Samsung Galaxy Note 4 announced

Credit: Samsung/BusinessWeek

A few features worth noting:

● Metal/premium construction/premium product/quality feel/etc — Samsung has a record of using less glass & metal than some other manufacturers in its phones. Reviewers have been banging on about this for years. With the Note 4, Samsung has incorporated some metal into the case. One of the reasons I abandoned the iPhone 4 was its fragile glass/metal construction. Have you ever dropped a phone? Is there anyone who hasn't? If I'm carrying hundreds of dollars worth of hardware, that I depend on for a large & growing list of functions, I'd prefer something with the resilience of a basketball. That's not going to happen, but a minimum of glass, & replacing metal with shock-absorbing plastic is a good start. Better is to put it in a case/cover as well, which, fortunately, can make glass/metal/plastic construction moot, if you manage to chose the right one.

● Ultra low power mode lets it run all night on standby mode with only 5% battery.

● Fast charge to 50% — between this, ultra low power mode & the very slightly larger 3220 mAh battery, this thing should never let you down.

● Increased resolution — screen size is unchanged at 5.7 inches, but resolution has been increased from 1920 x 1080 to 2560 x 1440. Attention all mobile phone manufacturers: it is some time since anyone has been able to see the individual pixels in the display of top-of-the-line mobile devices. Enough already! The only practical consequence of further increasing resolution is the negative effect on battery life.

● Front facing camera resolution has been increased from 2 megapixels to 3.7 MP. Focal length has been shortened, increasing the viewing angle to 120 degrees. Although this will let you fit more people into a selfie, increased fish-eye effect won't make them look any better.

● Rear camera — resolution increased from 13 to 16 megapixels & optical image stabilisation added, adds up to better images.

Reviews:

http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/business-it/hands-on-review-samsung-galaxy-note-4-and-note-edge-20140904-10c6yn.html

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/mobile-phone/3512336/samsung-galaxy-new-note-4-release-date-price-specs-uk-photos-video-teaser-today/

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2014/09/samsung-galaxy-note-4-better-in-all-the-right-places/

http://bgr.com/2014/09/03/galaxy-note-4-review-pt-1-hands-on/ / long distance wireless charging Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Snapdragon 800 3 GB RAM Samsung phablet Galaxy Note 4 faux fake leather like effect rear metal frame 5.7-inch Super AMOLED screen quad HD QHD resolution 2,560 x 1,440 extra grunt 2.3GHz Qualcomm 805 cpu processor Snapdragon 800 phablets stylus phones mobile phone cell smart phone smartphone metal-frame metal frame Samsung Galaxy Alpha Korean S5 big screen phones brushed aluminium fingerprint sensor Super AMOLED 13 MP 16 MP OIS optical image stabilisation quad core processor Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 chipset2.5GHz Adreno 420 GPU 4GB of RAM 3GB RAM 64-bit processor Android octa-core Exynos 5433 four low-powered cores 1.3GHz four higher powered cores 2.3GHz Mali-T760 GPU 16 32 64 GB microSD storage 128GB stylus tablet phablet Ultra Power Saving Mode TouchWiz UI charger wireless charging charging plate charge QHD display quad octa core processor aluminium frame QHD screen /