Impartial on it. I came from the note 4 and a long line of smartphones before that. I fel in love with my note 4 right away, almost all positives. Unfortunately this one feels like every phone I had before the note 4, it's got alot of positives and negatives.
Positives:
1. Phone is gorgeous
2. Fingerprint scanner works impressively fast and accurately. Serious, I am super impressed with how well it works.
3. Auto brightness seems to work better.
4. Waterproof. Not a big deal because I've never had water damage, but now I don't have to stress about it.
5. Updated android has some nice new features and optimizations
Negatives:
1. Camera is worse. I get it that the pixels are bigger and the photo ARE better in the dark. blah blah blah. I take most my photos and videos outside with ample light. For me it's a lose lose. I never take pictures with terrible lighting and when I do, they still aren't gonna be great from a cell phone anyways. I wish they atleast stuck with 16MP. My note 4's videos and pictures were beautiful. The only thing better is my DSLR and honestly it would give it a run for its money for pre-processed standard pictures.
2. Battery: It's not worse than my Note 4's but it's not better. What a disappointment. They both barely last the full average day for me. Anything outside the average and I have to charge it. Why cut corners on battery? To slim it down an unfathomable amount? Most people put huge cases on it anyways, who cares if its a hair bigger or smaller. The size race ended years ago.
3. Messaging: Stock app would continually freeze on me after I imported my last phones messages. I downloaded Chomp SMS and use that flawlessly, so not a big deal. But after so many years I have no idea how they still can't figure it out but aftermarket apps can.
4. Fragility: I run my phones naked. My note 4 has been dropped dozens of times over the years and has been great. In fact I have never had a cracked screen with any of my phones. However with this one I am actually nervous. The screen is curved around the edges which will definitely make it a weak point. Also it now has 2 glass sides to worry about.
5. Speed: At first it was actually laggy and alot of apps had kinks. After doing alot of organization and deleting bloatware it is no longer laggy and works great. The problem is that it is literally not any faster than my 2 year old note 4. What gives?!
6. Lost Features: In an futile effort to declutter touchwiz they deleted many useful features. Not any faster anyways but thanks for deleting the features.
Overall I was super happy with my note 4. The only reason I didn't just replace the aging battery and I upgraded is I was hoping for some pleasant surprises and because I have the money to. Unfortunately I was disappointed. If I could take the note 4, add waterproof abilities, put that fingerprint scanner in & update to the newest android. I would do it in a heartbeat. In fact I would even pay more money for it than I did this phone!
My wife upgraded too and she is pretty much on the brink of returning it and going back to the note 4. It's really sad because this phone is gorgeous, but there are just so many down falls. It finally FEELS like a flagship phone. But now it just doesn't function like one.
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