My father gifted me a Samsung Galaxy Note 4 6 months ago, when I first used it, it was the best phone I have ever had. Superb 2 day battery life, amazing camera, great screen especially for browsing the web.
Then came the curse called Lollipop update, I thought it's gonna make the phone better.....it only made it laggy, battery life went down from 2 days on average usage to 1 day max.....I hated my Note 4 so much at this point....so then I decided to root the phone and go back to Kit Kat 4.4.4 and by rooting it, I won't be forced to update to Lollipop, that went well initially, battery life became decent again, the lag factor was improved but overall, it's not as I wish, when you open apps like the camera for example, it's not instantaneous....
Additionally, I kept getting random errors saying "TouchWiz has stopped working" so I decided to forget about rooting (Knox warranty is now void though) and went back to Lollipop 5.0.1 but I still got the TouchWiz has stopped working error randomly. Seems like rooting was a bad idea as it seems to have destroyed my phone somehow...
I then sold it and got a BlackBerry Passport because I love physical keyboards..BIG mistake. This akward keyboard that has the numbers and symbols in a virtual keyboard defeats the whole purpose of being able to quickly type what you want, so I found myself actually slower in typing with this hybrid keyboard setup and I misses a lot of my apps even though I was able to sideload them through the Google Play Store they just don't look right because of the scaling.. Then the biggest problem with BlackBerry that I was facing with the BB Q10, BB Classic, and now with the BB Passport......I thought they might have fixed it by now on BB OS 10.3.2 but nope, the problem is randomly I would start getting duplicate contacts everywhere or contacts will just disappear. I lost many contacts in this process that I was now sick of BlackBerry and swore never to buy a BlackBerry again.....
So again, I was shopping for a new phone. I want a phone with a good camera as I don't have a digital camera and I want it to be super snappy and fast. Since I would never touch any iToy because I hate how hard it is to transfer songs to my phone using iTunes, my next choice was the Galaxy Note 5 even though that doesn't seem like a real upgrade from the Note 4 but it's still the best.....
Unfortunately, they don't sell the Note 5 in 64GB here in Dubai only 32GB and with no expandable SD Card slot, that won't do it for me since my data by itself (MP3s, Videos, Pics) is around 30GB by itself.
They do however sell the Galaxy S6 edge+ in 64GB so I asked the sales rep what is the difference between this and the Note 5 and she said the only difference is that it has no S-Pen! GREAT! I never used that gimmick even once on my Note 4 and didn't want an extra burden to worry about breaking it or losing it.
So I bought the Galaxy S6 edge+ Gold Color 64 GB and here is my mini review:
Build Quality = This is the highest quality phone I ever owned! Feels very premium and luxurious because of its platinum gold color.
Battery life = 2 days easily with moderate usage, I think the battery life is a bit better than the Note 5 due to the lack of the S-Pen but maybe I'm just imagining things. I was surprised that even though the batter is smaller in capacity than the Note 4 which has a 3200mAH battery and this one has a 3000mAH battery, the battery life is actually better. Mind you I never turn off any features, I want to enjoy everything in my phone so location is on, WiFi is on, 4G is on, you name it.
OS = It comes pre-loaded with Lollipop 5.1 so I didn't get all the bugs/glitches that were in 5.0.1, that's great.
PS: when I sold my Note 4 just a week back, it still hadn't received the update to 5.1 I think Samsung are practicing a cheap trick by not offering the update to the older phones to force people to buy their next new phone.
Snappiness = I am very sensitive to lag, this phone gives me the 0 lag factor even after owning it for 4 days and installing all my apps and literally torturing it. Love how everything opens instantly.
Example, on the Note 4, when I hit the active apps virtual button to get a scroll list of all my running apps, scrolling through them is super laggy and slow as if I was using a phone from the year 2000 with outdated hardware. With the Note 6 Edge+, scrolling through all my apps is super smooth. It's a night and day difference.
Camera = First of all, Samsung replaced the stupid shortcut of launching S-Voice by double tapping the home key which was one of the most useless apps ever IMHO and now replaced that shortcut to make it launch the camera when you double tap the home key. As simple as this sounds, this is a superb feature! now when you see something and want to quickly grab your phone to take a photo, all it takes is to double tap the home key button twice and the camera launches in less than a second!
I took a few photos of my cats with the camera and I was blown away by how fast the auto focus works and how sharp and vibrant the pictures look I could almost swear this was taken by a DSLR camera!
I am simply blown away by this phone. I am a very picky person usually but this phone fits all my needs and does it with style.
Picture example of a photo taken by the S6 edge+:
Then came the curse called Lollipop update, I thought it's gonna make the phone better.....it only made it laggy, battery life went down from 2 days on average usage to 1 day max.....I hated my Note 4 so much at this point....so then I decided to root the phone and go back to Kit Kat 4.4.4 and by rooting it, I won't be forced to update to Lollipop, that went well initially, battery life became decent again, the lag factor was improved but overall, it's not as I wish, when you open apps like the camera for example, it's not instantaneous....
Additionally, I kept getting random errors saying "TouchWiz has stopped working" so I decided to forget about rooting (Knox warranty is now void though) and went back to Lollipop 5.0.1 but I still got the TouchWiz has stopped working error randomly. Seems like rooting was a bad idea as it seems to have destroyed my phone somehow...
I then sold it and got a BlackBerry Passport because I love physical keyboards..BIG mistake. This akward keyboard that has the numbers and symbols in a virtual keyboard defeats the whole purpose of being able to quickly type what you want, so I found myself actually slower in typing with this hybrid keyboard setup and I misses a lot of my apps even though I was able to sideload them through the Google Play Store they just don't look right because of the scaling.. Then the biggest problem with BlackBerry that I was facing with the BB Q10, BB Classic, and now with the BB Passport......I thought they might have fixed it by now on BB OS 10.3.2 but nope, the problem is randomly I would start getting duplicate contacts everywhere or contacts will just disappear. I lost many contacts in this process that I was now sick of BlackBerry and swore never to buy a BlackBerry again.....
So again, I was shopping for a new phone. I want a phone with a good camera as I don't have a digital camera and I want it to be super snappy and fast. Since I would never touch any iToy because I hate how hard it is to transfer songs to my phone using iTunes, my next choice was the Galaxy Note 5 even though that doesn't seem like a real upgrade from the Note 4 but it's still the best.....
Unfortunately, they don't sell the Note 5 in 64GB here in Dubai only 32GB and with no expandable SD Card slot, that won't do it for me since my data by itself (MP3s, Videos, Pics) is around 30GB by itself.
They do however sell the Galaxy S6 edge+ in 64GB so I asked the sales rep what is the difference between this and the Note 5 and she said the only difference is that it has no S-Pen! GREAT! I never used that gimmick even once on my Note 4 and didn't want an extra burden to worry about breaking it or losing it.
So I bought the Galaxy S6 edge+ Gold Color 64 GB and here is my mini review:
Build Quality = This is the highest quality phone I ever owned! Feels very premium and luxurious because of its platinum gold color.
Battery life = 2 days easily with moderate usage, I think the battery life is a bit better than the Note 5 due to the lack of the S-Pen but maybe I'm just imagining things. I was surprised that even though the batter is smaller in capacity than the Note 4 which has a 3200mAH battery and this one has a 3000mAH battery, the battery life is actually better. Mind you I never turn off any features, I want to enjoy everything in my phone so location is on, WiFi is on, 4G is on, you name it.
OS = It comes pre-loaded with Lollipop 5.1 so I didn't get all the bugs/glitches that were in 5.0.1, that's great.
PS: when I sold my Note 4 just a week back, it still hadn't received the update to 5.1 I think Samsung are practicing a cheap trick by not offering the update to the older phones to force people to buy their next new phone.
Snappiness = I am very sensitive to lag, this phone gives me the 0 lag factor even after owning it for 4 days and installing all my apps and literally torturing it. Love how everything opens instantly.
Example, on the Note 4, when I hit the active apps virtual button to get a scroll list of all my running apps, scrolling through them is super laggy and slow as if I was using a phone from the year 2000 with outdated hardware. With the Note 6 Edge+, scrolling through all my apps is super smooth. It's a night and day difference.
Camera = First of all, Samsung replaced the stupid shortcut of launching S-Voice by double tapping the home key which was one of the most useless apps ever IMHO and now replaced that shortcut to make it launch the camera when you double tap the home key. As simple as this sounds, this is a superb feature! now when you see something and want to quickly grab your phone to take a photo, all it takes is to double tap the home key button twice and the camera launches in less than a second!
I took a few photos of my cats with the camera and I was blown away by how fast the auto focus works and how sharp and vibrant the pictures look I could almost swear this was taken by a DSLR camera!
I am simply blown away by this phone. I am a very picky person usually but this phone fits all my needs and does it with style.
Picture example of a photo taken by the S6 edge+: