't receive them or my recipient doesn't receive them and when I do receive them, they're so compressed that they look like an 8-bit video game. This isn't the Note's fault though. It's just an observation coming from iOS.

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If you didn't disable iMesaage before dumping the iPhone it can cause issues with people not getting your SMS and MMS messages if they are still on iPhones. You have to contact Apple support and have them completely disassociate your number from iMessage if that is the case (unless you still have the device to turn it off). The same can happen when people with iPhones message you. Finally, even if you did disable it at the device level before dumping the iPhone it can still happen, as it did to me the last time I gave up an iPhone.

The 8 bit video thing isn't normal and shouldn't be caused by the above, though - not sure what that's about.

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[BJM9282]

Maybe the Verizon version? I have used iphone and note 4 but have experienced noned of these problems My Note 4 on ATT is the best phone I have used to date No lag or hesitation, excellent picture quality and screen, sound is good. I don't know. Maybe Verizons is different.

I'm using the AT&T version. At this point, there's nothing to lead me to believe there's a hardware issue with my phone. Makes me wonder if some of the issues aren't caused be certain apps I've installed because I keep seeing posts here and there from people who have a totally lag-free device and they say everything is perfect with their phone. Since I'm not the one using their phone, I have no room to debate whether or not it's true.

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[LegalAmerican]

I enjoyed reading your feedback, however I was disturbed when you said you hadn't used the S pen so you wont comment on that.

I don't understand why ANYONE would buy the Note series if you aren't going to use the S pen. If you want the Samsung feel, get the S series. If you want a big phone, get one of the many big phones. People buy a Note, and then they compare it to all these other devices, and almost ALWAYS they follow it up with: "I didn't use the Note's biggest strength, so I can't comment on that."

My wife has the Moto X 2014 and the speaker is amazing. I love how snappy it is to use, and she loves it as well. My dad also has that phone and that was my second choice. The Note has good and bad to discuss, but might I recommend trying out the best that the Note has to offer instead of just comparing the best that other phones have to offer to the Note, and not the best of what the Note has to offer to other phones?

 

[Almeuit]

Welcome to Android Central! It sounds like you honestly don't like the Note 4 very much -- You may want to reconsider if you're still within your return window .

 

[IrishFXDB]

I enjoyed reading your feedback, however I was disturbed when you said you hadn't used the S pen so you wont comment on that.

I don't understand why ANYONE would buy the Note series if you aren't going to use the S pen. If you want the Samsung feel, get the S series. If you want a big phone, get one of the many big phones. People buy a Note, and then they compare it to all these other devices, and almost ALWAYS they follow it up with: "I didn't use the Note's biggest strength, so I can't comment on that."

My wife has the Moto X 2014 and the speaker is amazing. I love how snappy it is to use, and she loves it as well. My dad also has that phone and that was my second choice. The Note has good and bad to discuss, but might I recommend trying out the best that the Note has to offer instead of just comparing the best that other phones have to offer to the Note, and not the best of what the Note has to offer to other phones?

I've owned the Note 2, 3, and 4 and never gave half a damn about the S Pen. If you don't need to hand write notes and you don't do artistic things, what's so great about the pen? The size and battery life have always been the Note series killer features - the pen has always been an item that is awesome to a select group of people and worthless to the rest no matter how much Samsung tries to build it up.

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[BJM9282]

If you didn't disable iMesaage before dumping the iPhone it can cause issues with people not getting your SMS and MMS messages if they are still on iPhones. You have to contact Apple support and have them completely disassociate your number from iMessage if that is the case. The same can happen when people with iPhones message you.

The 8 bit video thing isn't normal and shouldn't be caused by the above, though - not sure what that's about.

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Thanks for that! I did disable iMessage on my iPhone and iPad before receiving the Note 4, but I didn't know I had to call Apple and have them deregister my number.

As for mms compression, apparently this is an issue many people have had with AT&T. There are several posts on android central regarding this. Apparently there's really no fix for it. I've tried hangouts and just get an error when someone sends me an mms message. I'm wondering if I need to play around with the APN settings, but I have no idea which is the best to use.

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[lterry913]

Take stability off in camera settings...this speeds up photo shooting...or use burst which take a bunch of quick shots and lets you choose which is best. No phone I have found has the best of everything but I love my note so far.

 

[LegalAmerican]

I've owned the Note 2, 3, and 4 and never gave half a damn about the S Pen. If you don't need to hand write notes and you don't do artistic things, what's so great about the pen? The size and battery life have always been the Note series killer features - the pen has always been an item that is awesome to a select group of people and worthless to the rest no matter how much Samsung tries to build it up.

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Then don't buy a Note! Samsung has chosen to make the Note ABOUT the S pen. If you don't give a hot da** about it, then all i'm saying is don't buy it and then wonder why the device doesn't seem as special as another device that focused on something you require. If I absolutely HAVE to have amazing external speaker quality, I am not going to buy an HTC One and then a Galaxy S5 and compare the two and say that the S5 let me down tremendously. IT didn't. I just didn't do my research and I set it up for failure. Others who might want the kitchen sink in terms of features, would be doing themselves a disservice getting a Nexus and saying it sucks because it didn't do what the S5 did.

I'm no Samsung fanboy, however I am a fanboy of doing research and looking into the strengths of a phone before I choose which one underperforms based on my expectations. That's all i'm saying. I know the S pen isn't for everyone, and those people don't need to buy a Note. If you want the big screen, get the Nexus 6 or the Galaxy Mega or the iPhone 6+ or the G flex, or any number of other big screens that focus on what you do need/want in a device.

 

[IrishFXDB]

Thanks for that! I did disable iMessage on my iPhone and iPad before receiving the Note 4, but I didn't know I had to call Apple and have them deregister my number.

As for mms compression, apparently this is an issue many people have had with AT&T. There are several posts on android central regarding this. Apparently there's really no fix for it. I've tried hangouts and just get an error when someone sends me an mms message. I'm wondering if I need to play around with the APN settings, but I have no idea which is the best to use.

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No problem. Calling Apple isn't always required, but sometimes things get "stuck" so it's worth a shot.

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[IrishFXDB]

Then don't buy a Note! Samsung has chosen to make the Note ABOUT the S pen. If you don't give a hot da** about it, then all i'm saying is don't buy it and then wonder why the device doesn't seem as special as another device that focused on something you require. If I absolutely HAVE to have amazing external speaker quality, I am not going to buy an HTC One and then a Galaxy S5 and compare the two and say that the S5 let me down tremendously. IT didn't. I just didn't do my research and I set it up for failure. Others who might want the kitchen sink in terms of features, would be doing themselves a disservice getting a Nexus and saying it sucks because it didn't do what the S5 did.

I'm no Samsung fanboy, however I am a fanboy of doing research and looking into the strengths of a phone before I choose which one underperforms based on my expectations. That's all i'm saying. I know the S pen isn't for everyone, and those people don't need to buy a Note. If you want the big screen, get the Nexus 6 or the Galaxy Mega or the iPhone 6+ or the G flex, or any number of other big screens that focus on what you do need/want in a device.

You didn't actually answer my question about what's so great about the pen if you aren't in one of the select groups of people I mentioned.

Also, some of the other phones you mentioned aren't even out yet, or just came out. The others are not on the same flagship level as the Note series from a hardware perspective, and the Galaxy Mega is ridiculous. Stop trying to act like the S Pen is the only reason to own the Note because it isn't. I have known a lot of people that owned Note phones and not one of them used the S Pen. The size and battery life has always been the leading reason people buy the Note series, not the pen, whether you want to accept it or not. The Note series also has a lot of other features outside the pen that other phones don't, or didn't until recently, have - like multi window.

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[LegalAmerican]

You didn't actually answer my question about what's so great about the pen if you aren't in one of the select groups of people I mentioned.

Also, some of the other phones you mentioned aren't even out yet, or just came out. The others are not on the same flagship level as the Note series from a hardware perspective, and the Galaxy Mega is ridiculous. Stop trying to act like the S Pen is the only reason to own the Note because it isn't. I have known a lot of people that owned Note phones and not one of them used the S Pen.

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Why do I need to answer your question with specifics aside from just saying that I love the S pen capability? If you need specifics, i'll offer a few....I love the screenshot functionality, I love being able to then draw precise notes on top of a screenshot. I love using the function of clipping a small piece from a webpage and saving that to a prior note. I take notes in meetings, college classes, and my daughter loves to draw with it. There's so many reasons I love the S pen.

I know some people do not care for or need the S pen. And i'm not saying that's the ONLY good thing about it. what I am saying, is that Samsung has chosen to focus on the S pen when it comes to the Note series, and everything else is just small improvements upon the S series that gets released a few months prior. My entire point, is that the Note's biggest strength is that it has the S pen functionality. You seem offended that Samsung pushes the S pen so hard, yet it's their NOTE device line. Why wouldn't they push it when it's the entire point of the Note? Sure, there's many other great features like the metal trim, incredible screen, screen size, multitasking functionality, etc.. But there are other outstanding devices on the market that meet most of those categories and they do not push any s pen.

The phones I mentioned were just off the top of my head, so I apologize if those I mentioned did not meet your expectations. However the Note came out just barely before the Nexus 6 was announced, so people are still within their return window if they don't need or are offended by the S pen that they can return it and get the Nexus. That's why I mentioned that as an alternative even though it's not yet on shelves.

Back to my original point, each device has it's strengths and no one should or can expect the Note to compare in terms of external speaker to the HTC One or Moto X. The camera, that should meet expectations and outperform an iPhone 5s or whatever, so Samsung better release a software update to improve the performance because I too have had many of the problems OP mentioned.

 

[IrishFXDB]

Why do I need to answer your question with specifics aside from just saying that I love the S pen capability? If you need specifics, i'll offer a few....I love the screenshot functionality, I love being able to then draw precise notes on top of a screenshot. I love using the function of clipping a small piece from a webpage and saving that to a prior note. I take notes in meetings, college classes, and my daughter loves to draw with it. There's so many reasons I love the S pen.

I know some people do not care for or need the S pen. And i'm not saying that's the ONLY good thing about it. what I am saying, is that Samsung has chosen to focus on the S pen when it comes to the Note series, and everything else is just small improvements upon the S series that gets released a few months prior. My entire point, is that the Note's biggest strength is that it has the S pen functionality. You seem offended that Samsung pushes the S pen so hard, yet it's their NOTE device line. Why wouldn't they push it when it's the entire point of the Note? Sure, there's many other great features like the metal trim, incredible screen, screen size, multitasking functionality, etc.. But there are other outstanding devices on the market that meet most of those categories and they do not push any s pen.

The phones I mentioned were just off the top of my head, so I apologize if those I mentioned did not meet your expectations. However the Note came out just barely before the Nexus 6 was announced, so people are still within their return window if they don't need or are offended by the S pen that they can return it and get the Nexus. That's why I mentioned that as an alternative even though it's not yet on shelves.

Back to my original point, each device has it's strengths and no one should or can expect the Note to compare in terms of external speaker to the HTC One or Moto X. The camera, that should meet expectations and outperform an iPhone 5s or whatever, so Samsung better release a software update to improve the performance because I too have had many of the problems OP mentioned.

So YOU love the S Pen, and for YOU it is the killer feature. That does not mean someone who doesn't care about it should ignore the Note.

I don't hate the S Pen, nor do I hate Samsung for including it. I hate that people come into threads like this and start shooting someone down for not liking or caring about the S Pen and then telling them they should have never gotten the Note because the S Pen is the entire reason to get the Note when that isn't remotely true.

Even without the S Pen you have:

Top of the line specs
Huge screen
All day and then some battery
Multi window
Great resolution
The rest of the S features if you care about that
A good camera

The LG Flex and the Galaxy Mega can't hold a candle to the specs and finish of the Note 4, the LG G3 has a terrible screen by comparison and lesser specs, the iPhone 6 Plus is an Apple device and not everyone wants Apple nor do they want a phone BIGGER than the Note 4 with a smaller screen, the Nexus 6 was announced 4 days AFTER the primary Note 4 launch and a month after Note 4 preorders started and it doesn't even have a concrete release date yet.

I don't hate Samsung and I don't hate the S Pen. I hate people passing their opinion as fact like you did and then saying people that don't like or care about the S Pen shouldn't even get the Note and their criticisms hold no weight because of it. YOU love the S Pen and it is THE reason to own a Note for YOU, but you are NOT everyone and you don't speak for everyone.

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[nugj]

Well I think you could hardly blame a guy for getting one of the earlier Notes and not using the S pen. Samsung basically invented the phablet market space. So virtually everything else is a tag along and was not available at one point in time. On the other hand, at least in my case, microSD would not be enough on its own strength to push me into a Note. IMO, if you don't use the S pen now there are so many other devices I would consider more suitable. However if you really look into what the S pen does (don't expect us or at least me to tell you) then it makes the Note much more fit the phablet mold which makes sense by the way. Again see inventor of the market space above. To me, almost everything else, especially an iPhone 6 is for the most part a blown up phone or OK blown up smartphone if you want.

As for audio quality...frankly there is no such thing as "audio quality" on these devices. There is only some version of bad to worse. People commenting that the HTC is for audiophiles makes me laugh. An audiophile would listen to that thing and spit in your eye. From a practical perspective you are really talking about using ear buds because these device are things you carry. How much garbage do you really think you are going to carry with them? So now you are down to really good (meaning expensive) ear buds on one of these devices producing probably as good as you are going to get from a practical perspective....really.....REALLY!!!! I don't care about phone call audio quality either. As long as it does not make my ears bleed...i am fine with it. You think these things are bad? Should have heard twisted pair wired phone in the 50's.

 

[Baby_Doc]

I enjoyed reading your feedback, however I was disturbed when you said you hadn't used the S pen so you wont comment on that.

I don't understand why ANYONE would buy the Note series if you aren't going to use the S pen. If you want the Samsung feel, get the S series. If you want a big phone, get one of the many big phones. People buy a Note, and then they compare it to all these other devices, and almost ALWAYS they follow it up with: "I didn't use the Note's biggest strength, so I can't comment on that."

My wife has the Moto X 2014 and the speaker is amazing. I love how snappy it is to use, and she loves it as well. My dad also has that phone and that was my second choice. The Note has good and bad to discuss, but might I recommend trying out the best that the Note has to offer instead of just comparing the best that other phones have to offer to the Note, and not the best of what the Note has to offer to other phones?

Only 10 percent of note users frequently use their s - pen according to a survey. I don't use mine. I bought my Note primarily because it had all the features of the S5 and more. The more I particularly wanted was the bigger screen.

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[IrishFXDB]

Well I think you could hardly blame a guy for getting one of the earlier Notes and not using the S pen. Samsung basically invented the phablet market space. So virtually everything else is a tag along and was not available at one point in time. On the other hand, at least in my case, microSD would not be enough on its own strength to push me into a Note. IMO, if you don't use the S pen now there are so many other devices I would consider more suitable. However if you really look into what the S pen does (don't expect us or at least me to tell you) then it makes the Note much more fit the phablet mold which makes sense by the way. Again see inventor of the market space above. To me, almost everything else, especially an iPhone 6 is for the most part a blown up phone or OK blown up smartphone if you want.

As for audio quality...frankly there is no such thing as "audio quality" on these devices. There is only some version of bad to worse. People commenting that the HDC is for audiophiles makes me laugh. An audiophile would listen to that thing and spit in your eye. From a practical perspective you are really talking about using ear buds because these device are things you carry. How much garbage do you really think you are going to carry with them? So now you are down to really good (meaning expensive) ear buds on one of these devices producing probably as good as you are going to get from a practical perspective....really.....REALLY!!!! I don't care about phone call audio quality either. As long as it does not make my ears bleed...i am fine with it. You think these things are bad? Should have heard twisted pair wired phone in the 50's.

What devices match the Note 4 on screen, specs, camera, etc? Don't include the Nexus 6, we all know about the Nexus 6. I want to know what phones you can buy NOW that match the Note 4 on screen size, screen quality, specs, etc, that you should choose if you don't care about the S Pen. Nothing smaller than a 5.7" screen please, since that apparently isn't enough reason to buy a Note 4.

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