After a period of slight stagnation, with iterative changes to its smartphone line, it’s fair to say that Samsung’ back with a bang with its Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge handsets. Made of metal and glass, with all-new internals, these new handsets are massive improvements over their predecessors. They’re also good clues as to what Samsung will do with its stylus-controlled phablet Galaxy Note range. Here we’re rounding up all of the current rumours to find out what the Note 5 has in store for us.
Release date
Samsung is a creature of habit, releasing a new model in each range at roughly the same time each year. It has always launched the Galaxy Note at IFA in September, so we’d assume that it will do the same this time around with the Note 5. IFA takes place between the 4th and the 9th September 2015, so expect the Note 5 to be launched then: Samsung usually launches at a press day before the show launches, so expect the handset to be unveiled on the 2nd or 3rd September.
What we learned from the Galaxy S6
Last year, it was the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 that proved to be the high-end flagship handset for Samsung, with a fast processor and higher-resolution screen than the Galaxy S5. This year, we suspect that things are going to be different, with the Galaxy S6 range proving to be the basis of the Note 5.
There’s also a good chance that the Note 5 will use a similar design to the Galaxy S6, with a metal body bonded to a glass rear. That would mean that the Note range would lose the soft-touch plastic rear and changeable battery. An alternative is that the Note 5 retains a similar design to the Note 4 (itself based on the Alpha), with a metal body, but a removable plastic rear.
We may also find that Samsung removes the memory card slot, as it did with the S6. While this stops people cheaply upgrading their handsets, we don’t have a problem with built-in memory: it’s more convenient and we’ve seen most big handset manufacturers move this way.
Specifications
With the Galaxy S6 range, Samsung moved away from Qualcomm and manufactured its own Exynos SoC. This 64-bit CPU has proven to be incredibly powerful and, as the first mobile chip to use a 14nm fabrication process, power efficient. It seems unlikely, given the investment it must have taken to create these chips, that Samsung would go back on itself and buy from Qualcomm again. As a result, we’re expecting the Note 5 to have the same chip as the S6.
We can also expect the Note 5 to use Samsung’s embedded package on package (ePoP) memory. This creates a single memory package that contains 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. The benefit is that this design takes up less room, so there’s more room for a bigger battery, and it’s more energy efficient, improving battery life. Samsung has announced that it’s started mass-manufacturing ePoP.
“By offering our new high-density ePoP memory for flagship smartphones, Samsung expects to provide its customers with significant design benefits, while enabling faster and longer operation of multi-tasking features,” Jeeho Baek, Senior Vice President of Memory Marketing at Samsung Electronics said in a press release. “We plan to expand our line-up of ePoP memory with packages involving enhancements in performance and density over the next few years, to further add to the growth of premium mobile market.”
Screen size and resolution
There have been reports that Samsung is planning to go for a 4K screen for the Note 5, although that seems unlikely, as the higher resolution would decrease battery life. Far more likely, is that the Note 5 will have the same 2,560x1,440 resolution as the Galaxy S6 and Note 4. Size-wises, people have suggested that the handset may be 5.9in although a 5.7in display, as with the existing Note would still work well.
A bigger question is, will the phone come in two varieties, as with the S6? In other words, will we get a flat phone and a curved edge device? We’ve already had a Galaxy Note Edge, although that handset only curved on one side, and it felt like a proto-type for the Galaxy S6 Edge. There’s a chance that Samsung would move the S6 Edge’s technology into a bigger form factor, but is there really a need for this?
A curved display like this can look really nice, but it’s not necessary, adds a lot to the price and isn’t particularly stylus-friendly. Given that the stylus is one of the big selling points of the Note range, it seems unlikely that Samsung would pick a design that doesn’t work well with it.
Price
Pricing is much harder to work out, particularly when we don’t yet know what the phone is made out of. However, we can still make some informed guesses. When we reviewed the Note 4, it cost £600, which is the same as the S6 costs. Given that the Note 4 has a stylus and a bigger screen, we can expect it to cost more, so look to pay around £650 for it. If Samsung does release a Note 4 Edge, then we can expect that to cost around another £160 extra, putting the phone at around £800. That would make it extremely expensive, and would be another reason that Samsung would decide to make a flat Note 4 only.