Samsung has unveiled the Galaxy Note 4: its fourth-generation smartphone with a stylus for taking notes and sketching. Here's everything you need to know about the Note 4 release date, price and specs in the UK. See also: Galaxy Note 4 launch - as it happened
The Note 4 looks much like the Note 3, having the same size 5.7in screen, soft-textured back and metal band around the edge. However, there are plenty of changes and updates: keep reading to find out what they are.
Samsung Galaxy Note 4: Release date
The Note 4 will go on sale in October, so there's not long to wait. As soon as we have an exact date for the UK release, we'll update this story. It will be available in four colours: black, white, gold and pink.
See also: Samsung Galaxy Note 4 vs Samsung Galaxy S5 and Samsung Galaxy Note 3 vs Samsung Galaxy Note 4.
Samsung Galaxy Note 4: Price
There's still no word on a UK price, but the Note 4 is likely to come in between £550 and £600 – similar to the Galaxy S5.
Samsung Galaxy Note 4: specifications
Screen
The big news as far as hardware is concerned is that the screen is now a 'Quad HD' display, with a resolution of 2560x1440 - that's a whopping 515ppi. It's covered in '2.5D glass' which means it has a very slight curve. The Note 3 has a flat screen with merely a full HD 1920x1080 resolution. The 5.7in diagonal means it's not much larger than many phones these days, and smaller than the LG G Flex
UV sensor
Another big feature, which Samsung didn't really mention during the launch is that the Note 4 is the first mobile device with a built-in UV sensor. Part of the S Health system, it will warn users if they are getting too much sun.
There are a total of 5 UV index levels: Low, Moderate, High, Very High and Extreme, and users will be presented with different precautions based on the level of the sun’s ultraviolet radiation.
Fingerprint scanner
The fingerprint scanner is improved in the Note 4. All four fingerprint canning features in the Galaxy S5 - Screen Lock, Private Mode, Samsung Account Verification and PayPal Payments - are coming to the Note 4.
S-Pen
The S-Pen - or stylus - now has 2048 levels of pressure sensing, double that of the Note 3. A new S-Pen feature is Smart Select which allows you to capture several pieces of information at once. For example, you could clip a couple of hotels from TripAdvisor and then some images from another source, then share that group of selections with a contact by dragging and dropping into an email.
The new Snap Note feature can automatically straighten images taken with the camera, and then convert any text into editable copy.
Microphones
Not all notes are visual, and the voice recorder has been improved in the Note 4 by using three microphones to record sounds from 8 distinct directions. The interview mode uses noise suppression to isolate the interviewee and make the voice clearer. Noise cancellation, using the extra microphones, also improves phone calls, especially when using speaker phone.
Cameras:
Instead of talking about numbers, Samsung says it wants to concentrate on ease of use and ‘quality images’ with the Note 4. To that end, it has a 3.7Mp front-facing camera (with a bright f1.9 aperture) and a 16Mp rear camera with optical image stabilisation.
The bigger aperture makes the front camera 60 percent brighter than the Note 3, so it should provide better images in dim conditions. It's also possible to use the heart-rate sensor on the back as a shutter button.
Another change on the front camera is that it has a wider viewing angle of 90 degrees (as opposed to the 77 degrees of the Note 3) and there’s also a panorama mode which increases the angle to 120 degrees.
Battery life:
A new fast charging charges from zero to 50 percent in 30 minutes. It takes about 55 minutes to charge the Note 3 from empty to half full. The Note 4 also has lower power consumption, which gives a 7.5 percent increase in battery life, despite having the higher-resolution screen and only marginally higher-capacity 3220mAh battery (the Note 3 has a 3200mAh cell.
Storage and memory
The Note 4 has 32GB of internal storage and a microSD card slot capable of accepting up to 64GB cards. Contradicing rumours of 4GB of RAM, there's actually 3GB.
The full specifications are below:
| Network | 2.5G (GSM/ GPRS/ EDGE) : 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz |
| AP | 2.7 GHz Quad-Core Processor |
| Display | 5.7 inch (143.9mm) Quad HD Super AMOLED (2560 x 1440) |
| OS | Android 4.4 (KitKat) |
| Camera | Rear Facing: 16Mp Auto Focus camera with Smart OIS |
| Rear Facing Camera : HDR (Rich tone), Selective Focus, Rear-cam Selfie, Beauty face, Virtual Tour Shot, Shot & More, Dual Camera | |
| Video | Codec: H.264, MPEG-4, H.263, VC-1, WMV7, WMV8, Sorenson Spark, MP43, VP8 |
| Audio | Codec: MP3, AAC/AAC?/eAAC?, WMA, AMR-NB/WB, Vorbis, FLAC(?) |
| S Pen Optimized Features | Air Command (Action Memo, Smart Select, Image Clip, Screen Write) |
| Additional Features | Multi Window |
| Ultra Power Saving Mode | |
| Voice Recorder (Normal Mode, Interview Mode, Meeting Mode, Voice Memo) | |
| Download Booster | |
| S Health 3.5 | |
| Dynamic Lock Screen | |
| Briefing | |
| Google Mobile Services | Chrome, Drive, Photos, Gmail, Google, Google+, Google Settings, Hangouts, Maps, Play Books, Play Games, Play Newsstand, Play Movie & TV, Play Music, Play Store, Voice Search, YouTube |
| Connectivity | WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac (HT80) MIMO PCIe |
| Sensor | Gesture, Accelerometer, Geo-magnetic, Gyroscope, RGB,IR-LED |
| Memory | 32 GB Internal memory ? micro SD slot (up to 64GB) |
| Dimension | 153.5 x 78.6 x 8.5mm, 176g |
| Battery | Li-ion 3,220mAh, Fast Charging (Adaptive Fast Charging & QC2.0) |
Samsung Galaxy Note 4: Software
The Note 4 runs Android KitKat - no surprises there - but Samsung has also worked on the user interface to make it easier to use.
One of the biggest complaints from users was that Multi Window was too hard to use, and we'd have to agree. On the Note 4, Multi Window is part of the recent key. Using your finger or the S-Pen you can minimise an app and make it run as a ‘pop out’ window, as well as using split view where you can run two apps, one in each half of the screen. Plus, it's simple to adjust how much space to give each app by dragging the dividing line.
Other software changes include dynamic lock screens with images from third-party providers including Yahoo! You can, of course, choose your own images.
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